224 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



ii has run and the mushrooms begin to show, you can very safely 

 drop your temperature down to about 54 degrees. They won't 

 come 1 1 1 > quite as fast, but you will get finer and larger mushrooms 

 at that period of growth. 



We had on our place, after I got the mushroom fever, a plot I 

 thought suitable and I conceived the idea of planting mushrooms in 

 this part, and I have been exceedingly successful with them in a 

 small way. T have no means of warming this place, so as the cold 

 weather came on, they finally quit growing, and the beds finally froze 

 up solid, as hard as stone. 



We let them alone and this spring they thawed out and when the 

 temperature arose to 50, the mushrooms began growing and they 

 have grown remarkably fine mushrooms, and the temperature has 

 never been up to 56 yet, and we are still getting a few of them 

 although the beds are getting pretty well exhausted. The con- 

 clusion I have arrived at in the matter of temperature is, that after 

 the mushroom spawn has run, 54 degrees is the better temperature 

 to keep your room than probably any other temperature that you 

 can keep it. 



Now 7 in the matter of watering and regulating your beds. Your 

 mushrooms won't grow without w r ater, and many growers water 

 them, I think, about once a week, some with water tempered, 

 others with the cold spring water that they may happen to have. 

 My habit has been — we heat our house with hot water — my habit 

 has been to use warm water; just simply take the chill off. You 

 don't w r ant to make your beds too wet, and yet you want to wet them 

 enough. When it comes to the quantity of water that you should 

 put in, I am frank to say that I don't know. I know that you don't 

 want to keep the top of your beds too moist. You must thoroughly 

 wet the manure all the way through, and the beds must be free from 

 surface water, although I remember that on one occasion, when my 

 beds were not producing very well, I watered them thoroughly and 

 got a fine crop of mushrooms afterwards, so that the rules of the 

 books do not always go in practical experience. 



I presume the question would arise probably with some of you. 

 What kind of a building will you put them in? The construction 

 of those buildings that I have begun to use— they were mainly 

 lumber buildings with double walls lined with building paper and 

 made absolutely dark, and usually putting from five to seven beds 

 into them in height, that is, the first bed being on the ground floor 

 and so on up. That is the way we always do with the beds. Your 

 bed that is down in the dirt will always yield you more mushrooms 

 and it will last longer and bear longer than any other bed you may 

 have in your house. The beds are put in on frame-work at a con 

 venient distance for picking, between twenty and twenty-two inches 



