26 MUSHROOMS, HOW TO GROW THEM. 



scantling and hemlock boards, and the beds are all one 

 board deep. 



A common iron stove and string of sheet iron smoke 

 pipes are used for heating the cellars. But he tells me 

 the parching effect is very visible on the beds, it dries 

 them up on the surface very much, and he has to 

 sprinkle them frequently with water to keep them moist 

 enough. During the late summer and fall months, on 

 his return trips from the Brooklyn markets, Mr. Denton 

 hauls home fresh horse manure from the City stables. 

 All that he can put on a wagon costs him about twenty- 

 five cents ; and this is what he uses for mushrooms. He 

 prepare! it in a large open shed just above the cellar, 

 and when it is fit for use he adds about one-third of its 

 bulk of loam. The loam is the ordinary field soil from 

 his market garden. He tells me he has better success 

 with beds made up in this way than when manure alone 

 is used. We all know how very heavily market garden- 

 ers manure their land, also how vigorously most writers 

 on mushroom culture denounce the use of manure-fatted 

 loam in mushroom beds, but here is Mr. Denton, the 

 most successful grower of mushrooms for market in the 

 neighborhood of New York, practicing the very thing 

 that is denounced ! While he likes good lively manure 

 to begin with he is very careful not to use it soon enough 

 to run any risk of overheating in the beds. The loam in 

 the manure counteracts this strong heating tendency, 

 also with the loam mixture the shelf-beds can be built 

 much more firmly than with plain manure on the springy 

 boards. When the temperature falls to 90° he spawns 

 the beds. 



He uses both French and brick spawn, but leans with 

 most favor to the latter, of which in the fall 1889 he used 

 400 lbs. He markets from 1700 to 2500 lbs. of mush- 

 rooms a year from these two cellars. Mr. Denton be- 

 lieves emphatically in cleanliness in the mushroom eel- 



