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 deg.) 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. Ot