CULTIVATION OF MUSHROOMS. 273 



the restaurant owner where mushrooms are served. In serving the 

 mushrooms broiled on toast, the medium-sized one is more desirable 

 from the standpoint of the restaurant owner, in that two medium- 

 sized ones might be sufficient to serve two persons, while one quite 

 large one, weighing perhaps the same as the two medium ones, 

 would only be sufficient to serve one person at the same price, 

 unless the large mushroom was cut in two. If this were done, how- 

 ever, the customer would object to being served with half a mush- 

 room, and the appearance of a half mushroom served in this way is 

 not attractive. 



Resoiling. Once or twice a week during the harvesting period all 

 loose earth, broken bits of spawn, free buttons, etc., should be 

 cleaned out where the mushrooms have been picked. These places 

 should be filled with soil and packed down by hand. All young 

 mushrooms that "fog off" should be gathered up clean. Some 

 persons follow the practice of growing a second crop on the same 

 bed from which the first crop has been gathered. The bed is 

 resoiled by placing about two inches of soil over the old soil. The 

 bed is then watered, sometimes with lukewarm water to which a 

 small quantity of nitrate of soda has been added. The large grow- 

 ers, however, usually do not grow a second crop in this way, but 

 endeavor to exhaust the material in the bed by continuous growth. 



Use of manure from beds which have failed. Manure in which the 

 spawn has failed to run is sometimes removed from the bed and 

 mixed with fresh manure, the latter restoring the heat. If the 

 manure was too wet, the moisture content can now be lessened by 

 the use of dry soil. 



Cleaning house to prepare for successive crops. When the crop is 

 harvested, all the material is cleaned out to prepare the beds for the 

 next crop. The material is taken out '* clean," and the floors, beds, 

 walls, etc., swept off very clean. In addition, some growers white- 

 wash the floors and all wood-work. Some whitewash only the 

 floors, depending on sweeping the beds and walls very clean. Still 

 others whitewash the floors and wash the walls with some material 

 to kill out the vermin. Some trap or poison the cockroaches, wood- 

 lice, etc., when they appear. Some growers who succeed well for 

 several years, and then fail, believe that the house *' gets tired," as 

 they express it, and that the place must rest for a few years before 

 mushrooms can be grown there again. Others grow mushrooms 

 successfully year after year, but employ the best sanitary methods. 



Number of crops during a year. In caves or mines, where the 

 temperature is low, the beds are in process of formation and cropping 



