OcToOBER, 1906 
a few hundred every year. With the bulbs 
costing only half a cent each, in quantity, 
there is really no excuse for not trying this 
plan. But don’t plant the bulbs in straight 
lines, as some do! 
If you want better flowers, larger masses, 
and more lasting results, you must raise 
crocuses in beds of deep rich sandy loam. 
In that case it will pay to dig up the crocuses 
in midsummer the first two years, in order to 
destroy all diseased and weak corms, as they 
are highly susceptible to fungous diseases. 
When the perfection of the new bulb shows 
that the crocuses are at home, there is no need 
of disturbing them until they crowd one 
another so much as to deteriorate, which may 
be in three or four years. The corms tend to 
rise out of the ground because new ones form 
on top of the old. Therefore, in garden cul- 
ture, they would better be planted three 
nches deep, though some cultivators advise 
THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 
only one or two inches, asserting that more 
crocuses fail to bloom by reason of deep 
planting than from any other cause. 
The only hardy yellow flower of March I 
know of, beside the crocus, is the winter aco- 
nite (Hranthis hyemalis). It has larger 
flowers than a crocus, and sometimes blooms 
as early as January. It belongs to the butter- 
cup family, and has from five to eight golden 
petals, or rather sepals, for such the petal-like 
parts are supposed to be, as in many other 
members of the Ranunculacee. The plant 
grows about six inches high, and each stem 
has one palmately cut leaf directly under the 
solitary flower. There are also similar basal 
leaves which expand later. 
The winter aconite is one of those flowers 
mentioned in every book on gardening, but 
rarely seen in real life in America. Although 
it has run wild in a few places here, it is 
probably not adapted as well to our climate 
135 
as to that of its European home. The 
standard advice is to naturalize it under de- 
ciduous trees, as it is supposed not to like full 
sunshine while ripening its bulbs. Yet I 
saw such a spot at Tuxedo last spring where 
only half a dozen plants had struggled 
through the ground from the five hundred 
bulbs planted during the previous autumn. 
It is to be hoped that someone who has both 
failed and succeeded with the winter aconite 
will give us the benefit of his experience. 
Mere unclouded success rarely enlightens. 
PLANTING TABLE FOR MARCH-BLOOMING BULBS 
Depth 
Distance apart 
(inches) i 
(inches) 
Snowdrop, common 2 2 
5 giant 3 4 
Glory-of-the-snow 2-3 1-2 
Scillas 3 4 
Winter aconite I 4 
Crocuses 1-3 2-4 
Grecian windflower 1-2 4 
Spring snowflake 2-3 4 
Growing Mushrooms on a Ping-Pong Table—By Louise Shaw %, 
FOUR MONTHS’ 
SUPPLY OF THIS TABLE DELICACY RAISED IN AN ORDINARY HOUSE CELLAR—THE 
AMATEOR’S OPPORTUNITY TO HAVE MUSHROOMS FROM CHRISTMAS TO EASTER BY BEGINNING NOW 
OR years we dreamed of raising mush- 
rooms in the cellar, but last autumn 
the enterprising member of the family said 
we were really going to do it. Many and, it 
must be confessed, conflicting accounts of 
how to begin were read, but the general 
directions finally followed were those given 
in Farmer’s Bulletin No. 204, from the De- 
partment of Agriculture. 
A room that could either be shut off from 
the rest of the cellar or opened to admit the 
heat of the furnace was chosen for the experi- 
ment (a mushroom cellar must be kept 
steadily at 55 degrees). For the bed itself we 
adopted the simple expedient of setting up 
an old ping-pong table and boarding up the 
sides about fifteen inches. This gave us a 
bed of forty-five square feet at much less 
cost than the customary shelves around the 
wall. 
From a livery stable nearby we bought for 
three dollars enough fresh horse manure to 
make twelve wheelbarrow loads after the 
coarsest straw had been taken out. The 
manure must be fresh; it is useless for 
mushroom growing after it has lost its heat. 
The manure was put under a covered shed 
where the rain could not reach it, and during 
the next ten days it was turned seven times— 
every day at first and later every other day. 
The purpose of turning the manure is to keep 
it from burning while the first violent decom- 
position takes place; when that is over, and 
there is no longer danger of a sour fermenta- 
tion setting in, it is safe to use the material 
for making the beds. This condition is not 
supposed to be reached inside of two or three 
weeks, but in our case the manure seemed to 
be in right condition in a little over a week, 
possibly on account of the frequent turning. 
On the tenth day (November 17th) the bed 
was made by pounding down the manure layer 
by layer until the whole twelve wheelbarrow 
loads were packed to a depth of not more than 
ten inches, and the bed was so solid that a 
vigorous thrust was needed to drive in our 
beautiful new brass-pointed thermometer. 
WATCHING THE TEMPERATURE 
It took only a day or two for the tempera- 
ture of the bed to rise to 96°F. Then it be- 
gan to drop gradually. In ten or eleven days 
the bed had reached the right temperature to 
spawn—7o to 75 degrees—and here we met 
the first reverse: The spawn was so delayed 
in delivery that by the time it reached us the 
temperature of the bed had fallen to 56 de- 
grees. It was brought up to 68° again by 
covering the bed a foot deep with salt hay and 
sprinkling with warm water about a week 
This bed was made up November 17th; spawned December 7th; and cased onthe 14th. The first mushrooms appeared above the surface of the bed February 7th, at 
which time the mulch of salt hay was removed. To secure mushrooms for Christmas spawn the bed before October 15th 
