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MUSHROOMS:
How to Grow Them.
A PRACTICAL TREATISE
ON
Mushroom Culture for Profit and Pleasure.
BY
WILLIAM FALCONER.
ILLUSTRATED.
NEW YORK,
ORANGE JUDD CO.
1892.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1891, by the
ORANGE JUDD COMPANY,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
PREFACE
Mushrooms and their extensive and profitable culture should concern
every one. For home consumption they are a healthful and grateful food,
and for market, when successfully grown, they become a most profitable
crop. We can have in America the best market in the world for fresh
mushrooms; the demand for them is increasing, and the supply has always
been inadequate. The price for them here is more than double that paid
in any other country, and we have no fear of foreign competition, for
all attempts, so far, to import fresh mushrooms from Europe have been
unsuccessful.
In the most prosperous and progressive of all countries, with a
population of nearly seventy millions of people alert to every
profitable, legitimate business, mushroom-growing, one of the simplest
and most remunerative of industries, is almost unknown. The market
grower already engaged in growing mushrooms appreciates his situation
and zealously guards his methods of cultivation from the public. This
only incites interest and inquisitiveness, and the people are becoming
alive to the fact that there is money in mushrooms and an earnest demand
has been created for information about growing them.
The raising of mushrooms is within the reach of nearly every one. Good
materials to work with and careful attention to all practical details
should give good returns. The industry is one in which women and
children can take part as well as men. It furnishes indoor employment in
winter, and there is very little hard labor attached to it, while it can
be made subsidiary to almost any other business, and even a recreation
as well as a source of profit.
In this book the endeavor has been, even at the risk of repetition, to
make the best methods as plain as possible. The facts herein presented
are the results of my own practical experience and observation, together
with those obtained by extensive reading, travel and correspondence.
To Mr. Charles A. Dana, the proprietor of the Dosoris mushroom cellars
and estate, I am greatly indebted for opportunities to prepare this
book. For the past eight years everything has been unstintedly placed at
my disposal by him to grow mushrooms in every way I wished, and to
experiment to my heart's content.
To Mr. William Robinson, editor of _The Garden_, London, I am especially
indebted for many courtesies--permission to quote from _The Garden_,
"Parks and Gardens of Paris," and his other works, and to illustrate the
chapters in this book on Mushroom-growing in the London market gardens
and the Paris caves, with the original beautiful plates from his own
books.
The recipes given in the chapter on Cooking Mushrooms, except those
prepared for this work by Mrs. Ammersley, although based on the ones
given by Mr. Robinson, have been considerably modified by me and
repeatedly used in my own family.
My thanks are also due to Mr. John F. Barter, of London, the largest
grower of mushrooms in England, for information given me regarding his
system of cultivation; to Mr. John G. Gardner, of Jobstown, N. J., one
of the most noted growers for market in this country, for facilities
allowed me to examine his method of raising mushrooms; and to Messrs. A.
H. Withington, Samuel Henshaw, George Grant, John Cullen, and other
successful growers for assistance kindly rendered.
WILLIAM FALCONER.
DOSORIS, L. I., 1891.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.--THOSE WHO SHOULD GROW MUSHROOMS 9
Market Gardeners-- Florists-- Private Gardeners-- Village
People and Suburban Residents-- Farmers.
CHAPTER II.--GROWING MUSHROOMS IN CELLARS 15
Underground Cellars-- In Dwelling House-- Mr. Gardner's
Method-- Mr. Denton's Method-- Mr. Van Siclen's Method-- The
Dosoris Mushroom Cellar.
CHAPTER III.--GROWING MUSHROOMS IN MUSHROOM HOUSES 34
Building the House-- Mrs. Osborne's Mushroom House-- Interior
Arrangement of Mushroom Houses-- Mr. Samuel Henshaw's Mushroom
House.
CHAPTER IV.--GROWING MUSHROOMS IN SHEDS 39
The Temperature of Interior of the Bed-- Shelf Beds-- The Use
of the Term Shed.
CHAPTER V.--GROWING MUSHROOMS IN GREENHOUSES 41
Cool Greenhouses-- On Greenhouse Benches-- In Frames in the
Greenhouses-- Orchard Houses-- Under Greenhouse Benches--
Among Other Plants on Greenhouse Benches-- Growing Mushrooms
in Rose Houses-- Drip from the Benches-- Ammonia Arising.
CHAPTER VI.--GROWING MUSHROOMS IN THE FIELDS 54
Mushrooms often appear Spontaneously-- Wild Mushrooms-- Mr.
Henshaw's Plan-- Brick Spawn in Pastures.
CHAPTER VII.--MANURE FOR MUSHROOM BEDS 57
Horse Manure-- Fresher the Better-- Manure of Mules-- Cellar
Manure-- City Stable Manure-- Baled Manure-- Cow Manure--
German Peat Moss Stable Manure for Mushroom Beds-- Sawdust
Stable Manure for Mushroom Beds-- Tree Leaves-- Spent Hops.
CHAPTER VIII.--PREPARATION OF THE MANURE 69
Preparing out of Doors-- Warm Sunshine-- Fire-fang-- Guard
Against Over Moistening-- The Proper Condition of the Manure--
Loam and Manure Mixed.
CHAPTER IX.--MAKING UP THE MUSHROOM BEDS 74
The Thickness of the Beds-- Shape of the Beds-- Bottom-heat
Thermometers-- The Proper Temperature-- Too High
Temperature-- Keep the House at 55°.
CHAPTER X.--MUSHROOM SPAWN 78
What is Mushroom Spawn?-- The Mushroom Plant-- Spawn Obtained
at any Seed Store-- Imported from Europe-- The Great
Mushroom-growing Center of the Country-- English Spawn--
Mill-track Mushroom Spawn-- Flake or French Spawn-- Virgin
Spawn-- How to Keep Spawn-- New Versus Old Spawn-- How to
Distinguish Good from Poor Spawn-- American-made Spawn-- How to
make Brick Spawn-- How to make French (flake) Spawn-- Making
French Virgin Spawn-- A Second Method-- Third Method-- Relative
Merits of Flake and Brick Spawn.
CHAPTER XI.--SPAWNING THE BEDS 96
Preparing the Spawn-- Steeped Spawn-- Flake Spawn--
Transplanting Working Spawn.
CHAPTER XII.--LOAM FOR THE BEDS 100
Cavities in the Surface of Beds-- The Best Kind of Loam--
Common Loam-- Ordinary Garden Soil-- Roadside Dirt-- Sandy
Soil-- Peat Soil or Swamp Muck-- Heavy, Clayey Loam-- Loam
Containing Old Manure.
CHAPTER XIII.--EARTHING OVER THE BEDS 103
Loam is Indispensable-- The Best Soil-- Proper Time to Case
Beds-- Inserting the Spawn-- Sifting the Soil-- Firming the
Soil-- Green Sods.
CHAPTER XIV.--TOPDRESSING WITH LOAM 107
Beds that are in Full Bearing-- Filling up the Holes-- Firming
the Dressing to the Bed-- Beds in which Black Spot has
Appeared.
CHAPTER XV.--THE PROPER TEMPERATURE 109
Covering the Beds with Hay-- A High Temperature-- In a
Temperature of 50°-- In a Temperature of 55°-- Boxing Over the
Bed.
CHAPTER XVI.--WATERING MUSHROOM BEDS 111
Artificially Heated Mushroom Houses-- Sprinkling Water over
Mulching-- Watering Pots-- Manure Water-- Preparing Manure
Water-- Common Salt-- Sprinkling the Floors-- Houses Heated by
Smoke Flues-- Manure Steam for Moistening the Atmosphere.
CHAPTER XVII.--GATHERING AND MARKETING MUSHROOMS 115
When Mushrooms are Fit to Pick-- Picking-- The Advantages of
Pulling over Cutting-- Pulled Mushrooms-- Gathering Field or
Wild Mushrooms-- Marketing Mushrooms.
CHAPTER XVIII.--RE-INVIGORATING OLD BEDS 120
Worn Out Beds-- Spurts of Increased Fertility-- A Spent
Mushroom Bed-- Living Spawn.
CHAPTER XIX.--INSECT AND OTHER ENEMIES 122
Maggots-- Black Spot-- Manure Flies-- Slugs-- "Bullet" or
"Shot" Holes-- Wood Lice-- Mites-- Mice and Rats-- Toads--
Fogging Off-- Flock-- Cleaning the Mushroom Houses.
CHAPTER XX.--GROWING MUSHROOMS IN RIDGES OUT OF DOORS
AROUND LONDON 136
Ridges in the Open Field-- Bed Making-- Manure Obtained from
City Stables-- The Site for Beds-- Planting the Spawn--
Drenching Rains-- Russia Mats-- The First Beds-- The First
Cutting-- Watering.
CHAPTER XXI.--MUSHROOM GROWING IN THE PARIS CAVES 143
Caves and Subterranean Passages-- The Manure Used--
Preparation of the Manure-- Making the Beds-- The Spawn--
Stratifying the Spawn-- Chips and Powder of Stone-- Earthing
Over the Beds-- Temperature in High-roofed Caves-- When the
Mushrooms are Gathered-- Proper Ventilation.
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.
=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.
=Village People and Suburban Residents.=--Those who keep horses should,
at least, grow mushrooms for their own family use and, if need be, for
market as well. They are so easily raised, and they take up so little
space that they commend themselves particularly to those who have only a
village or suburban lot, and, in fact, only a barn. And they are not a
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, the carriage-house, barn-cellar, woodshed, or
house-cellar; or if we can not spare much room anywhere, make a bed in a
big box and move it to where it will be least in the way. But the best
place is, perhaps, the cellar. An empty stall in a horse-stable is a
capital place, and not only affords room for a full bed on the floor,
but for rack-beds as well.
=Farmers.=--No one can grow mushrooms better or more economically than
the farmer. He has already the cellar-room, the fresh manure and the
loam at home, and all he needs is some spawn with which to plant the
beds. Nothing is lost. The manure, after having been used in mushroom
beds, is not exhausted of its fertility, 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 commonest farm
hand can do the work, which consists of turning the manure once every
day or two for about three weeks, then building it into a bed and
spawning and molding it. Nearly all the labor for the next ten or twelve
weeks consists in maintaining an even temperature and gathering and
marketing the crop.
Many women are searching for remunerative and pleasant employment upon
the farm, and what can be more interesting, pleasant and profitable work
for them than mushroom-growing? After the farmer makes up the mushroom
bed his wife or daughter can attend to its management, with scarcely any
tax upon her time, and without interfering with her other domestic
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 the winter
season is limited enough, and pin-money often proportionately short; but
with an insatiable market demand for mushrooms all winter long, at good
prices, no farmer's wife need care whether the hens lay eggs at
Christmas or not. When mushroom-growing is intelligently conducted there
is more money in it than in hens, and with less trouble.