Mushrooms: how to grow them

l-and with as much pleasure and profit. Below it is shown, in particular, that this peculiar plant is singularly well adapted to the condi

ing mushrooms. They have the manure needed for their other crops, and they may well use it first for a mushroom crop. After having borne a crop of mushrooms it is thorough

(eighteen to twenty feet), low, hip-roofed (30°) structures. In most of them the salad beds are made upon the floor, and the pathways are sunken a little so as to give headroom in walking and working. Others of these greenhouses are built a little higher, and middle and side benches are erected within them, as in the case of florists' greenhouses, and with the view of growing salad plants on these benches as florists do carnations, and mushrooms under the benches. The mushrooms are protected from sunlight by a covering of light boards, or hay, or the space under the benches is entirely shut

of these cellars are ordinary barn cellars, others-large and commodious-have been built under barns and greenhouses, purposely

urposes, is admirably adapted for mushroom beds, and the warmth and moisture of the greenhouse are exceptionally congenial conditions for the cultivation of mushrooms. Florists need the loam and manure anyway, and these are just as good for potting purposes-better for young stock-after having been used in the mushroom beds than they were before, so that the additional expense in connection with the crop is the labor in making the beds and the price of the spawn. Mushrooms are not a bulky crop; they require no space or care in summer, are easily grown, handled, and marketed, and there is always a demand for them at a good price. If the crop turns out well it is nearly all profit; if it is a complete failure very little

their employers. Fresh mushrooms, like good fruit and handsome flowers, are a product of the garden that is always acceptable. One of the princ

ms. 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-build

er and ripened their wood early so as to be ready for starting into growth again in December or January, the grapery is kept cool and ventilated in the fall and early winter, but this need not interfere with the mushroom crop. Box up the beds or make them in frames inside the grapery; the warm manure will affo

crop for which we have to make a great preparation and need a large quantity of manure. No matter how small the bed may be, it will bear mushrooms; and if we desire we can add to the bed week after week, as our store of manure increases, and in this way keep up a continuous succession of mushrooms. A bed may be made in the cow-house or horse-stable,

rtility, but, instead, is well rotted and in a better condition to apply to the land than it was before being prepared for the mushroom crop. The farmer will not feel the little labor that it takes. There is no secret whatever connected with it, and skilled labor is unnecessary to make it successful. The co

mestic duties. And it is clean work; there is nothing menial about it. No lady in the land would hesitate to pick the mushrooms in the open fields, how much less, then, should she hesitate to gather the fresh mushrooms from the clean beds in her own clean cellar? Mushrooms are a winter crop; they come when we need them most. The supply of eggs in