Mushrooms

Chapter Xxii.--Cooking Mushrooms 150

Baked Mushrooms-- Stewed Mushrooms-- Soyer's Breakfast Mushrooms-- Mushrooms à la Crême-- Curried Mushrooms-- Broiled Mushrooms-- Mushroom Soup-- Mushroom Stews-- Potted Mushrooms-- Gilbert's Breakfast Mushrooms-- Baked Mushrooms-- Mushrooms à la Casse, Tout-- Broiled Beefsteak and Mushrooms-- To Preserve Mushrooms-- Mushroom Powder-- To Dry Mushrooms-- Dried Mushrooms-- Mushroom Ketchup-- Pickled Mushrooms.

ILLUSTRATIONS

Mushroom Cellar under a Barn, 16 Boxed-up Frame with Straw Covering, 19 Cross Section of the Dosoris Mushroom Cellar, 27 Ground Plan of the Dosoris Cellar, 28 Base-burning Water Heater, 32 Vertical Section of Base-burning Water Heater, 32 Mushroom House Built Against a North-facing Wall, 34 Section of Mrs. Osborne's Mushroom House, 35 Ground Plan of Mrs. Osborne's Mushroom House, 36 Interior View of Mr. S. Henshaw's Mushroom House, 38 Boxed Mushroom Bed under Greenhouse Bench, 41 Mushrooms Grown on Greenhouse Benches, 43 Wide Bed with Pathway Above, 44 Mushrooms on Greenhouse Benches under Tomatoes, 45 Mr. Wm. Wilson's Mushroom Beds, 51 Mushroom Bed Built Flat upon the Ground, 52 Ridged Mushroom Bed, 53 Banked Bed against a Wall, 53 Perspective View of the Dosoris Mushroom Cellar, 58 Bale of German Peat Moss, 66 Brick Spawn, 80 Flake, or French Spawn, 82 Brick Spawn Cut in Pieces for Planting, 97 A Perfect Mushroom, 116 Mushrooms Affected with Black Spot, 125 A Flock-Diseased Mushroom, 133 The Covered Ridges, 140 In the Mushroom Caves of Paris, 147 Gathering Mushrooms in the Paris Caves for Market, 149

MUSHROOMS, HOW TO GROW THEM.

CHAPTER I.. Those Who Should Grow Mushrooms.

THOSE WHO SHOULD GROW MUSHROOMS.

=Market Gardeners.=--The mushroom is a highly prized article of food which can be as easily grown as many other vegetable products of the soil--and with as much pleasure and profit. Below it is shown, in particular, that this peculiar plant is singularly well adapted to the conditions that surround many classes of persons, and by whom the mushroom might become a standard crop for home use, the city market, or both. It is directly in their line of business; is a winter crop, requiring their care when outdoor operations are at a standstill, and they can most conveniently attend to growing 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 thoroughly rotted and in good condition for early spring crops; and for seed beds of tomatoes, lettuces, cabbages, cauliflowers, and other vegetables, it is the best kind of manure.

Years ago market gardening near New York in winter was carried on in rather a desultory way, and the supply of salads and other forced vegetables was limited and mostly raised in hotbeds and other frames, and prices ran high. But of recent years our markets in winter have been so liberally supplied from the Southern States, that, in order to save themselves, our market gardeners have been compelled to take up a fresh line in their business, and renounce the winter frames in favor of greenhouses, and grow crops which many of them did not handle before. These greenhouses are mostly long, wide (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 in, cupboard fashion, with wooden shutters. The temperature is very favorable for mushrooms,--steady and moderately cool, and easily corrected by the covering-in of the beds; and the moisture of the atmosphere of a lettuce house is about right for mushrooms. In such a house the day temperature may run up, with sunshine, to 65° or 70° in winter, but an artificial night temperature of only 45° to 50° is maintained. Under these conditions, with the beds about fifteen inches thick, they should continue to yield a good crop of short-stemmed, stout mushrooms for two or three months, possibly longer.

Besides growing the mushrooms in greenhouses our market gardeners are very much in earnest in cultivating them in cellars. Some of these cellars are ordinary barn cellars, others--large and commodious--have been built under barns and greenhouses, purposely for the cultivation of mushrooms. Several of these mushroom cellars may be found on Long Island between Jamaica and Woodhaven.

=Florists.=--In midwinter the cut flower season is at its height and the florist endeavors to make all the money out of his greenhouses that he possibly can; every available inch of space exposed to the light is occupied by growing plants, and under the benches alongside of the pathways dahlias, cannas, caladiums, and other tubers and bulbs are stored, also ivies, palms, succulents and the like. In order that the plants may be more fully exposed to the sunlight, they are grown on benches raised above the ground so as to bring them near to the glass; and the greenhouse seems to be full to overflowing. But right here we have the best kind of a mushroom house. The space under the benches, which is nearly useless for other purposes, 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 is lost, and it must be a bad failure that will not yield enough to pay for its cost. Why should the florist confine himself to one crop at a time in the greenhouse when he may equally well have two crops in it at the same time, and both of them profitable? He can have his roses on the benches and mushrooms under the benches, and neither interferes with the other. Let us take a very low estimate: In a greenhouse a hundred feet long make a five foot wide mushroom bed under the main bench; this will give 500 square feet of bed, and half a pound to the foot will give 250 pounds of mushrooms, which, sold at fifty cents a pound net, brings $125. This amount the florist would not have realized without growing the mushrooms.

=Private Gardeners.=--It is a part of their routine duty, and success in mushroom growing is as satisfactory to themselves as it is gratifying to their employers. Fresh mushrooms, like good fruit and handsome flowers, are a product of the garden that is always acceptable. One of the principal pleasures in having a large garden and keeping a gardener consists in being able to give to others a part of the choicest garden products.

In most pretentious gardens there is a regular mushroom house, and the growing of mushrooms is an easy matter; in others there is no such convenience, and the gardener has to trust to his own ingenuity where and how he is to grow the mushrooms. 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-building he can surely find a corner; or, handier still, convenient room under the greenhouse benches, where he can make some beds. Failing all of these he can start in August or September and make beds outside, as the London market gardeners do.

In fruit-forcing houses, especially early graperies, gardeners have a prejudice against growing any other plants than the grapevines lest red spiders, thrips, or mealy bugs are introduced with the plants, but in the case of mushrooms no such grounds are tenable. As the vines have yielded their fruit by midsummer 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 afford the mushrooms heat enough until it is time to start the vines, when the increased temperature and moisture of the house will be in favor of the mushrooms because of the declining heat in the manure beds. The mushrooms have no deleterious effect whatever upon the vines, nor have the vines upon the mushrooms.

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