Bulletin of the of Agriculture . rket in unsound condition. OUTLINE OF EXPERIMENTS IN 1913-14. CAREFUL CUTTING. In order to determine the effect of greater care in preparing lettucefor shipment, various methods of cutting were tested in these investi-gations. It seemed evident from the start that the infection occurred 4 BULLETIN 601, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. mainly through the lower leaves,, which rest on the ground. There-fore the lettuce was cut at a point just above these leaves. Thismethod left the three or four under leaves untouched on the one or two of t
Bulletin of the of Agriculture . rket in unsound condition. OUTLINE OF EXPERIMENTS IN 1913-14. CAREFUL CUTTING. In order to determine the effect of greater care in preparing lettucefor shipment, various methods of cutting were tested in these investi-gations. It seemed evident from the start that the infection occurred 4 BULLETIN 601, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. mainly through the lower leaves,, which rest on the ground. There-fore the lettuce was cut at a point just above these leaves. Thismethod left the three or four under leaves untouched on the one or two of the leaves on the head showed signs of decay theywere pulled off. If a large number of leaves were diseased or if themam stalk showed signs of disease, the head was discarded. Onlylettuce that appeared entirely free from disease was included in thesecarefully cut lots. Figure 4 is a fair representation of the appear-ance of the lettuce when cut by either method. The commerciallycut lettuce is dirty and shows diseased areas on the lower leaves,. Fig. 2.—A field of healthy lettuce, showing the condition of the plants at harvest time. whereas that carefully cut is clean, attractive, and free from carefully cut lettuce was packed in accordance with com-mercial methods, and a similar lot, cut and handled throughoutcommercially, was obtained from the same field at the same time forpurposes of comparison. PRECOOLING. The lots obtained each day were divided into two parts: Half ofthe carefully cut lettuce and half of that commercially cut were pre-cooled, and comparable lots were placed under regular refrigeration. The precooling was done by means of the portable precooling plantof the Office of Horticultural and Pomological Investigations. This HANDLING LETTUCE AND CELEEY. 5 plant consists of a complete 12-ton refrigerating outfit installed in afreight car. Ammonia expansion coils in a well-insulated compart-ment at one end of the car furnished as low a temperature as was
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectagriculture, bookyear
