A hoe is an ancient and versatile

agricultural Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, and forestry for food and non-food products. Agriculture was a key factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created f ...

and

horticultural Horticulture (from ) is the art and science of growing fruits, vegetables, flowers, trees, shrubs and ornamental plants. Horticulture is commonly associated with the more professional and technical aspects of plant cultivation on a smaller and mo ...

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

root crop Root vegetables are underground plant parts eaten by humans or animals as food. In agricultural and culinary terminology, the term applies to true roots, such as taproots and root tubers, as well as non-roots such as bulbs, corms, rhizomes, and ...

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 heaping 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 bu ...

), digging narrow furrows ( drills) and shallow trenches for planting

seeds In botany, a seed is a plant structure containing an embryo and stored nutrients in a protective coat called a ''testa''. More generally, the term "seed" means anything that can be sown, which may include seed and husk or tuber. Seeds are the ...

bulbs In botany, a bulb is a short underground stem with fleshy leaves or leaf basesBell, A.D. 1997. ''Plant form: an illustrated guide to flowering plant morphology''. Oxford University Press, Oxford, U.K. that function as food storage organs during ...

. 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 plant organ, 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 bel ...

s and

crop residue Crop residues are waste materials generated by agriculture. The two types are: * Field residues are materials left in an agricultural field or orchard after the crop has been harvested. These residues include stalks and stubble (stems), leav ...

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

potatoes The potato () is a starchy tuberous vegetable native to the Americas that is consumed as a staple food in many parts of the world. Potatoes are underground stem tubers of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'', a perennial in the nightshade famil ...

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. A hand 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.

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" 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 (" drills") and shallow trenches for the planting of

. * 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 hoe, hula hoe, stirrup hoe, scuffle hoe, loop hoe, 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 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 file:7263 Canterbury Agricultural College farm.jpg, Filling a feed-box of a seed drill, Lincoln University (New Zealand), Canterbury Agricultural College farm, 1948 A seed drill is a device used in agriculture that sowing, sows seeds for crops by ...

, 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 labor and land productivity between the mid-17th and late 19th centuries. Agricu ...

. * 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 ...

* 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). File:Dutch hoe.JPG, An old Dutch hoe File:Push Hoe.jpg, A push hoe File:Weeder.jpg, A Dutch hoe or push hoe; usually attached to a long hilt and handle File:Hoe 1.jpg, Curved blade File:COLLECTIE_TROPENMUSEUM_Metalen_hak_met_houten_steel_TMnr_3401-3.jpg, Indonesian Pacul File:Hawea coûteure.jpg, Short-handled grub hoe File:Magaglio, dettaglio.jpg, Fork hoe File:Rake_in_Kenya.jpg, A three-tined hoe from Mount Kenya. 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:Adze.jpg, Blade of an adze File:EB1911 Hoe - Martin’s One-Row Horse Hoe.jpg, Horse hoe File:Schrepel_DSCN1238.JPG, A hand hoe, i.e. a small, short-handled hoe

History

Hoes are an ancient technology, predating the

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

and perhaps preceded only by the digging stick. In Sumerian mythology, the invention of the hoe was credited to

Enlil Enlil, later known as Elil and Ellil, is an List of Mesopotamian deities, 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 t ...

, the chief of the council of gods. The hoe features in a Sumerian disputation poem known as the

Debate between the hoe and the plough The Debate between the hoe and the plough (Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, CSL 5.3.1) is a work of Sumerian language, Sumerian literature and one of the six extant works belonging to this literature's genre of Sumerian disputations, ...

, 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. Another composition from the same era and language, the Song of the hoe, is dedicated to the praise of this tool. The hand-plough (''mr'') was depicted in

predynastic Egypt Prehistoric Egypt and Predynastic Egypt was the period of time starting at the first human settlement and ending at the First Dynasty of Egypt around 3100 BC. At the end of prehistory, "Predynastic Egypt" is traditionally defined as the period ...

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 during 1755–1750 BC. It is the longest, best-organized, and best-preserved legal text from the ancient Near East. It is written in the Old Babylonian dialect of Akkadian language, Akkadi ...

(ca. 18th century BC) and the

Book of Isaiah The Book of Isaiah ( ) 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 prophet Isaiah ben Amo ...

(c. 8th century BC). Long-term use of short-handled hoes, which required the user to bend over from the waist to reach the ground, could cause permanent, crippling

lower back pain Low back pain or wiktionary:lumbago#Etymology, lumbago is a common musculoskeletal disorders, 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 var ...

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

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

with the political help of 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 (United States), Democratic P ...

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 Sac ...

. They declared that the short-handled hoe was an unsafe hand tool, which was then banned under California law in 1975. File:Skorpion II.svg, '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 macehead found by British archeologists James E. Quibell and Frederick W. Green in what they called the main deposit in the temple of Horus ...

) 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 classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

iron hoe (

Kerameikos Kerameikos (, ) also known by its latinization of names, Latinized form Ceramicus, is an area of Athens, Greece, located to the northwest of the Acropolis, Athens, Acropolis, which includes an extensive area both within and outside the ancient ci ...

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 Roman civilization *Epistle to the Romans, shortened to Romans, a letter w ...

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

Shennong Shennong ( zh, c=神農, p=Shénnóng), variously translated as "Divine Farmer" or "Divine Husbandman", born , was a mythological Chinese ruler known as the first Yan Emperor who has become a deity in Chinese and Vietnamese folk religion. H ...

the Divine Farmer (

Han dynasty The Han dynasty was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China (202 BC9 AD, 25–220 AD) established by Liu Bang and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–206 BC ...

, 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 heaping 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 bu ...

''Japanese Une ( 畝)'' for

scallion Scallions (also known as green onions and spring onions) are edible vegetables of various species in the genus ''Allium''. Scallions generally have a milder taste than most onions. Their close relatives include garlic, shallots, leeks, chive ...

s, ploughed by

rotary tiller A cultivator (also known as a rotavator) 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 li ...

or hoe (2007) 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, 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 ga ...

, 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.

References

External links

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

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