The roller is an

agricultural Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people ...

tool used for flattening land or breaking up large clumps of

soil Soil, also commonly referred to as earth or dirt, is a mixture of organic matter, minerals, gases, liquids, and organisms that together support life. Some scientific definitions distinguish ''dirt'' from ''soil'' by restricting the former ...

, especially after

ploughing 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 ...

disc harrow A disc harrow is a harrow whose cutting edges are a row of concave metal discs, which may be scalloped or set at an oblique angle. It is an agricultural implement that is used to till the soil where crops are to be planted. It is also used to ...

ing. Typically, rollers are pulled by

tractor A tractor is an engineering vehicle specifically designed to deliver a high tractive effort (or torque) at slow speeds, for the purposes of hauling a Trailer (vehicle), trailer or machinery such as that used in agriculture, mining or construc ...

s or, prior to mechanisation, a team of animals such as

horse The horse (''Equus ferus caballus'') is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of ''Equus ferus''. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million ...

s or

oxen An ox ( : oxen, ), also known as a bullock (in BrE, AusE, and IndE), is a male bovine trained and used as a draft animal. Oxen are commonly castrated adult male cattle; castration inhibits testosterone and aggression, which makes the m ...

. As well as for agricultural purposes, rollers are used on

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by s ...

pitches and residential

lawn A lawn is an area of soil-covered land planted with grasses and other durable plants such as clover which are maintained at a short height with a lawnmower (or sometimes grazing animals) and used for aesthetic and recreational purposes. ...

areas. Flatter land makes subsequent

weed control Weed control is a type of pest control, which attempts to stop or reduce growth of weeds, especially noxious weeds, with the aim of reducing their competition with desired flora and fauna including domesticated plants and livestock, and in natu ...

and

harvest Harvesting is the process of gathering a ripe crop from the fields. Reaping is the cutting of grain or pulse for harvest, typically using a scythe, sickle, or reaper. On smaller farms with minimal mechanization, harvesting is the most la ...

ing easier, and rolling can help to reduce moisture loss from cultivated soil. On lawns, rolling levels the land for

mowing A mower is a person or machine that cuts (mows) grass or other plants that grow on the ground. Usually mowing is distinguished from reaping, which uses similar implements, but is the traditional term for harvesting grain crops, e.g. with reapers ...

and compacts the soil surface. Rollers may be weighted in different ways. For many uses a heavy roller is used. These may consist of one or more cylinders made of thick

steel Steel is an alloy made up of iron with added carbon to improve its strength and fracture resistance compared to other forms of iron. Many other elements may be present or added. Stainless steels that are corrosion- and oxidation-resist ...

, a thinner steel cylinder filled with

concrete Concrete is a composite material composed of fine and coarse construction aggregate, aggregate bonded together with a fluid cement (cement paste) that hardens (cures) over time. Concrete is the second-most-used substance in the world after wa ...

, or a cylinder filled with water. A water-filled roller has the advantage that the water may be drained out for lighter use or for transport. In frost-prone areas a water filled roller must be drained for winter storage to avoid breakage due to the expansion for water as it turns to

ice Ice is water frozen into a solid state, typically forming at or below temperatures of 0 degrees Celsius or Depending on the presence of impurities such as particles of soil or bubbles of air, it can appear transparent or a more or less opaq ...

Designs

One-piece versus segmented

On tilled soil a one-piece roller has the disadvantage that when turning corners the outer end of the roller has to rotate much faster than the inner end, forcing one or both ends to skid. A one-piece roller turned on soft ground will skid up a heap of soil at the outer radius, leaving heaps, which is counter-productive. Rollers are often made in two or three sections to reduce this problem, and the Cambridge roller overcomes it altogether by mounting many small segments onto one axle so that they can each rotate at local ground-speed.

Smooth versus ridged

The surface of rollers may be smooth, or it may be textured to help break up soil or to groove the final surface to reduce scouring from rain. Each segment of a Cambridge roller has a rib around its edge for this purpose. The name cultipacker is often used for such ridged types, especially in the United States.

Uses

Farming use

Rollers are a secondary tillage tool used for flattening land or breaking up large clumps of

, especially after

ing. Rollers are typically pulled by

s today. Before

mechanised agriculture Mechanised agriculture or agricultural mechanization is the use of machinery and equipment, ranging from simple and basic hand tools to more sophisticated, motorized equipment and machinery, to perform agricultural operations. In modern times, po ...

, a team of

working animal A working animal is an animal, usually domesticated, that is kept by humans and trained to perform tasks instead of being slaughtered to harvest animal products. Some are used for their physical strength (e.g. oxen and draft horses) or for ...

s such as

s or

provided the power. Animal power is still used today in some contexts, such as on

Amish The Amish (; pdc, Amisch; german: link=no, Amische), formally the Old Order Amish, are a group of traditionalist Anabaptist Christian church fellowships with Swiss German and Alsatian origins. They are closely related to Mennonite churches ...

farms in the United States and in regions of Asia where draft oxen are still widely used. Rollers prepare optimal

seedbed A seedbed or seedling bed is the local soil environment in which seeds are planted. Often it comprises not only the soil but also a specially prepared cold frame, hotbed or raised bed used to grow the seedlings in a controlled environment into ...

s by making them as flat as is practical and moderately firmed. Flatness is important at planting because it is the only practical way to control average seed planting depth without laborious hand planting of each seed; it is not practical to follow an instruction of (for example) 1-cm planting depth if the contour of the seedbed varies by 2 cm or more between adjacent spots. This is why breaking up of even small clods/lumps, and well-leveled spreading of soil, is important at planting time. Flatter land also makes subsequent

and

ing easier. For example, in mechanical weed control, controlling

cultivator 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 ma ...

tooth depth is practical only with a decently flat soil contour, and in combining, controlling combine head height is practical only with a decently flat soil contour. Rolling is also believed to help reduce moisture loss from cultivated soil.

Ganging and trailing

Rollers may be ganged to increase the width of each pass/swath. Rollers may be trailed after other equipment such as

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 ...

s, or

mower A mower is a person or machine that cuts (mows) grass or other plants that grow on the ground. Usually mowing is distinguished from reaping, which uses similar implements, but is the traditional term for harvesting grain crops, e.g. with reapers ...

Cricket pitch use

In cricket, rollers are used to make the pitch flat and less dangerous for batsmen. Several size rollers have been used in the history of cricket, from light rollers that were used in the days of uncovered pitches and at some stages during the 1950s to make batting less easy, to the modern “heavy roller” universally used in top-class cricket today. Regulations permit a pitch only to be rolled at the commencement of each innings or day’s play, but this has still had a massive influence on the game by eliminating the shooters that were ubiquitous on all but light soils before heavy rollers were used. Heavy rollers have sometimes been criticised for making batting too easy and for reducing the rate at which pitches dry out after rain in the cool English climate.“Notes by the Editor”
from Pardon, Sydney H. (editor); '' John Wisden’s Cricketers’ Almanac''; Sixty-Eighth Edition (1931)

Lawn use

Lawn rollers are designed to even out or firm up the lawn surface, especially in climates where heaving causes the lawn to be lumpy. Heaving may result when the ground freezes and thaws many times over winter. Where this occurs, gardeners are advised to give the lawn a light rolling with a lawn roller in the spring. Clay or wet soils should not be rolled as they become compacted.

References

External links

{{Garden tools Agricultural machinery Cricket equipment