GROWING ML'SHEOOMS IN CELLARS. 31 



little flat mushroom beds and bearing a very good crop. 

 Truth to tell, I used to fear growing mushrooms in 

 dwelling houses might be objectionable in various ways ; 

 but this instance is very interesting, as there is not even 

 the slightest unpleasant smell in the chamber itself. 

 The beds are small, scarcely a foot high, and perfectly 

 odorless ; so that it is quite clear that one may cultivate 

 mushrooms in one's house, in such a case as this, with- 

 out the slightest offence." 



Mr. Gardner's Method. — Mr. J. G. Gardner, of 

 Jobstown, N. J., uses an ordinary cellar, such as any 

 farmer in the country has, and the little that has been 

 done to it to darken the windows and make them tight, 

 so as to render them better for mushrooms, any farmer 

 with a hand-saw, an ax, a hammer and a few nails and 

 some boards can do. Mr. Gardner is a market gardener, 

 and has not the amount of fresh manure upon his own 

 place that he needs for mushroom-growing, but he buys 

 it, common horse manure, in New York, and it is shipped 

 to him, over seventy miles, by rail. And this pays ; and 

 if it will pay a man to get manure at such a cost for 

 mushroom-growing, how much more will mushroom- 

 growing pay the farmer who has the cellar and the 

 mannre as well? Mr. Gardner raises mushrooms, and 

 lots of them. When I visited him last November, in- 

 stead of ti'ying to hide anything in their cultivation 

 from me, he took particular pains to show and explain 

 to me everything about his way of growing them. And 

 he assures me that by adopting simple means of prepar- 

 ing the manure and "fixing" for the crop, and avoiding 

 all complicated methods, one can get good crops and 

 make fair profits. 



His cellar is sixty feet long, twenty-four feet wide, 

 and nine feet high from floor to ceiling. The floor is 

 an earthen one, bnt perfectly dry. It is well supplied 

 with window ventilators and doors, and in the ceiling in 



