EXPERIMENTS WITH UDO. 



11 



away from the robust growth of the shoots. A method which has 

 obviated this defect in using tiles is to put around each hill a deep 

 box or small half cask from which the bottom has been removed and 

 fill it with light sand or such a light material as sifted coal ashes. 

 Shoots which come up through such a medium are almost free from 

 the elongated leafstalks which are developed when the shoots are 

 produced in the dark air chambers under the tiles. 1 Care must be 

 taken in any method of mounding up or filling in dirt or ashes over 

 the crowns that the shoots do not break through into the sunlight, 



Fig. 10. — The blanched shoots from a single crown of udo from which the draintile 

 has just been removed. Note the slender leafstalks rising from the main stems. 

 This forms an objection to the use of the draintile or any method of forcing in a 

 closed air chamber. 



for as soon as they do this they become green and take on a rank, 

 objectionable flavor. 



Properly grown udo shoots produced from 3-year-old plants should 

 be from 12 to 18 inches long and 1 inch to 1^ inches in diameter at 

 their bases (fig. 10). Such shoots ere tender throughout, with no 

 trace of fiber except in the rather thick " bark," which can be easily 

 removed. Naturally, if one is impatient for the very first udo shoots, 



1 Thinking to overcome this difficulty, the experiment was made of filling the tiles 

 with soil before inverting them over the crowns, but the plants refused to grow up 

 through this soil. 



