Mushrooms: how to grow them, page 99 by William Falconer
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A mushroom bed may keep on bearing in a desultory way for many months, and now and again show spurts of increased fertility; but this is no second crop; it is merely a prolonged dribbling of the first crop. A bed, by reason of cold or dryness, may, as it were, stand still or partially stop bearing, and soon after it is remoistened, warmed, and otherwise submitted to congenial conditions, will display renewed energy; but this is no second crop; it is merely a spurt of the first crop caused by extra favorable cultural conditions. But to show how vaguely this question which is so much written about is regarded, let me quote from a letter to me by Mr. J. Barter, who grows 21,000 lbs of mushrooms a year for the London market: "You ask me, 'Do you ever get a second crop?' My beds last in bearing, on an average, each three months, and that I reckon to be three crops. But whether it be three or six months, the weight of mushrooms is about the same. As there is in, say a ton of manure, only so much mushroom-producing power, if you force it to produce that weight in two months you are a gainer, as you thereby save in labor; but when that producing-power is exhausted it will produce no more mushrooms."
A spent mushroom bed is one that has been kept in bearing condition under the most favorable circumstances at our command, and it has borne a good crop, lasted some two months in bearing, and now it has stopped bearing (except in a meagerly, desultory way) because the spawn or mycelium has exhausted itself and is dead. Then, without living spawn in the bed how are we to get mushrooms? Some bits of mycelium are still alive and yield the desultory few, but every mushroom that they yield is preying on their vitality, and after a time they too shall die and the bed be completely barren, for the mycelium is altogether dead, and without mycelium mushrooms are an impossibility. We can keep mushroom mycelium in active growth the year round, and year after year, providing we never let it bear mushrooms. This is done by taki