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    Mushroom-Growing and Mushroom Insects and Their Control
    Mushroom-Growing and Mushroom Insects and Their Control
    Mushroom-Growing and Mushroom Insects and Their Control
    Ebook118 pages1 hour

    Mushroom-Growing and Mushroom Insects and Their Control

    By A. M. Bottomley

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    About this ebook

    This vintage book contains a comprehensive guide to cultivating mushrooms, with historical information, step-by-step instructions, handy tips, and much more. Profusely illustrated and full of useful information, “Mushroom-Growing and Mushroom Insects And Their Control” is highly recommended for those with a practical interest in growing mushrooms and would make for a worthy addition to collections of allied literature. Contents include: “Description of Mushrooms”, “History of the Mushroom-Growing Industry”, “Requirements for Mushroom Cultivation”, “Spawn”, “Manure”, “Suitable Growing Places”, “Special Houses”, “Mushroom Beds”, “Preparation of Beds”, “Care of Beds”, “Period of Production”, “Making of Crops”, “Aftercare of Beds”, etc. Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially commissioned new introduction on mushrooms.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRead Books Ltd.
    Release dateNov 16, 2011
    ISBN9781447492092
    Mushroom-Growing and Mushroom Insects and Their Control

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      Book preview

      Mushroom-Growing and Mushroom Insects and Their Control - A. M. Bottomley

      I.—Spawn, Manure and Houses.

      THE term mushroom is the popular name applied to those members of the gill-bearing fungi which are considered to be edible, and is often used to distinguish them from the poisonous members of the family commonly known as toad-stools.

      Description of Mushroom.

      The varieties of mushrooms most familiar to the majority of people in this country are the common meadow-mushroom, known as Psalliota (Agaricus) campestris, and the horse-mushroom, Psalliota arvensis. These consist of an umbrella-shaped structure with a whitish stem supporting a cream to brownish cap, on the underside of which are gills or plates radiating from the stalk to the edge of the cap. When the mushroom is young, or in the button stage, these gills are hidden by a white skin known as the veil. This breaks away as the mushroom expands, leaving a collar of tissue round the stalk, and exposing the gills, which are at first flesh-pink in colour, but finally change to a dark chocolate-brown.

      On the gills are borne millions of minute spores which are equivalent to seeds in higher plants. These may be seen to advantage by taking a fully grown cap in which the gills have turned brown, and, after cutting off the stalk, laying the cap flat, gills downward, on a piece of white paper for 6 to 12 hours, when the spores will be found to have dropped on the paper in a dark mass, along lines corresponding with the arrangement of the gills. In nature these spores are dispersed by wind and rain and those that come to rest in a suitable place, such as a manure dump, germinate and give rise to a mass of interwoven threads known as the mycelium or spawn. Some of these threads ultimately fuse together, forming tiny white balls which grow into mushrooms.

      The only mushrooms that are cultivated to any extent in western countries, are said to have been derived from the common forms Psalliota (Agaricus) campestris and Psalliota arvensis. Distinct types and varieties which differ from one another in size, colour, habit, etc., are available for cultivation, but these are all considered to be specialized forms of the wild species. The brown varieties are said to be more resistant to adverse conditions than the cream or the white, but the pure white mushrooms are the most popular and command the highest prices.

      History of the Mushroom-growing Industry.

      Mushrooms have been esteemed as an article of diet from very early times, and attempts at growing them date back to at least the tenth century. Early efforts to cultivate mushrooms were, however, of a very primitive nature and consisted for the most part in simply stimulating, by artificial means, natural occurrences of these fungi to further growth. It was probably not until the beginning of the seventeenth century that mushrooms were really propagated, i.e. grown from part of the plant itself. The French were the pioneers in this art and for a long time their methods were the only ones used. The English followed later with many improvements, but the processes connected with production were still haphazard and rather unreliable, and it was only about forty years ago that, as a result of researches carried out first by French and later by United States experts, the cultivation of mushrooms was placed on a scientific basis. The results of these and later researches, which consisted mainly in the production of a pure culture of spawn from which new mushrooms could be grown at will, were only made available for practical use round about 1921. Since then great strides have been, and are still being, made in every phase of the industry, and mushroom-growing is now a well-established business in many countries.

      Generally speaking, people in South Africa cannot be said to be mushroom-minded, and consequently lag far behind most other nations in mushroom matters. Until recently, relatively few people bothered even to eat these plants, much less tried to grow them artificially. Within the last few years, however, a great impetus has been given to mushroom-growing in South Africa, mainly owing to the advertising activities of business firms interested in promoting the sale of certain brands of pure culture spawn. As a result of these very attractive-sounding advertisements in the press, enquiries are continually being received by the Department of Agriculture for information concerning mushroom culture, and it is with a view to giving those interested—particularly the small amateur growers—a simple but full account of this industry with its attractions, as well as its drawbacks, that the present article has been compiled. Information, especially that applicable to South African conditions, has been drawn from the latest English and American publications on the subject and from the experience of local growers.

      Requirements for Mushroom Cultivation.

      Mushroom-growing

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