A farmer using a hoe to keep weeds down in a vegetable garden.
Ahoe is an ancient and versatileagricultural andhorticultural hand tool used to shape soil,remove weeds, clear soil, and harvestroot crops. Shaping the soil includes piling soil around the base of plants (hilling), digging narrow furrows (drills) and shallow trenches for plantingseeds orbulbs. Weeding with a hoe includes agitating the surface of the soil or cutting foliage from roots, and clearing the soil of oldroots andcrop residues. Hoes for digging and moving soil are used to harvest root crops such aspotatoes.
Types
Cultivating tool, a pull or draw hoe
Cultivating tool, a push or thrust hoe
There are many kinds of hoes of varied appearances and purposes. Some offer multiple functions, while others have only a singular and specific purpose.
There are two general types of hoe: draw hoes for shaping soil, and scuffle hoes for weeding and aerating soil.
Adraw hoe has a blade set at approximately a right angle to the shaft. The user chops into the ground and then pulls (draws) the blade towards them. Altering the angle of the handle can cause the hoe to dig deeper or more shallowly as the hoe is pulled. A draw hoe can easily be used to cultivate soil to a depth of several centimetres. A typical design of draw hoe, the "eye hoe", has a ring in the head through which the handle is fitted.[1] This design has been used since Roman times.
Ascuffle hoe is used to scrape the surface of the soil, loosen the top few centimetres, and to cut the roots of, remove, and disrupt the growth of weeds efficiently. These are primarily of two different designs: the Dutch hoe and the hoop hoe.
Ahand hoe is usually a light-weight, short-handled hoe of any type, although it may be used simply to contrast hand-held tools against animal- or machine-pulled tools.
The typical farming and gardening hoe with a heavy, broad blade and a straight edge is known as theItalian hoe,[2]grub hoe, grubbing hoe,azada (from Spanish),[3][4][5]grab hoe,[6]pattern hoe[7] ordago hoe[8][9] ("dago" being an ethnic slur referring to Italians, Spaniards, or Portuguese).
Theridging hoe, also known as theWarren hoe[10] and thedrill hoe, is a triangular (point-down) or heart-shaped draw hoe that is particularly useful for digging narrow furrows ("drills") and shallow trenches for the planting ofseeds orbulbs.[11][12]
ThePaxton hoe is similar to the Italian hoe, but with a more rounded rectangular blade.
Theflower hoe has a very small blade, rendering it useful for light weeding and aerating around growing plants, so as not to disturb their shallow roots while removing weeds beyond the reach of the gardener's arm.
Thehoedad,hoedag orhodag is a hoe-like tool used toplant trees.[13] According to Hartzell (1987, p. 29), "The hoedag [was] originally calledskindvic hoe... Hans Rasmussen, legendary contractor and timber farm owner, is credited with having invented the curved, convex, round-nosed hoedag blade which is widely used today" (emphasis added).[14]
Themortar hoe is a tool specific to the manual mixing of mortar and concrete, and has the appearance of a typical square-bladed draw hoe with the addition of large holes in the blade.[15]
Scuffle hoes
TheDutch hoe is designed to be pushed or pulled through the soil to cut the roots of weeds just under the surface. A Dutch hoe has a blade "sharp on every side so as to cut either forward and backward".[16] The blade must be set in a plane slightly upwardly inclined in relation to the dual axis of the shaft. The user pushes the handle to move the blade forward, forcing it below the surface of the soil and maintaining it at a shallow depth by altering the angle of the handle while pushing. A scuffle hoe can easily cultivate the soil and remove weeds from the surface layer.
Thehoop hoe, also known as the action hoe,[17][18] oscillating hoe, hula hoe,[18] stirrup hoe,[18] scuffle hoe,[18] loop hoe,[18] pendulum weeder,[19] or swivel hoe) has a double-edge blade that bends around to form a rectangle attached to the shaft. Weeds are cut just below the surface of the soil as the blade is pushed and pulled. The back and forth motion is highly effective at cutting weeds in loose or friable soil. The width of the blade typically ranges between 8 and 18 cm (3 and 7 in). The head is a loop of flat, sharpened strap metal. However, it is not as efficient as a draw hoe for moving soil.[20]
Thecollinear hoe orcollineal hoe has a narrow, razor-sharp blade which is used to slice the roots of weeds by skimming it just under the surface of the soil with a sweeping motion;[21] it is unsuitable for tasks like soil moving and chopping. It was designed byEliot Coleman in the late 1980s.[22]
Theswoe hoe is a modern,[23] one-sided cutting hoe, being a variant of the Dutch hoe.
Other hoes
Fork-hoe depiction inDer Rebmann (the vine-dresser).Jost Amman,Das Ständebuch, 1568
Hoes resembling neither draw nor scuffle hoes include:
Wheel hoes are, as the name suggests, a hoe or pair of hoes attached to one or more wheels. The hoes are frequently interchangeable with other tools.[24][25] The historic manufacturer of the wheel hoe was Planet JR, these wheel hoes are still produced by Hoss Tools.[26]
Horse hoes, resembling small ploughs, were a favourite implement of agricultural pioneerJethro Tull, who claimed in his book "Horse Hoeing Husbandry" that "the horse-hoe will, in wide intervals, give wheat throughout all the stages of its life, as much nourishment as the discreet hoer pleases."[27] The modern view is that, rather than nutrients being released, the crop simply benefits from the removal of competing plants.[28] The introduction of the horse hoe, together with the better-knownseed drill, brought about the great increase farming productivity seen during theBritish Agricultural Revolution.[29]
Fork hoes (also known as prong hoes,[10] tined hoes, Canterbury hoes, drag forks or bent forks) are hoes that have two or more tines at right angles to the shaft. Their use is typically to loosen the soil, prior to planting or sowing.[11]
Hoes are an ancient technology, predating theplough and perhaps preceded only by thedigging stick. InSumerian mythology, the invention of the hoe was credited toEnlil, the chief of the council of gods.[35] The hoe features in aSumerian disputation poem known as theDebate between the hoe and the plough, dating to the 3rd millennium BC, where a personified hoe debates a personified plough over which tool is the better. At the end of the poem, the hoe is declared the winner.[36] Another composition from the same era and language, theSong of the hoe, is dedicated to the praise of this tool.
Long-term use of short-handled hoes, which required the user to bend over from the waist to reach the ground, could cause permanent, cripplinglower back pain to farm workers. Over time, this resulted in change after a struggle led byCésar Chávez with the political help of GovernorJerry Brown in theCalifornia Supreme Court. They declared that the short-handled hoe was an unsafe hand tool, which was then banned under California law in 1975.[37][38]
Over the past fifteen or twenty years,[as of?] hoes have become increasingly popular tools for professional archaeologists. While not as accurate as the traditionaltrowel, the hoe is an ideal tool for cleaning relatively large open areas of archaeological interest. It is faster to use than a trowel, and produces a much cleaner surface than an excavator bucket or shovel-scrape, and consequently on many open-area excavations the once-common line of kneeling archaeologists trowelling backwards has been replaced with a line of stooping archaeologists with hoes.[citation needed]
^Hartzell, Hal Jr. (1987).Birth of a Cooperative: Hoedads, Inc. A Worker Owned Forest Labor Co-op. Eugene, OR: Hulogos'i Communications. p. 29.ISBN0-938493-09-4.
Jimenez, Enrique (2017). "The Babylonian Disputation Poems: With Editions of the Series of the Poplar, Palm and Vine, the Series of the Spider, and the Story of the Poor, Forlorn Wren".The Babylonian Disputation Poems. Brill.ISBN978-90-04-33626-1.
Evans, Chris, “The Plantation Hoe: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Commodity, 1650–1850,”William and Mary Quarterly, (2012) 69#1 pp 71–100.
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