112 



THE GARDENER. 



[APRIL. 



tions should be proceeded with in the case of Polyan- 

 thuses, Sec. kc. 



Kitchen Garden. — Make a mushroom bed in pro- 

 portion to the quantity of mushrooms you want to 

 raise (as for cucumbers), only drawing it up in the 

 form of the sloping roof of a house, beating it well as 

 you proceed, especially at the sides ; throw mats over 

 it for some days, until you tind the fermentation at a 

 moderate degree of heat, such as your hand can bear ; 

 then cover it an inch deep with earth, into which you 

 are to put portions of spawn about the size of a pigeon's 

 egg, at about eight inches apart every way ; put an 

 inch of earth over this, beat it down with the back of 

 a spade, and replace the matting, unless the weather 

 be very warm, and soft showers falling, in which case 

 it should be occasionally raised.* In six weeks the 

 mushrooms will appear, and they will continue to af- 

 ford a crop for about the same length of time : very 

 delicate watering may be given if the weather be not 

 moist. If you have a suitable house, you can com- 

 mand almost continual successions, by means of beds 

 heated by flues, and by various contrivances, as to 

 compartments for the successions of spawn cakes, 

 which you can make with dry horse dung (from hay 

 and corn only), cow dung, and loam, in equal parts, 

 well beaten and blended together.f Mr. Hankin, gar- 

 dener to Captain Mitford, in a recent communication 

 to the editor of the Gardeners' Chronicle, describes 

 his very successful and simple mode of raising them in 

 wooden boxes thus: — He tirst collects the fresh drop- 

 pings from the stable, and lays it in a shed to dry 

 before it is used ; he then puts it into wooden boxes 

 at nine inches deep, trellised at bottom (to allow the 

 heated air of the house to enter into the dung when 



* See Cobbetr's English Gardening, 

 f Loudon, p. 524, 



