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. 
Proper ly grown udo shoots produced from 3-year-old plants should 
be from 12 to 18 inches long and 1 inch to 1J inches in diameter at 
their bases (fig. 10). Such shoots r.re 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. 
