12 
MUSHROOMS, HOW TO GROW THEM, 
very low estimate : In a greenhouse a hundred feet long 
make a five foot wide mushroom bed under the main 
bench ; this will give 500 square feet of bed, and half a 
pound to the foot will give 250 pounds of mushrooms, 
which, sold at fifty cents a pound net, brings $125. This 
amount the florist would not have realized without 
growing the mushrooms. 
Private Gardeners.— It is a part of their routine 
duty, and success in mushroom growing is as satisfactory 
to themselves as it is gratifying to their employers. 
Fresh mushrooms, like good fruit and handsome flowers, 
are a product of the garden that is always acceptable. 
One of the principal pleasures in having a large garden 
and keeping a gardener consists in being able to give 
to others a part of the choicest garden products. 
In most pretentious gardens there is a regular mush¬ 
room house, and the growing of mushrooms is an easy 
matter; in others there is no such convenience, and the 
gardener has to trust to his own ingenuity where and 
how he is to grow the mushrooms. But so long as he 
has an abundance of fresh manure he can usually find a 
place in which to make the beds. In the tool-shed, the 
potting-shed, the wood-shed, the stoke-hole, the fruit- 
room, the vegetable-cellar, or in some other out-building 
he can surely find a corner ; or, handier still, convenient 
room under the greenhouse benches, where he can make 
some beds. Failing all of these he can start in August 
or September and make beds outside, as the London 
market gardeners do. 
In fruit-forcing houses, especially early graperies, gar¬ 
deners have a prejudice against growing any other plants 
than the grapevines lest red spiders, thrips, or mealy 
bugs are introduced with the plants, but in the case of 
mushrooms no such grounds are tenable. As the vines 
have yielded their fruit by midsummer and ripened their 
wood early so as to be ready for starting into growth 
