CHAPTER XIII 

 FIELD TRUCK CROPS 



THE truck crops differ from cereals and grasses in that 

 they are products of high commercial value, and are less 

 exhaustive of plant-food constituents, that is, when money 

 value is made the unit basis. They are termed "field 

 truck crops" because they are field crops, usually grown 

 in rotation and form a special crop for the grower which 

 is produced solely for market rather than for manufacture 

 upon the farm into a farm product. In sections near large 

 markets these crops are divided into early and late, the 

 early crop being regarded as the more profitable; hence 

 greater efforts are made, both in the way of fertilization 

 and of management, to secure a large and early crop, than 

 is the case with the late crop. For the early crop the nat- 

 ural supply of plant-food in the soil is not a prune consid- 

 eration. In districts distant from markets, the late crop 

 is the only one grown to any extent, and because it has the 

 whole season for its growth, greater dependence is placed 

 upon the natural resources of the soil. While, as already 

 stated, these crops are not regarded as exhaustive of plant- 

 food elements in the same sense as the cereal crops are, 

 because it frequently happens that a bushel of potatoes, or 

 of sweet potatoes, or of tomatoes, will bring as much as a 

 bushel of corn, or sometimes as a bushel of wheat, yet the 

 amount removed in the entire crop may be quite as great 

 as in the grain crop, because of the much larger number 

 of bushels grown an acre. 



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