Mushrooms: how to grow them - William Falconer (if you give a mouse a cookie read aloud .txt) 📗
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The entrance pits are nine and one-half feet deep from ground level, three feet eight inches wide, nine feet long, and are covered over with folding doors on strong hinges, and descended into by means of wooden movable stairs. These dimensions are needed at the end where the heating apparatus is placed, but at the other end, although it is convenient in handling the manure, a space two or three feet less would have answered just as well. A close door at either end of the mushroom cellar proper separates it from the end pits. The cellar is divided in the middle by a partition. This gives, when it is in full working order, eight beds, each thirty-one and one-half feet long, or a continuous run of 252 feet or 756 square feet of surface, and as the beds are renewed twice a year this gives 504 running feet of bed, or 1512 square feet of surface. A common average crop is three-fifths of a pound of mushrooms to the square foot of bed, and a good fair average is four-fifths of a pound. This would give over a thousand pounds of mushrooms a season from this cellar when it is in full running capacity. But as the aim is to have a steady supply of mushrooms from October until May, and not a flush at any one time and a scarcity at another, only two beds are made at a time, allowing a month to intervene between every two.
For the two beds, No. 1, preparing the manure begins in July, the beds are made up in August, and gathering of the crop commences in October; work on the two beds, No. 2, begins in August, the beds are made up in September, and the mushrooms gathered in November; preparing for the two beds, No. 3, begins in September, the beds are made up in October, gathering commences in December; for the two beds, No. 4, work begins in October, the beds are made up in November, and the crop is gathered in January; for the two beds, No. 5 (No. 1 renewed), work begins in November, the beds are made up in December, and the crop is gathered in February; for the two beds, No. 6 (No. 2 renewed), work begins in December, the beds are made up in January, and the crop is gathered in March; for the two beds, No. 7 (No. 3 renewed), work begins in January, the beds are made up in February, and the crop is gathered in April; for the two beds, No. 8 (No. 4 renewed), work begins in February, the beds are made up in March, and the mushrooms gathered in May. After this time of year the summer heat renders mushroom-growing uncertain, and the maggots destroy the mushrooms. This system allows each bed a bearing period of two months. After yielding a crop for some seven to nine weeks the beds are pretty well exhausted and hardly worth retaining longer. They might drag along in a desultory way for weeks, but as soon as they stop yielding a paying crop we clear them out and start afresh.
And when the mushroom season is closed we lift out and remove the manure, clean the boards used in shelving, and give the cellar a thorough cleaning,—whitewash its walls and paint its woodwork with kerosene to destroy noxious insects and fungi.
The heating apparatus consists of one of Hitchings' base-burner boilers with a four-inch hot-water pipe that passes around inside the cellar, and it deserves special mention because of its economy, efficiency, and the satisfaction it gives generally. This boiler needs no deep or spacious stoke-hole. Here it is set under the stairway in a pit four and one-half feet long, by three feet wide, by eighteen inches deep; it is not in the way, and there is plenty of room to attend to it. The heater, like a common parlor stove, has a magazine for the supply of coal. It has a double casing with the water space between and down to the bottom of it, so that when set in a shallow pit there is no difficulty whatever about the circulation of the water in the pipes. The hot water passes from the boiler to an open iron tank placed two feet above it, as shown in the engraving, and thence down through a perpendicular pipe till it reaches and enters the horizontal pipes that pass around the cellar and, returning, enters the boiler again near its base. The boiler and pipes are filled from this tank, which should always be kept at least half full of water, and looked into every day when in use, so that when the water gets lower than half full it may be filled up again. About 134 running feet of four-inch pipe are included inside the cellar (sixty-four feet on each side and six feet across at further end); this gives 134 square feet of heating surface, or a proportion of about a square foot of heating surface for every fifteen cubic feet of air space in the cellar. This proportion is more than ample in the coldest weather, but beneficial in so far that there is no need to fire hard to maintain the proper temperature. A three-inch pipe would have given heat enough, but the heat would not have been so steady. Both nut and stove coal is used in this heater, and in the severest winter weather it burns not more than a common hodful in twenty-four hours. It is so easily regulated that the temperature of the cellar day or night, or in mild or severe weather, never varies more than three degrees, namely from 57° to 60°.
In a close underground cellar where the temperature in midwinter without any artificial heat does not fall below 40° or 45° it is an easy matter, with such a heater as this is, to maintain any desired temperature. If the grates are renewed now and then, the heater should last in good condition for twenty years. With the ordinary stove there is danger of fire, of escaping gas and of sudden changes of temperature, and the evil influence of a dry, parching heat—just what mushrooms most dislike—is ever present. The first cost of a hot water apparatus may be more than that of an old stove and sheet iron pipes, but where mushrooms are grown extensively, as a matter of economy, efficiency, and convenience, the advantages are altogether on the side of the hot water apparatus. Furthermore, hot water pipes can be run where it would be unsafe to put smoke pipes.
CHAPTER III.GROWING MUSHROOMS IN MUSHROOM HOUSES.
A mushroom house is a building erected purposely for mushroom culture. It may be wholly or partly above ground, and built of wood, brick, or stone, and extend to any desired dimensions. But a few general principles should be borne in mind. Mushrooms in houses are a winter and not a summer crop, and they are impatient of sudden changes of temperature and of a hot or arid atmosphere. Therefore, build the houses where they will be warm and well-sheltered in winter, so as to get the advantage of the natural warmth, and spare the artificial heat. They should be entered from an adjoining building, or through a porch on the south side, so as to guard against cold draughts or blasts in winter when the door would be opened in going into or coming out of the house. At the same time, do not lose sight of convenience in handling the manure, either in bringing it into the house or taking it out, and with this in view it may be necessary to have a door opening to the outside. All outside doors should be double and securely packed around in winter. Side window ventilators are not necessary, at the same time they are useful in the early part of the season and in summer time; they should be double and tightly packed in winter. The walls, if made of brick, should be hollow, if of wood, double; indeed, walls built as if for an ice house are the very best for a mushroom house, and should be banked with earth, tree leaves, or strawy manure in winter, to help keep the interior of the house a little warmer.
The floor should be perfectly dry; that is, so well drained that water will not stand upon it, but it is immaterial whether the floor is an ordinary earthen one or of wood or cement.
The roof should be double and always sloping,—never flat. The hoar frost that appears in severe weather inside a single roof is likely to melt as the heat of the day increases, and this cold drip falling upon the beds below is very prejudicial to the mushroom crop. A double roof saves the beds from this drip, and it also renders the house warmer, and less fire is needed to maintain the requisite temperature. One might think that a single roof like that of a dwelling house, and then a flat ceiling under it, would be equivalent to a double sloping roof, but it is not. The moisture arising from the interior of the house condenses upon the flat ceiling, and the water, having no way of running off, drips down upon the beds. With a sloping ceiling or inside roof the water runs down the ceiling to the walls. A very pointed example of this may be seen
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