Mushroom bed

“ Next full moon, on a cloudless night, sprinkle the magic powder at the foot of your bed, and prick the mushroom deeply with a hairpin, uttering these words three times:—'I command thee, charmed plant, to bring me the man who shall wound me as I wound thee!' Then go to bed with the mushroom under your pillow, and wait in perfect quiet without speaking. The beloved one will appear. ”

“ Such a substance, thoroughly impregnated with urine and mixed with horse-droppings, forms an excellent material for mushroom-beds, especially if mixed with one-fourth of good fibrous loam. Such materials mixed and fermented together, and thrown into a bed a foot or eighteen inches in thickness, according to the temperature of the shed in which the bed is made, will be found to form capital material for growing this esculent, especially as it retains the heat for a long time. The worst of it is that the material is almost valueless after it has served the first purpose ”

“ The important thing should be to ascertain if the spawn spreads through the bed properly. The usual practice is to earth up the bed immediately or very soon after it is spawned, and not a few take no further notice of the bed or beds till the time arrives when the mushrooms ought to appear. A better plan is not to finally earth the bed until the spawn is seen beginning to spread its white filaments through the mass ”

“ In this state the bed should remain about a fortnight, and then some bricks of mushroom spawn having been procured from a nurseryman, they should be broken into pieces about an inch or an inch and a half square, and strewed regularly over the bed, each piece of the spawn being buried by raising up a little of the dung and inserting it. After this, the surface of the bed must be beaten flat with the spade, and the whole covered with a loamy soil, and beaten quite smooth. ”

“ Everywhere on the surface of these little beds small mushrooms were peering forth in quantity; as the beds are regularly gathered from every day, no very large ones are seen. They are preferred when about the size of a chestnut, and are removed root and branch, a small portion of finely sifted earth being placed in each hole, so as to level the bed as in the caves at Montrouge. ”

“ The mode of preparing the spawn here is entirely different to ours. They prefer virgin spawn—that is to say, spawn found naturally in a heap of manure. But as this material cannot be obtained in sufficient quantity to meet the wants of such extensive growers, they put a small portion of it into a mushroom-bed to spread, and instead of allowing this bed to produce mushrooms, it is all used as spawn, and is valued more than any other. ”

“ Toads.—These are recommended as good insect traps to be used in mushroom houses, but I do not want them there; the cure is as bad as the disease. The mushroom bed is a little paradise for the toad. He gets upon it and burrows or elbows out a snug little hole for himself wherever he wishes, and many of them, too, and cares nothing about whether, in his efforts to make himself comfortable, he has heaved out the finest clumps of young mushrooms in the beds. ”

“ It need hardly be added that, as it is not mushrooms, but creatures that rival ourselves in their love of mushrooms, that we wish to annihilate, the scalding water must not in any case be applied to the surface of the bed. If on the surface of old or dry beds, or those from which a good many mushrooms have been cut or pulled, there are any loose hollows or crevices in which the woodlice can take shelter, they should be sought out, cleared of vermin, levelled up, and made firm, so that the enemy cannot take up a position in which we cannot attack him. ”

“ As the lettuces are planted out upon the benches there is very little drip from them, hence the sunken beds are well enough. And the temperature of a lettuce house is about right for a long-lasting mushroom bed. Light is excluded by a simple covering of salt hay laid over the beds, and sometimes by light wooden shutters set up against the aperture between the lettuce benches and the floor, in this way boxing in the mushrooms in total darkness. ”

“ That a thickness of from one foot to fifteen inches for the beds [19] in an artificially heated house is quite sufficient. Eighteen inches will not be too much for beds made in sheds, though I have seen excellent crops on beds only a foot thick, in common sheds with leaky sides. All beds made indoors should be flat and firmly beaten down, though the absence of firmness is not, as some think, sufficient to account for want of success.
I will now quote a few words from Mr. Ayres on other materials for forming mushroom-beds than stable manure. ”

“ The beds are made upon the floor in the usual way, only for convenience' sake, to admit of plenty of room in making up the beds and gathering the crop, besides avoiding the necessity for building higher structures than the ordinary lettuce greenhouses, the mushroom beds are sunken about eighteen to twenty-four inches under the level of the pathways. ”

“ Here we saw little, smooth, putty-coloured ridges running along the sides of the passages, and wherever the rocky subway became as large as a small bedroom two or three little beds were placed parallel to each other. These beds were new, and dotted all over with mushrooms no bigger than sweet pea seeds, affording an excellent prospect of a crop. Each bed contains a much smaller body of manure than is ever the case in our gardens. They are not more than twenty inches high, and about the same width at the base ”

“ Woodlice are the greatest pests the mushroom-grower has to dispose of, and the most effective way of getting rid of them is by destroying them with boiling water. The surface of the bed being firm and covered with smooth firm soil, the only likely place to afford these creatures the interstices they usually retire into when disturbed, or when not employed in eating the head of every little mushroom that presents itself, is round the edges of the bed, and in the slit which often occurs between the bed and wall or sides of the shelves that support it. ”

“ With respect to the produce, the beds begin furnishing Mushrooms in a month or six weeks after spawning: sometimes indeed it will be two or three months, but there is no great success to be expected when they are long before they yield their first crop; a good working bed, if well spawned and managed, commonly affords plenty in six or eight weeks, continuing sometimes for three months together, rising in numerous clusters one under another, covering the surface of the bed, some appearing in embryo, some larger, and others, at the fame time, full sized ”

“ Spawn, in the common sense of the word, may be dispensed with by well amalgamating manure, loam, and old mushroom-beds, or leaf-mould containing traces of spawn, and these formed into beds about a foot thick in the mushroom-house, and covered with earth, produce without any further spawning ”

“ At one end are several of us with lamps, admiring the young mushrooms budding all over the rows of beds, which, serpent-like, are long and slim, and coil away into the darkness. At about 150 feet distance there is a group of three men and a boy, each with a lamp, again dispelling the darkness from the mushroom beds, and occupied in placing small quantities of a sort of white clayey sand in the spots whence gatherings have been made a few hours previously. ”

“ Though the first production is sometimes six or eight weeks or more after spawning before it appears, at the end of a month begin to examine the progress and working of the bed, and if successful, you will discover the running and knotting of the spawn abundantly; the Mushrooms will soon after begin to advance plenteously all over the bed, when they may be gathered as they are wanted. ”

“ In Dwelling House.—The cellar of a dwelling house is a capital place for mushroom beds, and can be used in whole or part for this purpose. In the case of private families who wish to grow a few mushrooms only for their own use it is not necessary to devote a whole cellar to it ”

“ If we had to depend on foreign spawn, as in the past, mushrooms would still be scarce and high.
The grower would rather pick a pound of mushrooms to each square foot of bed surface at an average price of 25 cents a pound than to pick one-half pound (more often less) at 50 cents a pound, which was the rule years ago.
4
MUSHROOMS GROWN FOR HOME USE
It is a very easy matter to plant a bed of mushrooms in the cellar or in an outbuilding, for home use, by following instructions and using good spawn. ”

“ Beds may be made alongside of the walls and, if there is room, also along the middle of the house, and shelves erected in the same way as in the cellar. But in the case of cold, thin outside walls, the shelf-beds should not be built close against them, but instead boxed off about two inches from the walls, so as to remove the beds from the chilling touch of the wall in winter. Economy may suggest the advisability of high mushroom houses, so that one may be able to build one shelf above another, until the shelves are two, three, or four deep. ”

“ I believe this kind of spawn spreads more rapidly through the beds than our own brick spawn, and is, on the whole, much more desirable. As it is usually very dry it is a good plan to place some of it in the mushroom-house a few days before spawning, so that it may begin to absorb moisture. A dark place in a warm house, or gentle hotbed, would do as well, but in no case should it be done more than three days before spawning time. ”

“ For cover, the little pathway between the beds is simply loosened up, and the rich soil of the market-garden applied equably, firmly, and smoothly with a shovel. With these open-air beds they succeed in getting mushrooms in winter. A covering of abundance of litter is put on immediately after the beds are earthed, and kept there as a protection. They have not long to wait till the beds are in full bearing, and when they are in that state it is thought better to examine and gather from them every second day, or even every day where there are many beds. ”

“ The floor is of earth, which, when well drained, he thinks preferable to either brick or lumber. The floor is entirely covered with beds, no shelves or walks being used. This makes it necessary to step on the beds, but as no covering is employed it is always easy to avoid stepping on the clusters of young mushrooms, and so long as they are left uninjured the bed is seldom, if ever, impaired by the compacting effect of the treading. In order to maintain a necessary winter temperature of 60° a four-inch hot-water pipe extends the whole length of the house about two feet from the floor. ”

“ With the fungus under my arm I walked briskly along, planning an omelet with the eggs, if we got any, and gathering mushrooms here and there. It was the mushrooms that led me to the discovery of a camping-place that was prehistoric in its primitiveness—a clearing, surrounded by low bushes, and in the center a fireplace of stones with a fire smouldering. At one side a heap of leaves and small twigs for a bed, a stump for a seat, and lying on top of it a sort of stone axe, made by inserting a sharp stone into the cleft of a sapling and tying it into place with a wild-grape tendril. ”

“ It is rather a novel, but still a good plan, to have the inner roof constructed of a brick arch, as it will of course save the outer one from decay, to which all mushroom-house roofs are liable more than any other kind of garden building. This house struck us at first sight as very complete, excepting in breadth. We should increase it to 9 feet—that is, 3 feet for the breadth of the beds on each side, and the same for the footpath, which at present is inconveniently narrow. ”

“ Indoor Beds.—Mushrooms may be grown almost anywhere, evenly in a cellar, or on the wall of a warm stable, provided only that the mode of procedure is in a reasonable degree adapted to the requirements of the fungus. Ordinary pits and frames are also serviceable, and many gardeners obtain good crops in autumn by the simple process of inserting a few lumps of spawn in a Cucumber or Melon bed while the plants are still in bearing. ”

“ In large, well appointed, private gardens, a mushroom house is considered an almost indispensable adjunct to the glasshouse establishment, and is generally built against the north-facing wall of a greenhouse. In this way it gets the benefit of the warm wall, and may be easily heated by introducing one or two hot-water pipes from the greenhouse system; besides, in winter the house may be entered from the glass house or adjacent shed, and in this way be exempted from the inclement breath of the frosty air that would be admitted in opening the outside door. ”

“ If the beds get dry they should be watered, for mushrooms will not grow well in dry beds or in a dry atmosphere. Watering is an operation requiring much care. In properly-made beds the manure should remain moist enough from first to last, and whatever dryness is evident should be in the loam casing of the beds and the atmosphere. In all artificially heated mushroom houses the beds and atmosphere are apt to get too dry at one time or another ”

“ The larger ones, on the contrary, are confined to the fields and forests, damp walls and hollow trees; or wherever rotting wood, leaves, or manure provide them with sufficient nourishment. Few people have any clear ideas about the growth [Pg 67] of a mushroom, except that the part we pick springs up in a single night. The real fact is, that a whole mushroom plant is nothing more than a gigantic mould or mildew, only that it is formed of many different shaped cells, and spreads its tubes underground or through the trunks of trees instead of in paste or jam, as in the case of the mould. ”