LOAM FOR THE BEDS. 
101 
Ordinary garden soil is used more frequently than any 
other sort, and altogether with highly satisfactory results. 
The greatest objection I have to it is the amount of 
insects it is apt to contain on account of its often re¬ 
peated heavy manurings 
Roadside dirt, whether loamy or gritty, may also be 
used with good results. If free from weeds, sticks, 
stones and rough drift, it may be used at once, but it is 
much better to stack it in a pile to rot for a few months 
before using. 
Sandy soil, such as occurs in the water-shed drifts 
along the roads and where it has been washed into the 
fields, is much inferior to stiller and more fibrous earth. 
I have used the rich dark colored soil from slopes and 
dry hollows in woods, and, odd though it may appear, 
as mushrooms do not naturally grow in woods, with suc¬ 
cess. But it is not as good as loam from the open field. 
Peat soil or swamp muck that has been composted for 
two or three years has failed to give me good returns. 
The mushrooms will come up through it all right, but 
they do not take kindly to it. 
Heavy, clayey loam is, in one way, excellent, in 
another, not so good. So long as we can keep it equably 
moist without making it muddy it is all right, but if we 
let it get a little too dry it cracks, and in this way breaks 
the threads of the spawn and ruins the mushrooms that 
were fed through them. 
Loam Containing Old Manure.—Loam in which 
there is a good deal of old, undecomposed manure, such 
as the rich soil of our vegetable gardens, is unqualifi¬ 
edly condemned by some writers because of the quantity 
of spurious and noxious fungi it is supposed to produce 
when used in mushroom beds. But I can not join in 
this denunciation because my experience does not justify 
it. This earth is the only kind used by many market 
gardeners, as they have no other, and certainly without 
