Both large-scale industrial and private, and even amateur farming, cannot do without loosening the soil. On a flower bed with tulips or a bed with dill an area of a couple of square meters, a manual chopper will successfully perform this operation. A plot of ten hectare (one hundredth is a plot of one hundredth of a hectare with an area of 10 x 10 = 100 m 2 ), sown, for example, with potatoes, most likely, it will require more powerful agricultural machines. And for loosening the soil, it will be necessary exactly the harrow. Tooth or disc, home-made or factory-made, aggregated by a walk-behind tractor, horse drawn traction or even human. The most common and simplest type of harrow is dental.
To make such an agricultural tool is not difficult with your own hands. It is important not to make a mistake with the size and weight, so that the harrow, instead of contributing to the crop, does not "bury" it. So, about everything in more detail.
Types of surface tillage. Turnoverless processing
There are few ways (types) of mechanical tillage. In different sources, they can be classified in different ways and differ in names. So, processing implies, in addition to compaction (rolling, clapping, pressing), three types of loosening:
- loosening the soil with a turnover of the reservoir;
- loosening without turnover of the reservoir;
- loosening with leveling.
If we are talking about preparing the soil for the winter in central Russia, then this is most often loosening with a turnover of the reservoir, or plowing. All kinds of plowshares of the plow provide different results. So, a plow with a cylindrical ploughshare surface wraps the formation partially, but breaks it along the entire length, providing along the way a good loosening. But the screw ploughshare turns the bed exactly 180 °, keeping it practically unchanged and well weeding the weed seeds to a depth (where a significant part of them dies due to removal from light and heat).
Some types of harrows also partially wrap the formation, such as a disk harrow. Her “relative” refers to agricultural implements that carry out cultivation with alignment.
Harrowing Objectives
What is harrowing used for? After all, there is plowing, cultivation. These agricultural practices loosen the subsoil layer, contribute to the air nutrition of the root systems of crops. And what can, in comparison with a plow or chisel, a tooth harrow? Easy processing of the surface itself, no more. But it is this type of impact on the field that is sometimes in demand.
A simple example. A field has been plowed on loams, there is no rain for a week, and on the contrary, the sun heats the giant clods of earth formed during the plowing process, and a warm breeze expels the remnants of moisture from them. What happens if you simply put grain seeders in such areas? Anything but sowing cereals. Harvesting with such agriculture is not worth the wait.
If the land is located on complex heavy land, after plowing, a tooth harrow will work successfully. A heavy construction bristled with metal teeth will break heavy clods.
And already a flat surface, now consisting of lumps measuring no more than a few centimeters, will not dry out ahead of time and will be ready to give life to a new crop.
Classification of Dental Harrows
Conventionally, a dental harrow can be divided into three classes:
- heavy (one tooth of such agricultural equipment presses on the ground with a force of about 2-3 kg);
- medium (tooth pressure from 1 to 2 kg);
- light (not more than one kilogram - tooth pressure of this harrow).
Recently, the classification is changing rapidly due to the increasing use of aggregates for integrated tillage. Such a machine wraps the formation in one pass, destroys it to lumps of a given size, smoothes the surface, and, if necessary, compacts it and even makes fertilizers.
The use of various types of harrows
The most difficult soils from the point of view of agricultural technology are clays and loams. A heavy tooth harrow is used to break up clods after raising a chill (reverse plowing) or chiseling. The coupling of such tools is aggregated, as a rule, with tractors from the 2nd class and higher.
Previously, the use of such hitch was a whole event. The hitch itself and the harrows included in it were delivered to the place of work in the trailer. It took several people in order to assemble all the links of agricultural equipment together. Modern hydroficated dental harrows are easily serviced by one machine operator. Directly on the field, the harrow from the transport position thanks to the presence of hydraulic drives is transferred to the working one at the touch of a button.
Medium harrows work on light soils - sandstones and sandy loams. But the use of light harrows is associated not with the type of soil, but with technology. With their help, moisture closure is most often performed - breaking the crust formed after precipitation. This is done in order to destroy the tubules through which moisture was absorbed into the ground - to save water for plants.
Also, with the help of light harrows weed control. Weeds that have just sprouted from the seed fall to the surface along with the roots and die from dehydration.
DIY harrow
The design of the dental harrow is uncomplicated. The simplest agricultural tool for loosening and leveling the soil layer is made like an ordinary wooden grate. The distance between adjacent teeth, if we talk about small personal plots, can be planned in the range from 100 to 200 mm.
The teeth in the grid nodes can be inserted in different ways:
- The easiest way is to drive in nails of sufficient thickness and then bite off the hats. Not the best solution from the point of view of reliability, suitable for light harrows (weed control until cultivated crops, moisture closure).
- Instead of nails, you can use thick self-tapping screws, and on the outside, as a working section, an uncut part remains.
- Pieces of reinforcement 8-12 mm, driven with guaranteed interference fit into pre-prepared holes.
Better and more reliable will be a metal harrow. You can use any hire available as strips: a corner, a channel, pipes, etc. Just do not weld the teeth (most often they use pieces of steel reinforcement) directly to the surface of the harrow. Such a tooth is likely to break off quickly. Holes are drilled in advance in advance, the prepared bars are inserted and the places of their exit are scalded on both sides.
For areas with difficult terrain
You can make a tooth harrow with your own hands with a slightly more complex design. It will work perfectly as a light harrow to destroy the capillary crust, as well as to destroy weeds. A feature of its design is the articulation of the elements.
Such a tool will perfectly cope with weeding weeds precisely because of its segment structure - not a single cavity or bulge of the sown area will remain without the “attention” of its teeth.
Toothed rotary harrow
Appeared in domestic crop production relatively recently. It is most often used in the cultivation of potatoes. After the passage of such a harrow, the farmer receives the correct bed of trapezoidal section. The harrow perfectly weeds, remarkably loosens the soil. It is important that you can use it until the flowering of potatoes - the teeth of the rotors practically do not damage the stems of plants.
Another plus. Potatoes after the passage of the rotor are in the beds at an elevation relative to the general field level. Due to this, since the ridges warm up better, earlier and more friendly shoots of the culture are provided.