Eastern North Carolina Encyclopedia
early varieties, such as the Netted Gem or Rocky Ford are grown, as these are more in demand and will pack and ship better than the larger varieties.
CUCUMBERS
The cucumber, giving best results on warm, quick soils, filled with sufficient vegetable matter to hold a good supply of moisture, naturally finds an important place among the truck crops of the Coastal Plain Section of this State.
When they are grown early they are profitable; in fact, earliness determines to a great extent the degree of success of the crop. It will usually warrant the market gardeners to go to some extra trouble and expense to attain this end. The plants are started in frames and hotbeds, but as they are transplanted with difficulty, it is better to start them in pots and transplant to the field when all danger of frost is over. They are grown to a large extent in frames after lettuce, in which case they come off in July in time for a crop of cowpeas or some other late-planted crop.
The crop can be shipped north until the price falls. Early cucumbers often bring as much as $2 per bushel basket, and 800 baskets per acre is not an uncommon yield.
ENGLISH PEAS
The early crop of English peas is a very important one to the truck growers in certain sections of Eastern North Carolina. The main crop of the extra earlies is sown in January and goes to market late in April and early May. Single growers will often plant one hundred acres in peas. They are a cheaply grown crop and are soon off the land. The vines can be turned under for the improvement of the soil, and the land at once made available for some later crop, such as cucumbers or melons.
ASPARAGUS
Asparagus could be made an important crop for the truck growers of the Coastal Plain Section, where the warm, mellow, sandy soil produces early crops of excellent quality. Due to its earliness, the eastern part of the State is preeminently the asparagus-growing section to supply northern markets. As local markets are often meagerly supplied with this wholesome vegetable, a profitable industry could be developed in many parts of the State in producing asparagus for home markets.
STRING BEANS
String beans are grown by truckers throughout the State with the crop receiving the greatest attention in the lower part of the Coastal Plain Section. Here they generally pay well when early. They are cheaply grown, need light fertilization, and are out of the way in early summer so that a hay crop of peas can be grown on the same land.
SPINACH
Spinach is grown by truckers for shipment during winter and early spring. During severe winters, when the crop is killed in the North, the southern-grown spinach sells to an advantage. In the South it is a hardy crop, cheaply grown, which yields heavily and occupies the ground only during the cool season.
FRUIT GROWING IN EASTERN NORTH CAROLINA
While practically all fruits can be grown throughout North Carolina the production of certain fruit crops upon a commercial scale is restricted to Eastern Carolina. With its wonderful climate, long growing season, and adaptable soil, Eastern Carolina is especially suited to the production of figs, grapes, pecans, blueberries, and strawberries.
STRAWBERRIES
Strawberries are grown generally over the entire State for home use and local market, but from a commercial standpoint the production of this crop has become developed in certain areas of the Coastal Plain Section.
The main point to be considered in the production of this fruit for commercial purposes is the fact that the strawberry is grown commercially in all parts of the country, and that each section from Florida to Maine has its own season in the market. Hence to make the crop profitable for shipment to northern markets, the berries must be grown where the climatic conditions warrant an early ripening of the fruit, so that it can be placed on the market before localities further north and closer to the markets come in with their berries. For this reason, the production of the crop commercially has been confined to the lands of the Coastal Plain where soil and climatic conditions combine to make this business very profitable. During the 1922 season there were over 1,000 carloads of berries handled from the main shipping points of this section.
GRAPES
North Carolina is more favored as regards its opportunities for grape growing than most other states by reason of the fact that the wide range of grape species that are native to the State. The grape in North Carolina is represented by two different general types, the muscadines, which are native of the Coastal Plain region, and the labruscas or "bunch grapes."
The muscadine, or the rotundifolia type of grapes, of which the Scuppernong and the James are the most important varieties, is native to the sandy soils of the Coastal Plain region. The Scuppernong, a white variety of the muscadine or rotundifolia type is found as a domestic fruit on almost every plantation in Eastern Carolina. Like the fig, it has proved to be almost an ideal home fruit for the South. It will permit of much neglect and almost unfailingly produce an abundant crop of very excellent fruit.
The muscadines are practically free from the attacks of insects and diseases, and produce
