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 in Mrs. C. J. Osborne’s excellent
mushroom house at Mamaroneck, N. Y. It had been built
in the most substantial manner, with a sloping roof
and a flat ceiling under the roof, but so much annoyance
was caused by the drip falling from it upon the beds
below that her gardener had the flat ceiling removed
and a sloping one built instead, and now it works
splendidly, and a few months ago I saw as fine a crop
of mushrooms in that house as one could wish to look
at.
The interior arrangement of the mushroom
house may resemble that of the mushroom cellar.
Beds may be made alongside of the walls and, if there
is room, also along the middle of the house, and shelves
erected in the same way as in the cellar. But
in the case of cold, thin outside walls, the shelf-beds
should not be built close against them, but instead
boxed off about two inches from the walls, so as to
remove the beds from the chilling touch of the wall
in winter. Economy may suggest the advisability
of high mushroom houses, so that one may be able to
build one shelf above another, until the shelves are
two, three, or four deep. But this is a mistake.
The artificial heat required to maintain a temperature
of 55 deg. in midwinter in a house built high
above ground would be too parching and unsteady for
the good of the mushrooms; besides, a second shelf
is inconvenient enough, and when it comes to a third
or a fourth the inconvenience would be too great,
and overreach any advantage hoped for in economy of
space. An unheated mushroom house must be regarded
as a shed, and treated similarly, as described in the
following chapter.
In large, well appointed, private
gardens, a mushroom house is considered an almost
indispensable adjunct to the glasshouse establishment,
and is generally built against the north-facing wall
of a greenhouse. In this way it gets the benefit
of the warm wall, and may be easily heated by introducing
one or two hot-water pipes from the greenhouse system;
besides, in winter the house may be entered from the
glass house or adjacent shed, and in this way be exempted
from the inclement breath of the frosty air that would
be admitted in opening the outside door.
Mr. Samuel Henshaw’s Mushroom
House.- Mr. Henshaw has raised mushrooms
several years at his place on Staten Island. His
mushroom house is nine feet wide and sixty feet long.
One side is a brick wall and the other is double boarded.
The roof is of tin, in which there are three sashes
each two by five feet, supplying ample light.
At each end is a door giving convenient access to
the interior, for carrying in and removing material
without disturbing the bearing beds. In winter
the roof is covered with a coating of salt hay, to
preserve an equable temperature and prevent the moisture
from condensing on the ceiling and falling in drops
on the beds. The floor is of earth, which, when
well drained, he thinks preferable to either brick
or lumber. The floor is entirely covered with
beds, no shelves or walks being used. This makes
it necessary to step on the beds, but as no covering
is employed it is always easy to avoid stepping on
the clusters of young mushrooms, and so long as they
are left uninjured the bed is seldom, if ever, impaired
by the compacting effect of the treading. In
order to maintain a necessary winter temperature of
60 deg. a four-inch hot-water pipe extends the
whole length of the house about two feet from the
floor. On the other side of the brick wall is
a greenhouse which, by keeping the wall warm, helps
to keep the mushroom house warm. Mr. Henshaw
divides this house into three equal beds. The
part at the further end of the house is made up in
the fall and comes into bearing in December; the middle
part a month later to come in a month later, and the
near end still a month later, to follow as another
succession. Then, if need be, and he wishes to
renew the bed at the further end of the house, he
clears it out and supplies fresh material for the
new bed.