46 
MUSHROOMS, HOW TO GROW THEM. 
feet wide and carrying three and one-half feet wide 
sashes. A string of them is run along the middle of the 
greenhouses, for greenhouse after greenhouse is occupied 
by them. They are flat upon the floor, and in the early 
part of the season alone in the greenhouses. But as the 
winter advances a temporary staging is erected over 
these frames, on which spiraeas, peas, beans, or other 
flowers or vegetables are to be grown. These love the 
light and a position near the glass, whereas the mush¬ 
rooms grow perfectly well in the dark quarters of the 
frames under the stages. If he did not grow mushrooms 
under these stages the room would be unoccupied, hence 
unproductive; but by occupying it with mushrooms he 
not only gets peaches and snap beans at once out of the 
same greenhouse, but also a crop of mushrooms, often 
worth as much as the other two. 
In preparing the beds in the frames they were made 
up a foot deep, very firm, and with New York stable 
manure brought direct from the cars. There was no 
preliminary preparation of the manure. A layer of loam 
one and one-half inches deep was then spread over the 
surface and forked into the bed of manure one and one- 
half inches deep, so as to form an earthy mat three 
inches deep. This was then packed solid with the feet, 
and a two-inch layer of loose manure added all over. In 
about ten days the temperature three inches below the 
surface was about 95°, and the beds were then spawned. 
In spawning, drills were drawn across the beds about a 
foot apart and just deep enough to touch but not pene¬ 
trate the earthy mat before referred to. The broken 
spawn was then sown in the drills and covered with a 
layer of loam one and one-half to two inches deep, which 
was tamped slightly. The sashes were then put on and 
tilted up a little to let the moisture escape. By the 
time the mushrooms appeared there was very little need 
of ventilating, as the condensation of moisture on the 
