24 
MUSHROOMS, HOW TO GROW THEM. 
along without any fire-heat, but this is very awkward 
when gathering the mushrooms. 
After the bed has borne a little while it is top-dressed 
all over with a half-inch layer of fine soil. Before using, 
this soil has been kept in a close place—pit, frame, shed, 
or large box—in which there was, at the same time, a 
lot of steaming-hot manure, so that it might become 
thoroughly charged with mushroom food absorbed from 
the steam from the fermenting material. 
Should any portion of the bed get very dry, water of a 
temperature of 90° is given gently and somewhat spar¬ 
ingly through a fine-spraying waterpot rose, or syringe. 
Enough water is never given at any one time to pene¬ 
trate through the casing into the manure below or the 
spawn in the manure. But rather than make a practice 
of watering the beds, Mr. Gardner finds it is better to 
maintain a moist atmosphere, and thus lessen the neces¬ 
sity for watering. 
Mr. Gardner firmly believes that the mushrooms de¬ 
rive much nourishment from the “ steam ” of fermenting 
fresh horse manure, and by using this “steam” in our 
mushroom houses we can maintain an atmosphere almost 
moist enough to be able to dispense with the use of the 
syringe, and the mushrooms are fatter and heavier for 
it. And he practices what he preaches. In one end of 
his mushroom cellar he has a very large, deep, open box, 
half filled with steaming fresh horse-droppings, and once 
or twice a day lie tosses these over with a dung-fork, in 
order to raise a “steam,” which it certainly does. It is 
also for this purpose that he introduces the loam so soon 
when making the beds, so that it may become charged 
with food that otherwise would be dissipated in the 
atmosphere. 
There is a marked difference between the mushrooms 
raised from the French flake spawn and those from the 
English brick spawn, but he lias never observed any dis- 
