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

as the manure is taken away from the stable each day, it is piled on the top of this stack. My object is to keep it so dry that it can neither heat nor rot. In August the stack is broken down and the best manure shaken out to one side for mushrooms, and the long straw and rotted parts thrown to the other side. This short manure, when moistened with water and thrown into a heap, exposed to the sun for a day or two, will heat up briskly. The beds illustrated in Fig. 19 were made from manure prepared in this way in August.

In the case of quite fresh manure, let it accumulate for a few days, or a fortnight, even, until there is enough of it to make up a bed, and then prepare it. Be very particular to prevent, from the first, its heating violently or "burning" while accumulating in the pile. Beds made from very fresh manure respond quickly and generously. The crop comes in heavily to begin with, and continues bearing largely while it lasts, but its duration is usually shorter than in the case of a bed made up of less fresh manure. But altogether it yields a better and heavier crop than a bed that comes in more gradually and lasts longer, and the mushrooms are of the finest quality.

Some growers use the droppings only, and reject all of the strawy part, or as much of it as they can conveniently shake out. This gives them an excellent manure and perhaps the very best for use on a small scale or in small beds. When mushrooms are to be grown in boxes, narrow troughs, half barrels, and other confined quarters, it is well to concentrate the manure as much as possible—use all the droppings and as little straw as you can. But droppings alone for large beds would take too much manure and cost too much, and they would not be any better than with a rougher manure.

Always preserve the wet, strawy part of the manure, along with the droppings, and mix and ferment them together, and in this way not only add largely to the bulk of the pile, but secure the benefits afforded by the urine without reducing, in any way, the strength or fermenting properties of the manure. Shake out all the rank, dry, strawy part of the manure and lay it aside for other purposes. This may be of further use as bedding in the stables, covering the mushroom beds after they have been made up, or for hotbeds; if well wetted with stable drainings, or even plain water, it forms a ready heating material.

Many a time when we have been short of home-made manure I have bought some loads here and there from different stables in the village, and mixed all together and made it into beds with excellent results. Sometimes when the manure under preparation had been rather old and cool, I have added a fifth or tenth part of fresh droppings to it, with very quickening effect in heating and apparent benefit to the crop.

It is generally believed that the manure of entire horses is better for mushrooms than that of other horses, but positive evidence in this direction has never come under my observation. Some practical men assert that there is no difference. Mr. John G. Gardner, at the Rancocas Farm, who has had abundant opportunity to test this matter, tells me that he has given it a fair trial and been unable to find any difference in the quality or quantity of mushrooms raised from beds made from the manure of entire horses and those raised from beds made from the manure of other equally as well fed animals. But the Parisian growers insist that there is a difference in favor of entire horses, especially in the case of hard-worked animals such as are engaged in heavy carting.

Manure of horses that are largely fed with carrots is emphatically condemned by most writers on the cultivation of mushrooms; indeed, it is one of the points in every book on mushrooms which I have read. Let us look at a few practical facts: There are at Dosoris two shelf beds in one cellar; each is thirty feet long, three feet wide, and nine inches deep, and both are bearing a very thick crop of mushrooms. The material in these beds consists of horse manure three parts and chopped sod loam one part, which had been mixed and fermented together from the first preparation. The manure was saved from the stables on the place in November, '88, the materials prepared in December, the beds built Dec. 17, spawned Dec. 24, molded over Dec. 31, and first mushrooms gathered Feb. 7, 1889. These beds bore well until the middle of April. The mushrooms did not average as large as they did on the deeper beds upon the floor of the cellar, but they ran about three-fourths to one ounce apiece, and a good many were more than this. It is most always the case, however, that the crop on thin shelf beds averages less than it does on thick floor beds, and especially is this noticeable after the first flush of the crop has been gathered, no matter what kind of fermenting material had been used. At the time when the manure used for these beds was being saved at the stable the horses were only very lightly worked, and to each horse was fed, in addition to hay and some oats and bran, about a third of a bushel of carrots a day. And this is the manure used for the late mushroom beds, and yet good crops and good mushrooms are produced. This is not only the experience of one year's practice but the regular routine of many.

Perhaps some one would like to ask: Do you consider the manure of carrot-fed horses as good as the manure of animals to which no carrots or other root crops had been fed? My answer is—decidedly not. While the manure of carrot-fed animals is not the best, at the same time it is good, and any one having plenty of it can also have plenty of mushrooms. The complete denunciation of the manure of carrot-fed horses so emphatically stereotyped upon the minds and pens of horticultural writers is not always founded on fact.

Manure of Mules.—This is regarded as being next in value to that of entire horses, and some French growers go so far as to say that it is quite as good. Mr. John G. Gardner tells me of an extraordinary crop of mushrooms he once had which astonished that veteran, Samuel Henshaw, and that it was from beds made of manure from mule stables. Certainly the heaviest crop of mushrooms I ever did see was at Mr. Wilbur's place at South Bethlehem, Pa., four years ago, and the beds were of clean mule droppings from the coal mines. Mule manure can be had in quantity at our mule stock yards, which are in nearly every large city in the Middle and Southern States. Getting it from the mines costs more than it is worth, except as a fancy article; the men will not collect and save it for any reasonable price.

Cellar Manure.—Many stables have cellars under them into which the manure and urine are dropped at every day's cleaning. These cellars are not generally cleaned out before a good deal of manure has accumulated in them, say a few weeks', or a few months', or a winter's gathering, and it is commonly pretty well moistened by the urine. If this manure has not become too dry and "fire-fanged" in the cellar it is splendid for mushrooms. We buy a good deal of it, but are particular to reject the very dry and white-burned parts. Sometimes the manure from the cow-stables, as well as from the horse-stables, is dropped together into the cellar; then I would give less for the manure, especially if the cow manure predominated, because in the working it keeps too cold and wet and pasty; but if there is not cow manure enough to give the mass a pasty character it will make capital mushroom beds. Pigs often have the run of the manure-cellar, as is generally the case in farmyards. I would not use any part of this mixed pig manure. Mycelium evades hog manure; besides it is impure and malodorous, and a propagating bed for noxious insect vermin. It matters very little what kind of bedding is used, in the case of cellar manure, but I would not buy it if sawdust or salt hay had been used as bedding. Neither of these materials, in limited quantity, is deleterious to the mushrooms; at the same time, they are far less desirable than straw, field hay, German peat moss, or corn stalks, and there are risks enough in mushroom-growing without courting any that we can as well avoid.

City Stable Manure.—Around New York this can always be had in any quantity at a reasonable rate, and it is first-rate manure for mushroom beds. Market gardeners haul in a load of vegetables to market and bring back a load of manure; others may buy and haul home manure in the same way, or make arrangements with a teamster to do it for them. But the whole matter of city manure is now so deftly handled by agents, who make a special business of it, that we can get any quantity of manure, from a 500 lb bale to an unlimited number of loads, and of most any quality, delivered near or far, inland or coastwise, at a fairly moderate price. It is the city stable manure that nearly all our large market growers use for their mushroom beds. When they get it at the stables and cart it home themselves they know what they are handling, and should take only fresh horse dung. In ordering it of an agent be particular to arrange for the freshest and cleanest, pure horse manure. They will get it for you. We get several hundreds of loads of this selected manure from them every year for hotbeds, and find it excellent. We also get 1000 to 2000 loads of the common New York stable manure a year for our general outdoor crops, and it also is capital manure in its way, but not so good as the selected manure for mushrooms. It is mixed a little and smells very rank, and in mushroom beds usually produces a good deal of spurious fungi. Most all of our largest mushroom growers, Van Siclen of Jamaica, Denton of Woodhaven, Connard of Hoboken, and others, live within easy hauling distance of the city, and are able to select and get the very choicest manure at a very cheap rate.

Baled Manure.—Within a year or two a good deal of our city horse manure has been put up in bales and thus shipped and sold. Each bale contains from 350 to nearly 500 lbs, and is made up, pressed and tied in about the same way as baled hay. The principal advantages of the bales are these: Only the cleanest horse manure is put up in this way; cow manure, offal, spent hops, or other short or soft manures are not included in the bales, nor, on account of shipping considerations, are malodorous manures of any sort permitted in them. The railroads allow baled manure to be put off on their platforms, and closer to their stations than they would allow loose manure; and it often happens that an agent will send a carload to a railroad station and dump it off there so that the people around who have only small garden lots can have an opportunity of buying one or more bales, just as they need it, and without, as is generally