Plowing wheatland

Allen's post about plowing wheat stubble reminded me of ads I've seen for "wheatland disc plows". Were they ever common and are they still used? What's the advantage or disadvantage over moldboards?

We called them "oneways" but that is what we used until the mid 60's when we got a tandom disc. the disc plow would only turn the stubble half way over and would leave some showing to hold the ground from blowing and hold run off. We stopped moldboard plowing in the mid 50's.

Wheatfarmer, you just clarified something that I have long wondered about. When I was a kid, Dad bought a well used Case VA which had a two disc plow. This plow mounted on the right side of the tractor in front of the rear wheel. Dad tried plowing with it and cussed it because the soil would not turn completely over. Now I understand why. They did their job in wheat land, but for turning soil to be planted in corn and tobacco, we needed a bottom plow to turn everything under.

Chemical fallow has pretty much replaced the one-way and a host of other implements used to till summer fallow on the High Plains. I don't live in that part of the country any more, but I'm sure there are still some in use.

After the Dust Bowl, Great Plains farmers figured out with help from the Soil Conservation Service that the plains don't get enough rain to reliably produce a crop every year. The solution was to "summer fallow", meaning you only plant every other year and till it just enough to control weeds in the off years. The one-way was one of the implements developed for this purpose. Other commonly used implements were chisel plows, sweeps and rod weeders. Every time you turn the soil, you lose moisture. Since a one-way only turns it half as much as plow or tandem disk, you lose less moisture. Moldboard plows are seldom if ever used for summer fallow.

In the seventies and eighties, farmers started to experiment with chemical fallow. Rather than till the soil to kill weeds, they used herbicides. Chemical fallow produces so much better yields than tilling that nearly all dryland farmers on the plains have made the switch. It's now common to use a three-year rotation (wheat-corn-fallow) instead of the old two-year rotation.

These machines were very popular here in Kansas years ago but have been long obsolete. Around here everyone calls it a "one-way" but "disc tiller" was a more generic name. Although this ad calls it a "disc plow" that term generally means a heavier-duty implement with larger discs supported by individual bearings and not setting parallel with each other. (Note in the ad that the discs are all on a common shaft.) Each manufacturer had their own name for the machine and obviously some names overlapped a bit. The action of the one-way is sort of halfway in between that of a disc harrow and a disc plow with a typical operating depth of three or four inches.

The last few years that I raised wheat in the 1980's, I quit using a moldboard plow and started using a chisel plow.

I'd chisel the ground, and then disc it a time or two. It went a lot faster, and didn't leave dead furrows and back furrows to cope with.

I hadn't thought of the difference between them until you mentioned it. I do believe Moline used to make them both ways but ended up with the style that is pictured. I remember seeing previous versions of them with steel wheels. They were heavy.