Farming in Your Cellar 



The French may lack land, but never ingenuity. So 

 they cultivate p'ants which thrive without sunlight 



To make the beds for growing mushrooms 

 horse manure is piled in ridges in quarries. 

 The spawn comes in the form of bricks 



THE underground cultivation of mush- 

 rooms is a large industry in the vicinity 

 of Paris. Thekindordinarilygrownis 

 the common mushroom, the variety best un- 

 derstood by cultivators. Xo one knows the 

 name of the genius in gardening who first 

 took the spawn from the half-decomposed 

 bed of dung where mushrooms had grown 

 and then sowed it in fresh dung to obtain 

 a second harvest. This method of "cellar 

 farming," as it may be called, arose in 

 France in the latter part of the eighteenth 

 century, but long before that period a 

 cultivator named Chambry conceived the 

 idea of turning abandoned subterranean 

 quarries into mushroom-beds. The large 

 profits he realized led a swarm of imitators 

 to rent all the deserted quarries. Thus the 

 raising of mushrooms became an established 

 industry. 



Nowadays, these subterranean mush- 

 room-beds near Paris are on the left bank 

 of the Seine, largely in the district between 

 Meudon and Ivry. Formerly the galleries 

 ran as far as Paris, existing under the 

 quarter Val-de-Grace. Of late years other 



excavations have been made in the suburbs 

 between St. Germain and Argenteuil, while 

 still others are to be found on the other 

 side of Paris, between Romainville and 

 Xoisy-le-Sec. Modern facilities of trans- 

 portation have led to the making of beds 

 farther off from Paris in the valley of the 

 Oise near Creil and Meru. The galleries 

 are cut either in gApsum as at Argenteuil, 

 or in white chalk, as at Meudon. The 

 oldest of the galleries form labyrinths of 

 narrow passages so low that workmen can- 

 not walk through them without stooping. 

 After securing good ventilation in an 

 abandoned quarry a well is dug to make 

 sure of the large amount of water necessary. 

 After this, horse manure is prepared by 

 piling it in heaps about a yard high. 

 Sometimes a pile will contain a thousand 

 wagon loads of material. The heap fer- 

 ments in the air for three weeks, and is 

 turned from time to time to check excessive 

 fermentation. The mushroom does not 

 develop properly in fresh manure. Fer- 

 mentation gives the manure the necessary 

 nutritive properties. After about twenty 



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