238 GARDENING FOE PROFIT. 



depth, is spread over the bed, and again beaten down with 

 the spade. This is gently watered with tepid water when 

 dry, and a second crop of Mushrooms (often better than 

 the first), is gathered in March. 



To show how a simple oversight in our operations may 

 defeat the whole work, I will state that, in my first at- 

 tempt at Mushroom growing, I labored for two years 

 without being able to produce a single Mushroom. In 

 my apprentice days we had known no such word as fail 

 in so simple a matter, but here, on my first attempt on 

 my own responsibility, I was met by total failure. Every 

 authority was consulted, all the various methods tried, 

 but with no better success. In all such cases something 

 must be blamed, and I pronounced the spawn as worth- 

 less ; but my good-natured employer quietly suggested 

 that this could not well be, as a friend of his had abun- 

 dant crops growing from spawn received from the same 

 source. Driven into a corner by this information, I made 

 another exploration of my "authorities," and was fortu- 

 nate to find in one of them a single sentence that at once 

 showed where my error had been. It was to "be careful 

 to delay the covering with mold until ten or twelve days 

 aZter the bed had been spawned." 



Now, in all the different methods I had tried, I had in 

 each invariably put in the spawn, and at once put on the 

 two-inch covering of soil, which had the effect to shut 

 dawn the steam, thereby raising the temperature in the 

 bed to a degree to destroy the spawn, and consequently 

 to defeat my whole operations. My excuse for this di- 

 gression is to show the importance of what might other- 

 wise be thought unnecessary details. 



The plan of one of our most successful Mushroom 

 growers in the neighborhood of New York is practically 

 that of rny own just given, except that he makes a differ- 

 ence in covering. Instead of using the two inches of 

 loose soil, as was my method, he uses old compact sod, 



