112 



KITCHEN GARDEN PLANTS. 



[chap. 



you have no other, mix with it an equal quantity of old hot-bed 

 lining, throw it together in a long ridge, where rains will not fall 

 on it to ferment, and in about three weeks it will be ready for use. 

 Then take and mark out the outline of the base of your bed, just as 

 I directed in my instructions about hot-beds in Chapter III. ; but 

 as this one is to go up in a sloping direction on both sides like the 

 roof of a house, you need not have the upright stakes nor the edge- 

 boards that I there recommended. Three or four feet will be quite 

 wide enough. The length you regulate according to the quantity 

 of mushrooms that you wish to grow. Begin then with your bed, 

 shaking the dung up well, and, if it be long, beating it well, just as 

 in the case of the cucnmber-bed, only keep drawing it'inby degrees 

 till you have it in the shape of the roof of a house : beat it on the 

 top as you carry it up, but particularly beat it at the sides, for there 

 you will want it to be perfectly even a«d firm. Having finished it? 

 you will guard it from rains and from the sun by covering it over with 

 long straw, old thatch, or mats ; for it must be neither two wet nor too 

 dry. Let it remain in this way a week, or till you find, by forcing 

 your fore-finger down into it, that the heat is moderate. Then put 

 on a layer of fresh mould to about an inch thick. In" this you 

 will stick little pieces of spawn of mushrooms at about eight 

 inches apart every way. Cover over these with mould to about 

 another inch in thickness, and pat it down nicely with a spade ; 

 and still keep the covering of straw or matting over the whole bed 

 as before, for neither wet not sun must get to it immoderately. 

 Success now greatly depends on the proper moisture of the bed. 

 If in summer-time, take off the covering now and then to admit of 

 gentle showers falling on it ; or, if in a very dry season, water now 

 and then. But if in winter, keep out the cold at all times. The 

 in-doors method of cultivating mushrooms was introduced to this 

 country from Germany. It is usually by means of a small house 

 in any awkward or out-of-the-way corner of the garden, about ten 

 or twelve feet wide and twenty or thirty feet long. With a fire- 

 place on the outside of one end, and a flue going from it straight 

 down under the middle of the floor of the house and back again 

 to the fire-place ; with one door, and two or three small windows, 

 which latter are generally kept shut close with unglazed shutters. 

 All along the two sides of this house are shelves arranged in three 

 tiers, one close to the bottom, another at about three feet up, and 

 another at about six feet up, and these shelves are about three feet 



