MANURE FOK MUSHROOM KEDS. 61 



Manure of horses that are largely fed with carrots is 

 emphatically condemned by most writers on the cultiva- 

 tion of mushrooms ; indeed, it is one of the points in 

 every book on mushrooms which I have read. Let us 

 look at a few practical facts : There are at Dosoris two 

 shelf beds in one cellar ; each is thirty feet long, three 

 feet wide, and nine inches deep, and both are bearing a 

 very thick crop of mushrooms. The material in these 

 beds consists of horse manure three parts and chopped 

 sod loam one part, which had been mixed and fermented 

 together from the first preparation. The manure was 

 saved from the stables on the place in November, '88, the 

 materials prepared in December, the beds built Dec. 17, 

 spawned Dec. 24, molded over Dec. 31, and first mush- 

 rooms gathered Feb. 7, 1889. These beds bore well 

 until the middle of April. The mushrooms did not 

 average as large as they did on the deeper beds upon the 

 floor of the cellar, but they ran about three-fourths to 

 one ounce apiece, and a good many were more than this. 

 It is most always the case, however, that the crop on 

 thin shelf beds averages less than it does on thick floor 

 beds, and especially is this noticeable after the first flush 

 of the crop has been gathered, no matter what kind of 

 fermenting material had been used. At the time when 

 the manure used for these beds was being saved at the 

 stable the horses were only very lightly worked, and to 

 each horse was fed, in addition to hay and some oats and 

 bran, about a third of a bushel of carrots a day. And 

 this is the manure used for the late mushroom beds, 

 and yet good crops and good mushrooms are produced. 

 This is not only the experience of one year's practice but 

 the regular routine of many. 



Perhaps some one would like to slsk : Do you con- 

 eider the manure of carrot-fed horses as good as the 

 manure of animals to which no carrots or other root 

 crops had been fed ? My answer is — decidedly not. 



