CHAPTER II. 
GROWING MUSHROOMS IN CELLARS. 
Underground Cellars. —Mushrooms require a uni¬ 
form moderately low temperature and moist atmosphere, 
and will not thrive where draughts, or sudden fluctua¬ 
tions of temperature or moisture prevail. Therefore an 
underground cellar is the best of all structures in which 
to grow mushrooms. The cellar is everybody’s mush¬ 
room house. 
Cellars are under dwellings, barns, and often under 
other out-buildings. These cellars are imperative for 
domestic purposes, for storing apples, potatoes and 
other root crops and perishable produce; and for these 
uses we need to make them frost proof and dry. These 
cellars are ideal mushroom houses, and any one who has 
a good cellar can grow mushrooms in it. In fact, our 
market gardeners who are making money out of mush¬ 
rooms find it pays them to excavate and build cellars 
expressly for growing mushrooms. Indeed, some of our 
market gardeners who have never grown a mushroom or 
seen one grown, but who know well that some of their 
neighbors are making money out of this business, in¬ 
stinctively feel that the first step in mushroom-growing 
is a cellar. It is almost incredible how secretly the 
market growers guard everything in connection with 
mushroom-growing from the outside world, and even 
from one another; in fact, in some cases their next-door 
neighbors and life-long intimate friends have never been 
inside their mushroom cellars. 
If a cellar is to be wholly devoted to mushroom-grow- 
15 
