Mushrooms: how to grow them, William Falconer [best novels to read to improve english TXT] 📗

The frames used are common hotbed box frames seven feet wide and carrying three and one-half feet wide sashes. A string of them is run along the middle of the greenhouses, for greenhouse after greenhouse is occupied by them. They are flat upon the floor, and in the early part of the season alone in the greenhouses. But as the winter advances a temporary staging is erected over these frames, on which spiræas, peas, beans, or other flowers or vegetables are to be grown. These love the light and a position near the glass, whereas the mushrooms grow perfectly well in the dark quarters of the frames under the stages. If he did not grow mushrooms under these stages the room would be unoccupied, hence unproductive; but by occupying it with mushrooms he not only gets peaches and snap beans at once out of the same greenhouse, but also a crop of mushrooms, often worth as much as the other two.

In preparing the beds in the frames they were made up a foot deep, very firm, and with New York stable manure brought direct from the cars. There was no preliminary preparation of the manure. A layer of loam one and one-half inches deep was then spread over the surface and forked into the bed of manure one and one-half inches deep, so as to form an earthy mat three inches deep. This was then packed solid with the feet, and a two-inch layer of loose manure added all over. In about ten days the temperature three inches below the surface was about 95°, and the beds were then spawned. In spawning, drills were drawn across the beds about a foot apart and just deep enough to touch but not penetrate the earthy mat before referred to. The broken spawn was then sown in the drills and covered with a layer of loam one and one-half to two inches deep, which was tamped slightly. The sashes were then put on and tilted up a little to let the moisture escape. By the time the mushrooms appeared there was very little need of ventilating, as the condensation of moisture on the glass was scarcely apparent; but ventilation is easily guided by the appearance of moisture on the glass, the more of this the more ventilation should be given. To begin with, there was no attempt at shading the frames; but as soon as the mushrooms began to appear the beds were shaded, and mostly by the crops of other plants on the stages above them. These frame beds were made up last October, and began bearing in December, and on March 14 Mr. Gardner wrote me: "The mushrooms in my frames have done grandly. I cut large basketfuls to-day of the finest mushrooms I have ever seen, some of them measuring five inches in diameter before being fully expanded."

And further, in submitting the above notes to him for verification, he adds: "There is one vital point we should impress upon all who grow mushrooms in frames or under greenhouse benches, namely, that sudden changes of temperature must be avoided. While light, in my opinion, is good for mushrooms, it causes a rise of temperature, and this we must guard against. In order to maintain a uniform temperature all glass exposed to light or heat in any other way should be covered with some non-conducting material. Rye straw is the best thing for this purpose that I know of. Indeed, neglect of this simple matter, in cases where sunlight and heat from hot-water pipes come in contact with the young mushrooms or mycelium on the surface of the beds, is the cause of many failures in growing in frames and greenhouses."

Under Greenhouse Benches.—Open empty spaces under the stages anywhere are good places for mushroom beds. However, carefully observe a few points, to wit: A dry floor under the beds is imperative, for a wet floor soaks and chills the beds, and renders them unhealthy for the spawn; but the common earth floor is good enough, provided water does not stand upon it at any time; if it does, the floor to be under the beds can be rendered dry by raising it a little higher than the general level, or using a flooring of old boards. Beds should not be built close up against hot-water pipes, steam pipes, or smoke flues, as the heat from these when they are in working condition will bake the parts of the beds next to them and render them unproductive, and also crack and spoil the caps of the mushrooms that come up within a foot or two of the pipes. But this injury from hot pipes and flues can be lessened greatly by boxing the pipes, so as to shut off the heat from the mushroom beds and allowing it full escape upward; then the beds can be made, with safety, up to within a foot of the pipes. As a rule, hot-water pipes are run around under the front benches of a greenhouse, then it would not be advisable to make beds under those benches. The middle bench is the one most commonly free from pipes, hence the one best adapted for beds. It has more headroom, and therefore easier working facilities. Steam-heated greenhouses generally present the best accommodations for mushroom beds, because the pipes occupy less room under the benches than do those for hot water, and they are always kept higher from the ground.

Among Other Plants on Greenhouse Benches.—It sometimes happens that mushrooms spring up spontaneously among the roses, carnations, violets, mignonette, and other crops that are grown "planted out" on the benches, and this is particularly the case where fresh soil had just been used, in whole or part, for filling the bench beds. These mushrooms come from natural spawn contained in the loam or manure before they were brought indoors, and which is apt to be true virgin spawn. The mushrooms are generally of the common kind, grown from brick spawn, but occasionally a much larger and heavier sort is produced, and this is the "horse" mushroom. It is perfectly good to eat, only of coarser quality than the other.

A fair and certain crop can be obtained by planting pieces of spawn in the beds here and there between the plants and where they will be least likely to be soaked with water. In order to further insure the development of the spawn, holes about the size of a pint cup should be scooped out here and there over the bed, and filled up solidly with quite fresh but dry horse droppings, with the piece of spawn in the middle, and covered over on top with an inch of loam, so as to leave the whole surface of the bed level. So small a quantity of dry manure surrounded with cold earth will not heat perceptibly, and the moisture of the loam about it will soon moisten it, no matter how dry it may be. The dry, fresh droppings are the very best material for starting the mycelium into growth.

Growing Mushrooms in Rose Houses.—George Savage, the head gardener at Mr. Kimball's greenhouses, Rochester, N. Y., grows mushrooms very successfully under the benches of the rose houses. When he makes up his earliest mushroom beds in the fall the rose house is kept cool, and this is an advantage to the mushroom beds, which get all the warmth they need from the fermenting manure; but as November advances, and the heat in the beds begins to wane the rose houses are "started," and this artificial warmth comes in good season to benefit the growing mushrooms. The roses, in this case, are planted out on benches, hence there is scarcely any dripping of water from above upon the mushroom beds below.

Mr. George Grant, of Mamaroneck, N. Y., who grows mushrooms in the greenhouse, I called to see last January, and was very much pleased with his simple and successful method. The beds were then in fine bearing, very full, and the crop was of the best quality. The beds were made upon the earthen floor of his tomato-forcing house and under the back bench. The bed was flat, seven to eight inches deep, with a casing of a ten-inch-wide hemlock board set on edge at the back, and another of same size against the front. The bed was made of horse droppings, six inches deep, and molded over with fresh loam one and one-half inch deep. Over the whole, and resting on the edges of the hemlock boards, was a light covering of other boards, with a sprinkling of hay on top of them to arrest and shed drip, and maintain an equable temperature in the bed.

Mr. Abram Van Siclen, of Jamaica, Long Island, is one of the largest mushroom growers for market in the country, as well as one of the most extensive growers of market-garden truck under glass around New York. He devotes an immense area under his lettuce-house benches to the cultivation of mushrooms. The beds are made upon the floor in the usual way, only for convenience' sake, to admit of plenty of room in making up the beds and gathering the crop, besides avoiding the necessity for building higher structures than the ordinary lettuce greenhouses, the mushroom beds are sunken about eighteen to twenty-four inches under the level of the pathways. As the lettuces are planted out upon the benches there is very little drip from them, hence the sunken beds are well enough. And the temperature of a lettuce house is about right for a long-lasting mushroom bed. Light is excluded by a simple covering of salt hay laid over the beds, and sometimes by light wooden shutters set up against the aperture between the lettuce benches and the floor, in this way boxing in the mushrooms in total darkness.

Mr. William Wilson, of Astoria, has an immense greenhouse establishment near New York. In his greenhouses, under both the side and middle benches, he grows mushrooms, and when I saw them in January there were about 300 square yards of beds. The beds were flat, about nine inches thick, built upon the ground, and protected from strong light by having muslin tacked over the openings between the benches and the beds alongside the pathways. But his crop was suffering from drip.