MANURE FOR MUSHROOM BEDS. 
61 
Manure of horses that are largely fed with carrots is 
emphatically condemned by most writers on the cultiva¬ 
tion of mushrooms; indeed, it is one of the points in 
every book on mushrooms which I have read. Let us 
look at a few practical facts : There are at Dosoris two 
shelf beds in one cellar; each is thirty feet long, three 
feet wide, and nine inches deep, and both are bearing a 
very thick crop of mushrooms. The material in these 
beds consists of horse manure three parts and chopped 
sod loam one part, which had been mixed and fermented 
together from the first preparation. The manure was 
saved from the stables on the place in November, ’88, the 
materials prepared in December, the beds built Dec. 17, 
spawned Dec. 24, molded over Dec. 31, and first mush¬ 
rooms gathered Feb. 7, 1889. These beds bore well 
until the middle of April. The mushrooms did not 
average as large as they did on the deeper beds upon the 
floor of the cellar, but they ran about three-fourths to 
one ounce apiece, and a good many were more than this. 
It is most always the case, however, that the crop on 
thin shelf beds averages less than it does on thick floor 
beds, and especially is this noticeable after the first flush 
of the crop has been gathered, no matter what kind of 
fermenting material had been used. At the time when 
the manure used for these beds was being saved at the 
stable the horses were only very lightly worked, and to 
each horse was fed, in addition to hay and some oats and 
bran, about a third of a bushel of carrots a day. And 
this is the manure used for the late mushroom beds, 
and yet good crops and good mushrooms are produced. 
This is not only the experience of one year’s practice but 
the regular routine of many. 
Perhaps some one would like to ask : Do you con¬ 
sider the manure of carrot-fed horses as good as the 
manure of animals to which no carrots or other root 
crops had been fed ? My answer is—decidedly not. 
