ROTATION OF CROPS 215 



districts of England that catch cropping 

 finds its greatest development. Not only 

 must the climate be good, but the soil must 

 be fairly light, so that there is no difficulty 

 in securing a good seed-bed in the minimum 

 of time after a crop has been removed from 

 the land. Strong land makes catch cropping 

 practically impossible, it being difficult to 

 plough such land during dry weather at the 

 height of summer. Even if it be broken up 

 at great expenditure on horse labour, or 

 through the utilization of steam, the furrow 

 is so rough and intractable as to be incapable 

 of yielding a satisfactory seed-bed, without 

 the intervention of a long period of exposure 

 to sun and air. But it is of the essence of 

 success in catch cropping that no time should 

 be lost between the separation of one crop 

 from the land and the sowing of the next, and 

 this is only possible where the land is of such 

 a character as to permit of its being ploughed 

 and otherwise worked under practically any 

 conditions of weather. 



By way of illustrating the practice of 

 catch cropping we may take the following 

 rotation. Wheat having been harvested and 

 cleared from the land by the middle of 

 August, the stubble is immediately scarified, 

 either by horse or steam power, so that 



