Red complex harrow on a field with forest in background.

A harrow is a farm implement used for surface tillage. It is used after ploughing for breaking up and smoothing out the surface of the soil. The purpose of harrowing is to break up clods and to provide a soil structure, called tilth, that is suitable for planting seeds. Coarser harrowing may also be used to remove weeds and to cover seed after sowing. There are four general types of harrows: disc harrows, tine harrows (including spring-tooth harrows, drag harrows, and spike harrows), chain harrows, and chain-disk harrows. They are almost always tractor-mounted implements, either trailed after the tractor by a drawbar or mounted on the three-point hitch. In modern mechanized farming, generally a farmer will use two harrows, one after the other. The disk harrow is used first to slice up the large clods left by the mould-board plough, followed by the spring-tooth harrow. To save time and fuel they may be pulled by one tractor the disk hitched to the tractor, and the spring-tooth hitched to, and directly behind, the disk. The result is a smooth field with powdery dirt at the surface.

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