152 SOILS 



light soil it will pay to take it off the plow and hitch 

 it to the harrow early enough to make a mellow 

 seed bed of the furrow-slices before nightfall. This 

 is much better than to defer harrowing until the 

 plowing is finished. The subsoil is compacted in 

 narrowing; this starts capillary action and water 

 is drawn from the soil below, and would escape 

 were it not for the mulch of fine soil left on me 

 surface by the harrow. The compacting effect on 

 the subsoil by harrowing is a benefit on most soils. 



LEADING TYPES OF CULTIVATORS 



As the term is commonly used, a cultivator is 

 any toothed implement that is used to stir the soil 

 after it has been fitted, chiefly for the purpose of 

 killing weeds and preventing the loss of soil water. 

 Many harrows are used as cultivators under certain 

 conditions; as when a spring-tooth harrow is used 

 to preserve the soil mulch in an orchard, or when a 

 spike-tooth harrow is used to run over the potato 

 field when the sprouts are still small enough to 

 slip between the teeth without injury. When 

 narrowed down to its most distinctive usage a 

 cultivator is a toothed implement drawn by one 

 horse and used for inter-tillage, or for preserving 

 the mulch between rows of plants. Most of these 

 kinds of cultivators, however, are only small 

 harrows with handles attached, and they stir the 

 soil in about the same way as the harrows that have 

 been described. All kinds of cultivators are some- 

 times called " horse hoes," but this name seems to be 

 especially fitted for the broad-tooth coulter 

 cultivators. 



The following classes of cultivators include most 

 of those in common use, but there is an almost 



