A hoe is an ancient and versatile

agricultural Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating Plant, plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of Sedentism, sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of Domestication, domesticated species created food ...

and

horticultural Horticulture is the branch of agriculture that deals with the art, science, technology, and business of plant cultivation. It includes the cultivation of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, herbs, sprouts, mushrooms, algae, flowers, seaweeds and no ...

hand tool used to shape soil, remove weeds, clear soil, and harvest

root crop Root vegetables are underground plant parts eaten by humans as food. Although botany distinguishes true roots (such as taproots and tuberous roots) from non-roots (such as bulbs, corms, rhizomes, and tubers, although some contain both hypocoty ...

s. Shaping the soil includes piling soil around the base of plants (

hilling Hilling, earthing up or ridging is the technique in agriculture and horticulture of piling soil up around the base of a plant. It can be done by hand (usually using a hoe), or with powered machinery, typically a tractor attachment. Hilling burie ...

), digging narrow furrows (

drills A drill is a tool used for making round holes or driving fasteners. It is fitted with a bit, either a drill or driverchuck. Hand-operated types are dramatically decreasing in popularity and cordless battery-powered ones proliferating due to i ...

) and shallow trenches for planting

seeds A seed is an embryonic plant enclosed in a protective outer covering, along with a food reserve. The formation of the seed is a part of the process of reproduction in seed plants, the spermatophytes, including the gymnosperm and angiosperm pl ...

or bulbs. Weeding with a hoe includes agitating the surface of the soil or cutting foliage from roots, and clearing the soil of old

root In vascular plants, the roots are the organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often below the sur ...

s and

crop A crop is a plant that can be grown and harvested extensively for profit or subsistence. When the plants of the same kind are cultivated at one place on a large scale, it is called a crop. Most crops are cultivated in agriculture or hydroponic ...

residues. Hoes for digging and moving soil are used to harvest root crops such as

potatoes The potato is a starchy food, a tuber of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'' and is a root vegetable native to the Americas. The plant is a perennial in the nightshade family Solanaceae. Wild potato species can be found from the southern United ...

Types

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. A draw 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. This design has been used since Roman times. A scuffle 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. The term "hand hoe" most commonly refers to any type of light-weight, short-handled hoe, although it may be used simply to contrast hand-held tools against animal or machine pulled tools.

Draw hoes

* The typical farming and gardening hoe with a heavy, broad blade and a straight edge is known as the Italian hoe, grub hoe, grubbing hoe, azada (from Spanish), grab hoe, pattern hoe or dago hoe ("

dago Dago may refer to: Places * Dagö/Dagø, the Swedish/Danish name of Hiiumaa, Estonia * Dago, Ghana, a village * Dago, Bandung, an area in Bandung, West Java, Indonesia * Dago Creek, Alaska * The Hill, St. Louis, in St. Louis, Missouri, was r ...

" being an ethnic slur referring to Italians, Spaniards, or Portuguese). * The ridging hoe, also known as the Warren hoe and the drill hoe, is a triangular (point-down) or heart-shaped draw hoe that is particularly useful for digging narrow furrows ("

") and shallow trenches for the planting of

or bulbs. * The Paxton hoe is similar to the Italian hoe, but with a more rounded rectangular blade. * The flower 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. *The hoedad, hoedag or hodag is a hoe-like tool used to plant trees. According to Hartzell (1987, p. 29), "The hoedag asoriginally called skindvic 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). * The mortar 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.

Scuffle hoes

* The Dutch 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". 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. * The hoop hoe, also known as the "action hoe", oscillating, hula, stirrup, pendulum weeder, 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 . The head is a loop of flat, sharpened strap metal. However, it is not as efficient as a draw hoe for moving soil. * The collinear hoe or collineal 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; it is unsuitable for tasks like soil moving and chopping. It was designed by

Eliot Coleman Eliot Coleman (born 1938) is an American farmer, author, agricultural researcher and educator, and proponent of organic farming. He wrote ''The New Organic Grower''. He served for two years as Executive Director of the International Federation of ...

in the late 1980s. * The swoe hoe is a modern, one-sided cutting hoe, being a variant of the Dutch hoe.

Other hoes

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. The historic manufacturer of the wheel hoe was Planet JR, these wheel hoes are still produced by Hoss Tools. * Horse hoes, resembling small ploughs, were a favourite implement of agricultural pioneer Jethro 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." The modern view is that, rather than nutrients being released, the crop simply benefits from the removal of competing plants. The introduction of the horse hoe, together with the better-known

seed drill A seed drill is a device used in agriculture that sows seeds for crops by positioning them in the soil and burying them to a specific depth while being dragged by a tractor. This ensures that seeds will be distributed evenly. The seed drill sow ...

, brought about the great increase farming productivity seen during the

British Agricultural Revolution The British Agricultural Revolution, or Second Agricultural Revolution, was an unprecedented increase in agricultural production in Britain arising from increases in labour and land productivity between the mid-17th and late 19th centuries. Agric ...

. * Fork hoes (also known as prong hoes, 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. * Clam hoes, made for

clam digging Clam digging is a North American term for a common way to harvest clams (edible infaunal bivalve mollusks) from below the surface of the tidal sand flats or mud flats where they live. It is done both recreationally (for enjoyment or as a so ...

* Adze hoes, with the basic hoe shape but heavier and stronger and with traditional uses in trail making. * Pacul or cangkul (hoes similar to adze hoe from Malaysia and Indonesia) * Gang hoes for powered use (in use at least from 1887 to 1964).

History

Hoes are an ancient technology, predating the

plough A plough or plow ( US; both ) is a farm tool for loosening or turning the soil before sowing seed or planting. Ploughs were traditionally drawn by oxen and horses, but in modern farms are drawn by tractors. A plough may have a wooden, iron or ...

and perhaps preceded only by the

digging stick A digging stick, sometimes called a yam stick, is a wooden implement used primarily by subsistence-based cultures to dig out underground food such as roots and tubers, tilling the soil, or burrowing animals and anthills. It is a term used in ar ...

. In Sumerian mythology, the invention of the hoe was credited to

Enlil Enlil, , "Lord f theWind" later known as Elil, is an ancient Mesopotamian god associated with wind, air, earth, and storms. He is first attested as the chief deity of the Sumerian pantheon, but he was later worshipped by the Akkadians, Bab ...

, the chief of the council of gods. The hand-plough (''mr'') was depicted in

predynastic Egypt Prehistoric Egypt and Predynastic Egypt span the period from the earliest human settlement to the beginning of the Early Dynastic Period around 3100 BC, starting with the first Pharaoh, Narmer for some Egyptologists, Hor-Aha for others, with ...

ian art, and hoes are also mentioned in ancient documents like the

Code of Hammurabi The Code of Hammurabi is a Babylonian legal text composed 1755–1750 BC. It is the longest, best-organised, and best-preserved legal text from the ancient Near East. It is written in the Old Babylonian dialect of Akkadian, purportedly by Hamm ...

(ca. 18th century BC) and the

Book of Isaiah The Book of Isaiah ( he, ספר ישעיהו, ) is the first of the Latter Prophets in the Hebrew Bible and the first of the Major Prophets in the Christian Old Testament. It is identified by a superscription as the words of the 8th-century BC ...

(c. 8th century BC). The human damage caused by long-term use of short-handled hoes, which required the user to bend over from the waist to reach the ground. Over time this could cause permanent, crippling

lower back pain Low back pain (LBP) or lumbago is a common disorder involving the muscles, nerves, and bones of the back, in between the lower edge of the ribs and the lower fold of the buttocks. Pain can vary from a dull constant ache to a sudden sharp feeli ...

to farm workers. Over time this resulted in change after a struggle led by

César Chávez Cesar Chavez (born Cesario Estrada Chavez ; ; March 31, 1927 – April 23, 1993) was an American labor leader and civil rights activist. Along with Dolores Huerta, he co-founded the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), which later merg ...

with the political help from Governor

Jerry Brown Edmund Gerald Brown Jr. (born April 7, 1938) is an American lawyer, author, and politician who served as the 34th and 39th governor of California from 1975 to 1983 and 2011 to 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, he was elected Secretary of S ...

in the

California Supreme Court The Supreme Court of California is the highest and final court of appeals in the courts of the U.S. state of California. It is headquartered in San Francisco at the Earl Warren Building, but it regularly holds sessions in Los Angeles and Sacra ...

. They declared that the short-handled hoe was an unsafe hand tool which was than banned under California law in 1975. File:Skorpion II.png, 'Mr' hand-plough,

Protodynastic Period of Egypt Naqada III is the last phase of the Naqada culture of ancient Egyptian prehistory, dating from approximately 3200 to 3000 BC. It is the period during which the process of state formation, which began in Naqada II, became highly visible, ...

(from the

Scorpion Macehead The Scorpion macehead (also known as the ''Major Scorpion macehead'') is a decorated ancient Egyptian mace (bludgeon), macehead found by United Kingdom, British archeologists James E. Quibell and Frederick W. Green (Egyptologist), Frederick W. Gr ...

) File:Houe_égyptienne_antique,_Musée_des_beaux-arts_de_Rennes.JPG, An ancient Egyptian hoe File:1257 - Keramikos Museum, Athens - Iron tool - Photo by Giovanni Dall'Orto, Nov 12 2009.jpg,

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...

iron hoe (

Kerameikos Kerameikos (, ) also known by its Latinized form Ceramicus, is an area of Athens, Greece, located to the northwest of the Acropolis, which includes an extensive area both within and outside the ancient city walls, on both sides of the Dipylon Ga ...

Archaeological Museum) File:RomanHoeBlade.jpg, A 2000-year-old iron

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a letter ...

hoe blade File:Raster_rastrus_rastrum_1890.png, Roman fork-hoe, called a "Raster" File:Shennong2.jpg,

Shennong Shennong (), variously translated as "Divine Farmer" or "Divine Husbandman", born Jiang Shinian (), was a mythological Chinese ruler known as the first Yan Emperor who has become a deity in Chinese and Vietnamese folk religion. He is venerat ...

the Divine Farmer (

Han Dynasty The Han dynasty (, ; ) was an imperial dynasty of China (202 BC – 9 AD, 25–220 AD), established by Liu Bang (Emperor Gao) and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–207 BC) and a warr ...

, 2nd century) File:YU motike.jpg, Draw hoe blades from Serbia File:Une(Japanese)(ridge)- between plowed furrows-1.JPG,

Hilling Hilling, earthing up or ridging is the technique in agriculture and horticulture of piling soil up around the base of a plant. It can be done by hand (usually using a hoe), or with powered machinery, typically a tractor attachment. Hilling burie ...

()
for

scallion Scallions (also known as spring onions or green onions) are vegetables derived from various species in the genus ''Allium''. Scallions generally have a milder taste than most onions and their close relatives include garlic, shallot, leek, ch ...

s, ploughed by

rotary tiller A cultivator is a piece of agricultural equipment used for secondary tillage. One sense of the name refers to frames with ''teeth'' (also called ''shanks'') that pierce the soil as they are dragged through it linearly. It also refers to mac ...

or hoe (2007) File:Weeder.jpg, A Dutch hoe or push hoe; usually attached to a long hilt and handle File:COLLECTIE_TROPENMUSEUM_Metalen_hak_met_houten_steel_TMnr_3401-3.jpg, Indonesian Pacul File:Japanese-hoe-biccyukuwa,katori-city,japan.JPG, Japanese 'bicchiu-guwa' ( びっちゅうぐわ), a fork-hoe for paddy fields. File:Rake_in_Kenya.jpg, A three-tined hoe from Mount Kenya. File:Schrepel_DSCN1238.JPG, A hand hoe, i.e. a small, short-handled hoe File:Draw hoe and Dutch hoe.jpg, Draw hoe (left) and Dutch hoe (right) sold now in the UK. File:Flag_of_Mozambique.svg,

Flag of Mozambique The flag of Mozambique is the national flag of the Republic of Mozambique that was adopted on 1 May 1983. It is a tricolor flag with white fimbriations and a red triangle. Teal stands for the riches of the land, the white fimbriations signify ...

, featuring a draw hoe

Archaeological use

Over the past fifteen or twenty years, hoes have become increasingly popular tools for professional archaeologists. While not as accurate as the traditional

trowel A trowel is a small hand tool used for digging, applying, smoothing, or moving small amounts of viscous or particulate material. Common varieties include the masonry trowel, garden trowel, and float trowel. A power trowel is a much larger gas ...

, 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.

Notes

References

External links

* "Scuffle hoe" or "Dutch hoe" as defined b
Memidex/WordWeb dictionary/thesaurus
* Photographs of horse hoes a

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