RE-INVIGORATING OLD BEDS. 
121 
weight of mushrooms is about the same. As there is in, 
say a ton of manure, only so much mushroom-producing 
power, if you force it to produce that weight in two 
months you are a gainer, as you thereby save in labor; 
but when that producing-power is exhausted it will pro= 
duce no more mushrooms. ” 
A spent mushroom bed is one that has been kept in 
bearing condition under the most favorable circumstan¬ 
ces at our command, and it has borne a good crop, lasted 
some two months in bearing, and now it has stopped 
bearing (except in a meagerly, desultory way) because 
the spawn or mycelium has exhausted itself and is dead. 
Then, without living spawn in the bed how are we to 
get mushrooms ? Some bits of mycelium are still alive 
and yield the desultory few, but every mushroom that 
they yield is preying on their vitality, and after a time 
they too shall die and the bed be completely barren, for 
the mycelium is altogether dead, and without mycelium 
mushrooms are an impossibility. We can keep mush¬ 
room mycelium in active growth the year round, and 
year after year, providing we never let it bear mush¬ 
rooms. This is done by taking the mycelium, just 
• before it begins bearing, from one manure bed and plant- 
it in another, and so on from bed to bed. At every 
fresh transplanting the mycelium exerts itself into re¬ 
newed growth, for it must become a strong plant before 
it has strength enough to produce and support a mush¬ 
room. Our utmost efforts have never rendered mycelium 
in a mushroom-bearing condition perennial. 
