If a cellar is to be wholly devoted to mushroom-growing it should be made as warm as possible with double windows, and double doors, where the entrance is from the outside, but if from another building single doors will suffice. A chimney-like shaft or shafts rising from the ceiling should be used as ventilators in winter, when we can not ventilate from doors or windows; indeed, side ventilation at anytime when the beds are in bearing condition is rather precarious. There should be some indoor way of getting into the cellar, as by a stairway from the building above it. Also an easy way of getting in fresh materials for the beds, and removing the exhausted material. This is, perhaps, best obtained by having a door that opens to the outside, or a moderately large one from the building above.
The interior arrangement of the cellar is a matter of choice with the grower, but the simplest way is to have beds three or four feet wide around the inside of the walls, and beds six feet wide, with pathways two, or two and one-half feet wide between them running parallel along the middle of the cellar. Above these floor-beds, shelf-beds in tiers of one, two, or three, according to the height of the cellar, may be formed, always leaving a space of two and one-half or three feet between the bottom of one bed and the bottom of the next. This is very necessary, in order to admit of making and tending the beds and gathering the crop, and emptying the beds when they are exhausted.
Provision should also be made for the artificial heating of these cellars, and room given for the heating pipes wherever they are to run. But wherever fire heat is used in heating these cellars, if practicable, the furnace itself should be boxed off, by a thin brick wall, from the main cellar, and the pipes only introduced. This does away with the dust and noxious gas, and modifies the parching heat.
But in a snug, warm cellar, artificial heat is not absolutely necessary. We can grow capital crops of mushrooms in such a cellar without any furnace heat, simply by using a larger body of material in making the beds—enough to maintain a steady warmth for a long time. But this, observe, is a waste of material, for no more mushrooms can be grown in a bed two feet thick than in one a foot thick. In an unheated cellar the mushrooms grow large and solid, but they do not come so quickly nor in such large numbers as in a heated one. And a little artificial warmth has the effect of dispelling that cold, raw, damp air peculiar to a pent-up cellar in winter, and purifies the atmosphere by assisting ventilation.
Instead of using box beds, some growers spread the bed all over the floor of the cellar, and leave no pathway whatever, stepping-boards or raised pathways being used instead. Of course, in these instances, no shelf beds are used. Others make ridge beds all over the cellar floor, as the Parisians do in the caves. The ridges are two feet wide at bottom, two feet high, and six or eight inches wide at top, and there is a foot alley between them. Here, again, no shelf beds are used.
One of the chief troubles with flat-roofed mushroom cellars is the drip from the condensed moisture rising from the beds, and this is more apparent in unheated than in heated cellars—the wet gathers upon the ceiling and, having no slope to run off, drips down again. Oiled paper or calico strung along Λ wise above the upper beds protects them perfectly; whatever falls upon the passage-ways upon the floor does no harm.
In any other outhouse cellar, as well as in one completely given over to this use, we can make up beds and grow good mushrooms. Mr. James Vick told me that at his seed farm near Rochester he raises many mushrooms in winter in his potato cellars; and so can any one in similar places. Mr. John Cullen, of South Bethlehem, Pa., a very successful cultivator, tells me that his present mushroom cellar used to be a large underground cistern, but with a little fixing, and opening a passage-way to it from a neighboring cellar, he has converted it into an excellent cellar for mushrooms, and surely the immense crops that I have seen in that cave of total darkness justify his good opinion of it.
In Dwelling House.—The cellar of a dwelling house is a capital place for mushroom beds, and can be used in whole or part for this purpose. In the case of private families who wish to grow a few mushrooms only for their own use it is not necessary to devote a whole cellar to it; but partition off a part of it with boards and make the beds in this. Or make a bed alongside of the wall anywhere and box it in to protect it from cold and draughts, and mice and rats. You can have shelves above it for domestic purposes, just as you would in any other part of the cellar. Bear in mind that mushrooms thrive best in an atmospheric temperature of from 50° to 60°, and if you can give them this in your house-cellar you ought to get plenty of good mushrooms. But if such a high temperature can not be maintained without impairing the usefulness of the cellar for other purposes, box up the beds tightly, and from the heat of the bed itself, when thus confined, there usually will be warmth enough for the mushrooms, but if not spread a piece of old carpet or matting over the boxing.
The beds may be made upon the floor, and flat, or ridged, or banked against the wall, ten or twelve inches deep in a warm cellar, and fifteen to twenty inches or more deep in a cool cellar, and about three feet wide and any length to suit.
The boxing may consist of any kind of boards for sides and ends, and be built about six or ten inches higher than the top of the beds, so as to give the mushrooms plenty headroom; the top of the boxing may be a lid hung on hinges or straps, or otherwise arranged, to admit of being easily raised or removed at will, and made of light lumber, say one-half inch thick boards. In this way, by opening the lid, the mushrooms are under observation and can be gathered without any trouble. When the lid is shut they are secure from cold and vermin. Thus protected the cellars can be ventilated without interfering with the welfare of the mushrooms. A light wooden frame covered with calico or oiled paper would also make a good top for the boxing, only it would not be proof against much cold, or rats or mice. If desirable, in warm cellars, shelf beds could be built above the floor beds, but in cool, airy cellars this would not be advisable.
Manure beds in the dwelling-house cellar may seem highly improper to many people, but in truth, when rightly handled, these beds emit no bad odor. The manure should be prepared away from the house, and when ready for making into beds it can be spread out thin, so as to become perfectly cool and free from steam. When it has lain for two days in this condition it may be brought into the cellar and made into beds. Having been well sweetened by previous preparation, it is now cool and free from steam, and almost odorless; after a few days it will warm up a little, and may then be spawned and earthed over at once. Do not bury the spawn in the manure, merely set it in the surface of the manure; this saves the spawn from being destroyed by too great a heat, should the bed become unduly warm. This, if the manure has been well prepared, is not likely to occur. The coating of loam prevents the escape of any further steam or odor from the manure.
On the 14th of January last, Mr. W. Robinson, editor of the London Garden, in writing to me, mentioned the following very interesting case of growing mushrooms in the cellar of a dwelling house: "I went out the other day to see Mr. Horace Cox, the manager of the Field newspaper, who lives at Harrow, near the famous school. His house is heated by a hot-water system called Keith's, and the boiler is in a chamber in the house in the basement. The system interested me and I went down to see the boiler, which is a very simple one worked with coke refuse. However, I was pleased to see all the floor of the room not occupied by the boiler covered with little flat mushroom beds and bearing a very good crop. Truth to tell, I used to fear growing mushrooms in dwelling houses might be objectionable in various ways; but this instance is very interesting, as there is not even the slightest unpleasant smell in the chamber itself. The beds are small, scarcely a foot high, and perfectly odorless;