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Abstract: The material generally employed in the United States for casing mushroom compost is a rich, garden-type, clay soil. In Europe, various soils and mixtures of peat and limestone are employed. Since a claybased garden soil is not available in our geographical locality, experiments were run with other materials. A mixture of equal parts by volume of peat and white building sand was found to have the desired porosity, provided by the sand, and the desired moisture-holding capacity, contributed by the peat. It had the further advantage of being uniform in composition and structure from run to run. In tests comparing this mixture with regular casing soil imported from Pennsylvania, morphological differences in the mushrooms from the two types of casing material were observed. In the case of the mushrooms from the Pennsylvania soil, the stipes (stems) were uniformly thick from top to bottom, and the base of the stripe was stubby and formed deep in the casing layer. The shape of these mushrooms were as normally obtained from commercial production of Agaricus bisporus.
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