ROLLING, PLANKING, AND HOEING 179 



plank harrow. The planker is now used where 

 the roller was formerly to crush the lumps on 

 heavy loams andcTay soils that do not need com- 

 pacting. On tenacious soils it is a common 

 practice to use the disk harrow after plowing, fol- 

 lowed by the planker, the Acme or spike-tooth 

 harrow and then the planker again, alternating 

 harrowing and planking the soil until it is brought 

 into the right condition. The last turn should be 

 with the planker, as it leaves the surface mellow 

 and smooth, so that fine seeds may be sown or the 

 land marked out for planting. 



The planker breaks up many of the small lumps 

 that slip through harrow teeth and presses others 

 into the ground where they can be torn out and 

 broken to pieces by the subsequent harrowing. 

 The planker is one of the most useful tools that any 

 farmeT^can have, especially if the soil is somewhat 

 heavy. It is never used to compact the soil around 

 the seeds, as a roller, but is always used like a 

 harrow as a pulveriser and leveller after plowing. 

 It is superior for this purpose to the roller; it 

 should be used in place of the roller in all cases but 

 two; upon light soils which need compacting and 

 upon seeding. 



HOEING 



In primitive agriculture the plow and the hoe 

 were about the only tillage tools used. Of late 

 years the hoe has been used less and less as an 

 implement of tillage. It has been forced aside by 

 the increasing necessity for doing as much of the 

 work on the farm as possible with horse power. 

 The harrow, the cultivator and the weeder now do 

 much of the work that was formerly done with the 



