Mushrooms: how to grow them by William Falconer (early reader chapter books txt) 📕

The boxing may consist of any kind of boards for sides and ends, and be built about six or ten inches higher than the top of the beds, so as to give the mushrooms plenty headroom; the top of the boxing may be a lid hung on hinges or straps, or otherwise arranged, to admit of being easily raised or removed at will, and made of light lumber, say one-half inch thick boards. In this way, by opening the lid, the mushrooms are under observation and can be gathered without any trouble. When the lid is shut they are secure from cold and vermin. Thus protected the cellars can be ventilated without interfering with the welfare of the mushrooms. A light wooden frame covered with calico or oiled paper would also make a good top for the boxing, only it would not be proof against much cold, or rats or mice. If desirable, in warm cellars, shelf beds could be built above the floor beds, but in cool, airy cellars this would not be advisable.

Manure beds in the dwelling-house cellar may seem highly improper to many people, but in truth, when rightly handled, these beds emit no bad odor. The manure should be prepared away from the house, and when ready for making into beds it can be spread out thin, so as to become perfectly cool and free from steam. When it has lain for two days in this condition it may be brought into the cellar and made into beds. Having been well sweetened by previous preparation, it is now cool and free from steam, and almost odorless; after a few days it will warm up a little, and may then be spawned and earthed over at once. Do not bury the spawn in the manure, merely set it in the surface of the manure; this saves the spawn from being destroyed by too great a heat, should the bed become unduly warm. This, if the manure has been well prepared, is not likely to occur. The coating of loam prevents the escape of any further steam or odor from the manure.

On the 14th of January last, Mr. W. Robinson, editor of the London Garden, in writing to me, mentioned the following very interesting case of growing mushrooms in the cellar of a dwelling house: "I went out the other day to see Mr. Horace Cox, the manager of the Field newspaper, who lives at Harrow, near the famous school. His house is heated by a hot-water system called Keith's, and the boiler is in a chamber in the house in the basement. The system interested me and I went down to see the boiler, which is a very simple one worked with coke refuse. However, I was pleased to see all the floor of the room not occupied by the boiler covered with little flat mushroom beds and bearing a very good crop. Truth to tell, I used to fear growing mushrooms in dwelling houses might be objectionable in various ways; but this instance is very interesting, as there is not even the slightest unpleasant smell in the chamber itself. The beds are small, scarcely a foot high, and perfectly odorless; so that it is quite clear that one may cultivate mushrooms in one's house, in such a case as this, without the slightest offence."

Mr. Gardner's Method.—Mr. J. G. Gardner, of Jobstown, N. J., uses an ordinary cellar, such as any farmer in the country has, and the little that has been done to it to darken the windows and make them tight, so as to render them better for mushrooms, any farmer with a hand-saw, an ax, a hammer and a few nails and some boards can do. Mr. Gardner is a market gardener, and has not the amount of fresh manure upon his own place that he needs for mushroom-growing, but he buys it, common horse manure, in New York, and it is shipped to him, over seventy miles, by rail. And this pays; and if it will pay a man to get manure at such a cost for mushroom-growing, how much more will mushroom-growing pay the farmer who has the cellar and the manure as well? Mr. Gardner raises mushrooms, and lots of them. When I visited him last November, instead of trying to hide anything in their cultivation from me, he took particular pains to show and explain to me everything about his way of growing them. And he assures me that by adopting simple means of preparing the manure and "fixing" for the crop, and avoiding all complicated methods, one can get good crops and make fair profits.

His cellar is sixty feet long, twenty-four feet wide, and nine feet high from floor to ceiling. The floor is an earthen one, but perfectly dry. It is well supplied with window ventilators and doors, and in the ceiling in the middle of the cellar opens a tall shaft or chimney-like ventilator that passes straight up through the roof above. While the beds are being made full ventilation by doors, windows and shaft is given, but as soon as there is any sign of the mushrooms appearing all ventilators except the shaft in the middle are shut and kept closed.

The bed occupies the whole surface of the cellar floor and was all made up in one day. As a pathway, a single row of boards is laid on the top of the bed, running lengthwise along the middle of the cellar from the door to the farther end, and here and there between this narrow path and the walls on either side a few pieces of slate are laid down on the bed to step upon when gathering the mushrooms. Here is the oddest thing about Mr. Gardner's mushroom-growing. He does not give the manure any preparatory treatment for the beds. He hauls it from the cars to the cellar, at once spreads it upon the floor and packs it solid into a bed. For example, on one occasion the manure arrived at Jobstown, July 8th; it was hauled home and the bed made up the same day, and the first mushrooms were gathered from this bed the second week in September,—just two months from the time the manure left the New York or Jersey City stables. The bed was fifteen inches thick. In making it the manure was first shaken up loosely to admit of its being more evenly spread than if pitched out in heavy forkfuls, and it was then tramped down firmly with the feet. The bed was then