Goe BULLETIN 677, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
yet a loam soil is the expressed second choice. This is particularly 
marked in the case of peppers and tomatoes, for which there seems to 
be little preference between a sandy loam and a loam soil. 
In the case of tomatoes the geographic distribution of the several 
answers served to indicate that the sandy loam soils were preferred 
where the crop was grown for early harvesting as a market crop, 
while the loam soil was as distinctly preferred in growing the crop 
tor the canning factories. 
In this case the crop is grown for two distinctly separate purposes. 
The truck-crop grower desires to secure a moderately heavy yield of 
early varieties which will sell at high prices. The main crop is 
marketed in crates and some of the later pick is marketed at much 
smaller prices for canning if the conditions are favorable. The 
orower of tomatoes as a truck crop depends chiefly on early market- 
ing and a high price. He, therefore, prefers a sandy loam soil. 
The grower of tomatoes who contracts his crop to the canning 
factory sets different varieties from the trucker. His sales are 
usually made on the ton basis and he decidedly depends upon heavy 
yields for his chances for profits. He, therefore, desires to use a 
heavier loam soil. For this reason the Sassafras loam has come to 
be recognized as the leading soil type for the growing of canning 
tomatoes, as it has been for the growing of Irish potatoes. 
In the case of peppers, the crop is used by many truckers as a 
supplementary crop only. By them it is planted upon land which 
was not in condition for planting to early tomatoes, to sweet pota- 
toes, or to some other standard early truck crop. Small areas of 
low, wet land within a sandy or sandy loam field are frequently 
planted to peppers long after the remainder of the field has been set 
out to tomatoes or sweet potatoes. In other cases, where peppers 
constitute a special crop, grown in large acreage, the crop has been 
found to produce reasonably early fruits on sandy loam soils and 
also to continue the picking season up to frost limits, when it is 
planted upon loams. It is therefore a crop grown quite extensively 
in some localities which are not fitted by the presence of sandy soil 
for the growing of the standard truck crops. The Sassafras sandy 
loam and the Sassafras gravelly sandy loam, in southeastern 
Gloucester County and in adjacent portions of Atlantic and Cum- 
berland Counties, are quite extensively planted to peppers. 
It will be noted that asparagus and cantaloupes stand at the head 
of the crops for which sandy loam to sandy soils are preferred. 
There is little difference between them with respect to soil choice. 
The answers received concerning asparagus were grouped somewhat 
excessively in the southwestern part of the State, where the produc- 
tion of the unblanched stalks is a specialty. It is possible that a 
stronger tendency toward the use of a decidedly sandy soil would 



