12 MUSHROOMS, HOW TO GROW THEM. 



very low estimate : lu a greeuhouse a hundred feet long 

 make a five foot wide mushroom bed under the main 

 bench ; this will give 500 square feet of bed, and half a 

 pound to the foot will give 350 pounds of mushrooms, 

 which, sold at fifty cents a pound net, brings $135. This 

 amount the florist would not have realized without 

 growing the mushrooms. 



Private Gardeners — It is a part of their routine 

 duty, and success in mushroom growing is as satisfactory 

 to themselves as it is gratifying to their employers. 

 Fresh mushrooms, like good fruit and handsome flowers, 

 are a product of the garden that is always acceptable. 

 One of the principal pleasures in having a large garden 

 and keeping a gardener consists in being able to give 

 to others a part of the choicest garden products. 



In most pretentious gardens there is a regular mush- 

 room house, and the growing of mushrooniis is an easy 

 matter; in others there is no such convenience, and the 

 gardener has to trust to his own ingenuity where and 

 how he is to grow the mushrooms. But so long as he 

 has an abundance of fresh manure he can usually find a 

 place in which to make the beds. In the tool-shed , the 

 potting-shed, the wood-shed, the stoke-hole, the fruit- 

 room, the vegetable-cellar, or in some other out-building 

 ho can surely find a corner ; or, handier still, convenient 

 room under the greenhouse benches, where he can make 

 some beds. Failing all of these he can start in August 

 or September and make beds outside, as the London 

 market gardeners do. 



In fruit-forcing houses, especially early graperies, gar- 

 deners have a prejudice against growing any other plants 

 than the grapevines lest red spiders, thrips, or mealy 

 bugs are introduced with the plants, but in the case of 

 mushrooms no such grounds are tenable. As the vines 

 have yielded their fruit by midsummer and ripened their 

 wood early so as to be ready for starting into growth 



