AMERICAN HOME GARDEN, 153 



MUSHROOMS. 



French, Cliimpignon comestible. German, Essbare B latter schamme. Span- 

 ish, Seta. 



The mushroom is a plant of the fungus family, which is 

 abundantly produced in our old pastures when a dry summer 

 is followed by a rather moist and warm fall. They may also 

 be raised from what is known as " mushroom spawn." This 

 is composed of loam, cut straw, and the fresh droppings of dry- 

 fed and highly-kept horses, in which the spores or invisible 

 seeds of the mushroom have been caused to germinate by gen- 

 tle fermentation in a dry place, producing a minute, white, 

 tubercular or thread-like growth throughout the mass. The 

 ordinary process is first to work the whole into the condition 

 of thick mortar or potters' clay, which the cut straw is used to 

 bind together, after which it is formed into small bricks, into 

 each of which a piece of old " spawn" is inserted as leaven. 

 The bricks, being then carefully piled upon a layer of stable 

 manure, are covered with enough of the same to induce a mod- 

 erate warmth in the mass. When the bricks, on being broken, 

 show that the spawn introduced or developed has spread through 

 them, they are thoroughly dried, and in this state will keep 

 good for several years. This is the " mushroom spawn" sold 

 in the seed-stores. When broken into small pieces, it may be 

 planted two or three inches deep in a spent hot bed in the 

 spring, or in a bed made by alternate layers of good sandy 

 loam and the horse-droppings named above. There may be 

 two or three layers of each, the strata of horse-droppings being 

 made four or six inches thick, and of the loam two inches, 

 forming altogether a thickness of sixteen or eighteen inches. 

 The bed may be large or small, as is found convenient, and 

 will succeed in a cellar not quite dark, or under a shed, or in 

 the open air, if formed so as to shed rain. It should be pretty 

 thickly covered with loose straw, which must be replaced after 

 each cutting of mushrooms.^ 



Instead of planting the bed with spawn, if in the season of 

 mushrooms, ea'ch layer, as it is made, may be moderately wa- 

 tered with lukewarm water in which ripe mushrooms have 



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