Petty Plough

The Petty Plough was a steerable plough created by brothers Frank and Herbert Petty of Doncaster, Victoria, Australia, in the early 1930s, designed to work between and around fruit trees in orchards without the tedious manual cultivation growers previously relied on. It could be pulled by horses or tractors and used steerable disc wheels controlled by levers and foot pedals so an operator could navigate precisely around trees, with cutting discs that could be reversed to turn soil toward the trees in autumn for drainage or away from them in spring to conserve water. Manufactured under license by Daniel Harvey, it was widely adopted across southeastern Australia, Tasmania, Western Australia and New Zealand, and remained an important tool in mechanizing orchard maintenance until its use declined from the 1960s onward as orchardists shifted from cultivation to mowing.