1912. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
1166 
CULTURE OF MUSHROOMS. 
I would like information and advice in regard to mush¬ 
room culture. I would like to know about going into it 
commercially in a moderate way. Of course I am a 
“greenhorn,” or I would not be asking advice about the 
business. Does it require a great deal of skill to handle the 
beds and what is the price that the crop usually brings? 
H. B. 
Any inexperienced person should start into com¬ 
mercial mushroom growing in a moderate way. It 
is not a gold mine, though many advertisers of 
spawn and special instructions give the beginner that 
impression. Prices are very variable, according to 
conditions of the market; the usual wholesale range 
is from 25 to 50 cents a pound. During a period of 
glut they have fallen as low as 10 cents a pound. 
Retail prices are, of course, higher and it is some 
special retailer who disposes of dollar-a-pound mush¬ 
rooms, of which we are told as evidence of the fortune 
awaiting the grower. Locality influences the demand. 
This inquirer does not tell us what 
facilities he has for growing the mush¬ 
rooms. They are cultivated in cellars, 
caves and under greenhouse benches, 
also in mushroom houses built for the 
purpose, a desirable style being built 
into a side hill. The material of the 
beds is horse manure, which should be 
collected fresh and put in a shed, or 
some place where it is not exposed to 
the weather, and turned over each 
morning until the rank heat subsides, 
in a week or more. The manure should 
not be strawy. Mix about one-third 
screened loam through the manure, then 
make it up into beds about nine to 12 
inches deep. Tramp or pound the 
manure layer by layer, so that it is 
solid and even. When the temperature 
of the bed drops to 90 degrees, as ascer¬ 
tained by inserting a thermometer, it is 
safe to spawn. The bed may go up to 
100 degrees or over after it is made, 
so you must wait until the temperature 
falls. It is unsafe to spawn when above 
90 degrees, or if below 80 degrees. 
The spawn, which comes in solid 
bricks if English (Milltrack), or in 
flakes if French, is broken into pieces 
about as large as a walnut, and is in¬ 
serted in the bed two or three inches 
deep, four or five inches apart each 
way. Ten days later the bed is cov¬ 
ered with two inches of screened loam, 
well firmed down, and after this a light 
covering of straw or meadow hay is 
applied, to prevent the beds from dry¬ 
ing out. After this no further attention 
should be needed until the mushrooms 
are ready to gather, which may be in 
four weeks, or in as many months. 
Six or eight weeks is a usual interval. 
If the beds get very dry, water must be 
applied at a temperature of 75 to 80 
degrees, using a pot with a fine 
sprinkler, but it is easy to overdo this 
with disastrous results, and it is much 
better to avoid watering. 
Another way to make up the beds is 
to use old well-rotted manure and fresh 
manure, half and half, mixing tho¬ 
roughly and making up into beds the 
following day. The beds are made and 
spawned just as given above. The ad¬ 
vantage of this plan is that the old 
manure reduces the heat enough to pre¬ 
vent burning, and thus avoids the labor 
of turning the fresh manure repeatedly. 
The manure from spent mushroom beds is used in 
this way, and the bed has a tendency to hold the 
moisture better. This plan is said to be very satis¬ 
factory. 
Most of the mushrooms come into this market in 
handle baskets, like the eight-pound grape baskets, 
which hold around four pounds of mushrooms, 
though some shippers with special outlets pack their 
product in pasteboard cartons. 
THE FALL GRAFTING FAD. 
I have read the two letters from this State by 
R. S. and E. K., page 1090, with much interest. The 
letter by Mr. S. fits to a T the claims of a person 
who with a helper charged up a few hundred dollars 
for such work in this tov/n two years ago this Fall, 
in 1910, to the sorrow and loss of those who em¬ 
ployed them, for the amount paid was in many cases 
the smallest part of the loss, the trees being very 
a soil will hold. Thus the water content of the sub¬ 
soil, below the drain grade, is not interfered with by 
thorough drainage, but remains practically unchanged. 
That is, it contains practically as much water, less 
the pressure, whether the soil is artificially drained 
or not. Capillary attraction is the mysterious agent 
that transports from the lower subsoil, below the 
drain grade and from the almost unlimited and 
inexhaustible subsoil, the reservoir water store house. 
Drains have no magical power to draw or extract 
water from a soil. A cubic foot of water weighs 
about 62-}£ pounds. If a second, third and fourth 
cubic foot of water be placed one above the other, 
the first, second, third and fourth cubic foot of water 
at the bottom of each, would have a corresponding 
weight or pressure relative to the weight. Or four 
cubic feet of water would weigh 249.5 pounds, with 
a similar pressure of same amount per square foot at 
the bottom. Converting this pressure to square 
inches it would be 1.73+ pounds. 
This same principle, plus the resist¬ 
ance of the soil, applies to the removal 
of surplus water from the soil. That 
is to say, the surplus water auto¬ 
matically develops, by virtue of its own 
weight, the pressure which compels sur¬ 
plus water from one level to a lower 
one, drainward, to the outlet and on 
its journey to the ocean, the final home 
of the waters. Water runs down hill 
in and through the soil precisely the 
same, except slower, as it does on and 
over the ground surface. 
Water leaves a soil in obedience to 
the law of gravitation, toward the point 
of least resistance. It is the operation 
of an invariable and unchangeable prin¬ 
ciple, as old as the everlasting hills. All 
nature is bound to serve it. As the 
water passes out of a soil it is simul¬ 
taneously filled with air, automatically 
by the constant 15-pound atmospheric 
pressure everywhere present over the 
entire earth. Water being heavier than 
air, water will promptly force practically 
the bulk of the air out of a soil during 
heavy storms. 
The idea that “soil air” will hold back 
water in the soil is unsound doctrine 
and false teaching, as unreliable as is 
much of the political news published 
daily in the great newspapers. The 
“Philosopher of Drainage” makes a 
statement, then contradicts it. “The 
rains of the Spring sink into the earth,” 
etc., but “the Summer rains fall and 
the air in the crevices holds the water 
back from the drains,” etc. Possibly 
along these same line of reasoning, this 
“Philosopher” could construct a dam 
of this thin air across a river and stem 
the flow thereof, while those more 
ignorant will still persist in building 
dams the same old way, out of soil, 
wood and masonry. 
While it is generally conceded that 
the sun has a puii, yet capillarity, even 
against gravity, is the accepted agency 
that supplies the soil with film moisture 
from the suberraneous region, and sur¬ 
face tension holds it. The same at¬ 
mosphere which delivered the water 
will also carry it away. But the unsci¬ 
entific farmer prevents this by constant 
cultivation, which forms the dust mulch. 
Our scientific teachers and authorities 
say the root-hairs of plants absorb the 
necessary water, while “the sun” does not and cannot 
“draw it up into the roots of growing plants.” There 
is nothing mysterious about it once the principle is 
understood. t. e. martin. 
We would like to step outside of the usual track to 
speak of the collection of new varieties of peaches 
which J. W. Steubenrauch, of Texas, has developed, 
This unassuming man lacks both the inclination and 
the ability to “blow his own horn,” but we believe 
that these new peaches, properly introduced, would 
change the history of American peach growing. The 
Carman peach came close to doing that, and some of 
these new varieties are better than Carman. Mr. 
Stubenrauch does not care to introduce these varieties 
himself. That is not his business, and he has gone 
at the work of disposing of them in what we consider 
a commendable way. It gives us pleasure to speak 
of a man like Stubenrauch—quiet, honest, honorable 
to a fault, and with nothing of the blowhard about 
him. We wish some strong organization of peach 
growers could control these varieties and put them out 
so as to do the most good to the world. 
severely cut back when in full leaf. The work was 
commenced here in the early Fall with trees in full 
leaf, and I heard of the work still going on in a 
neighboring town after the ground was frozen. 
In no case, as far as I know, did the work prove 
successful. The next Spring I saw many of those 
scions; one in 25 to 50 might be alive and making 
a feeble growth. Many had their trees grafted over 
that Spring; others waited to see the scions grow, 
and so lost a year in time. I was informed by a 
reliable man that he saw a bunch of scion wood 
cut off with a pair of pruning shears without any 
regard to anything but length. I saw old wood set 
for scions, not fit for such work, even without a 
bud upon it. But people do like to be humbugged, 
so why discuss it further? Yet I would suggest to 
Mr. S. that as a business matter he count the scions 
before paying the bill. The inexperienced orehardist 
often suffers from traveling advisers. h. o. m. 
A TOMATO PLANT GRAFTED ON POTATO. Fig. 478. 
“THE PHILOSOPHY OF DRAINAGE.” 
I have found the following in a California paper. How 
much of it is correct? 
“On drained land, the rains of the Spring sink into 
the earth and run away instead of covering the surface 
and washing a good part of the rich top soil into depres¬ 
sions and ditches. The water having run away, the air 
creeps downward through the crevices carrying nitrogen 
and oxygen in with it. After the land is plowed, har¬ 
rowed and planted, the Summer rains fall and the air 
in the crevices holds the water back from the drains, and 
then the sun draws it up into the roots of the growing 
plants. Such is the philosophy of drainage. Evon the 
best of land should be drained.” j. l. 
ANSWERED BY 1 E. MARTIN. 
On drained land not only the “Spring rains” but 
all rains sink into the soil and subsoil, while only 
the surplus, excess and free water eventually escapes 
into the drains and flows away without erosion or 
damage to the soil. At the same time, and before 
a single drop of surplus water goes into a drain, the 
soil and subsoil, above the drain grade, absorbs and 
retains as film moisture 15 to 40 per cent, depending 
on the humus content of the soil, of all the water 
