The independent. [volume] (Elizabeth City, N.C.) 1908-1936, 1922-04-28
MAKING MONEY
OUT OF LETTUCE
Wilmington, N. c. Truckers
Coin Money Out of Crop
We Should Grow

Eight car loads of lettuce are
moving daily from the Whining
ton, N. c. section at this time
and Wilmington truckers are
realizing upwards of thousand
dollars an acre from this one
crop. Within the past IS years
Wilmington has sprung into
prominence as a great trucking
center, with a truckers associa-
ton that markets more than a
half million dollars worth of
lettuce, cucumberS, strawberries,
beans and onions. And fifteen
years ago they said it couldn't
be done at Wilmington.
What is being done by truckers
around Wilmington can be better done
in Pasquotank, Camden and Currituck
counties where we have better soil.
bigger farms and more farm capital.
Most of the truck produced around
Wilmington is produced on small farms.
The history of the growth of the
trucking industry around Wilmington
would make interesting reading and
should inspire truckers of the Eliza
beth City region to diversification. Fiji
teen years ago a lone farmer near
Wilmington undertook to grow a little
lettuce to supply the hotel trade in
town. He started with crude hot beds
covered with pine-boughs' and later used
yellow cottons for his hotbed covers
He made money in a small way and
some of his neighbors began to initiate
his methods. They have since discov-
cred that lettuce grows more success
fully when planted in the open and hot
beds have been dispensed with by the
most successful growers.
Lettuce is grown in porous black san
dy SOIL 1t yields go to 400 baskets
to the acre. Intensive cultivation costs
as high as S12j an acre, but few cul-
tivate their crops so intensively and
get out at a cost of $50 to S15 an
acre. The market price ranges from
$3.50 to $500 a basket, the average
being we'll above the lower figure. The
lettuce is shipped in refrigerator cars
and the entire crop marketed thru the
Wilmington Truckers Association.
Some Pasquotank, Camden or Cur
rituck farmer who is stalking everything
on peas and potatoes would do well to
run down to Wilmington and get few
pointers on lettuce.
shallow waters, deposit their eggs and
then go back to the sea till another
season. Their young when hatched out
play about the inland waters for a
while and then go out thru the inlets
to the sea to grow up, when they too
come back to spawn.
These anadromous fish, as fish that
come inside to spawn are called, are
believed to live in the sea off the coast
in which they were spawned. Scien-
lists do not agree with the popular
theory that shad start in at Florida and
work their way up the coast. Scien-
fists believe that Florida shad are Flor
ida shad and that North Carolina shad
are shad that were hatched in North
Carolina waters and spend their lives
deep down in the sea off the North
Carolina coast. But when these shad
come up the coast in the spring of the
year and have difficulty in find their way
into the inland waters, it is probable
that their spawn is disspated in the
sea. They may have instinct or intel
ligence enough to work their way up
the coast till they find their way into
the Chesapeake Bay thru the Virginia
Capes; but this is giving the shad cred
it for possessing high degree of in
telligence.