24 



BULLETIN OF 



Massachusetts Boakd of Agriculture. 



CATCH-CROPS, 



By Wm. p. Brooks, Ph.D., Professor of Agriculture, Massachusetts Agricultural 



Collrgp. 



By the term catch-crop is commonly understood a crop which is used 

 to fill a gap, whether caused by the failure of one of the regular crops 

 of the farm or one coming between the main crops. It is a crop which 

 occupies a field which, in the more common farm practice, would re- 

 main bare or unproductive. It is often an emergency crop, i. c, a crop 

 not at first planned for, but introduced to supply a want which is a 

 consequence of accident or unforeseen conditions. A rigid regard for 

 the teachings of farm economy would make catch-crops, save those 

 sometimes introduced mider the spur of unforeseen contingencies, as 

 regular members of our rotations as any of the crops of the farm. It 

 is not truer that " nature abhors a vacuum " than that the good farmer 

 abhors bare fields. As idle hands find mischief, so also in one sense do 

 idle fields. 



Idle Fields make theih Owners Poor. 



The idle field is no more at a stand-still than the idle hand. A growth 

 of weeds on all except the most barren soon covers its nakedness. The 

 increased labor in the care of crops in subsequent years, resulting from 

 the germination of the countless seeds developed in the idle field, will 

 make heavy inroads upon the owner's time or money. The catch-crop 

 may be made to keep down these weeds ; and right here is found one 

 of the chief advantages of catch-cropping. 



But the weeds upon the idle field may be kept down by occasional 

 ploughing and harrowing, or they may be cut before they ripen seeds, 

 may be argued. True, the weed-seed pest may be prevented in either 

 of these ways : but even so the idle field makes the owner poor. Should 

 he choose to keep the weeds down by occasionally working the soil, he 

 gives his idle field what is known as a bare fallow ; and it must be ad- 

 mitted that bare fallows were once recommended by the best farmers 

 of their time. They are not advised by the progressive farmers of to- 

 day ; for it is known, largely as a result of the work of Lawes and 

 Gilbert, that the increased pi'oductiveness which often follows a bare 

 fallow is obtained at too heavy a cost. The items are : first, the loss 

 of time ; second, the labor of keeping the land clean ; and third, the 

 sacrifice to old ocean, to which it is carried by the leaching rainwater, 



