Abstract: In order to solve the problems in mountainous orchard digging operation which include high labor intensity and low efficiency for manual hoe digging, as well as to solve the weak adaptability for the existing large digging machines and hand held gasoline digging machines when being utilized in the mountainous orchards, a double column portable digging machine was developed thus to accelerate the domestic mountainous orchard digging mechanization process. The design was based on the systematic analysis of the characteristics in mountainous mechanized digging operation, and based on the reference of advantages or disadvantages in the existing digging machines. The study focused on the digging machine爷s structure, working principle, and modular design principle. A prototype machine was developed using high strength lightweight material. The testing results indicated that: the machine is convenient to assemble and disassemble, it has high working efficiency, its unearth rate reaches 85%, its digging efficiency is 130 hoes per hour, and the consistency coefficient of variation of each hoe is 10%. It can be concluded that the machine meets all the design goals and can better fix the problems in mountainous digging operation such as inconvenient movement and being harmful to the operators.