92 ORCHARD IMPLEMENTS 



that may win in a plowing match where beauty is the main 

 thing, but it certainly does not leave the soil in anything like 

 as good condition as the mold board with an abrupt turn. The 

 latter is as good as the former plus one or two harrowings. 



Types of Plows. — There are four or five types of plows 

 usually available to select from, any one of which is fairly satis- 

 factory. First, there is the ordinary ivalking plow. This will 

 do good work, and if the orchard is small it may be the best plow 

 to choose. The chief disadvantages of this plow are that it is 

 necessary to make a back-furrow and a dead furrow to each 

 row of trees and that it is not possible to get quite as close to the 

 trees as with some other plows, but neither one of these is a 

 serious objection. 



The former difficulty may be obviated by selecting a hillside 

 walking plow. This is reversible, so that all the furrows are 

 thrown in one direction. The plowman simply begins at one 

 side of the orchard find goes back and forth, making neither 

 dead nor back-furrows, until the entire orchard is plowed. The 

 usual custom in using such a plow is to throw the land down 

 the hill, but it is much better, unless the slope is very steep, to 

 throw it up the hill. Hillside land which is cidtivated will work 

 down the hill fast enough without any deliberate assistance from 

 the owner. 



The principal objection to this plow is that it does not do as 

 good work as the ordinary type of walking plow just mentioned. 

 This is not a very serious difference, but it may be avoided by 

 using the third type of plow, the douhle-sulky plow. This is a 

 wheeled implement with two plows side by side, one a right- 

 hand and the other a left-hand plow. It works exactly the same 

 as the hillside plow but does a little better work on the soil. 

 One can not, however, get quite so close to the trees with it. 

 For preparing a field to set an orchard on it is the finest thing 

 yet invented. 



Orchard Gang Plow. — We have next the small orchard gang 

 plow shown in Figure 38. This consists of three eight-inch plows 

 and will therefore move twenty-four inches in width at one time, 

 which means getting over the orchard in a hurrj'. It is built so 



