THIS is a phase of culture which may be pursued to great advantage in every private garden, almost without cost and attention. The low ridge-like hotbeds, for example, made for both long and short prickly cucumbers, gourds, marrows, &c., are admirably suited for growing a crop of mushrooms under the leaves of the subjects for which they were made. If the spawn be inserted soon after the beds are made, or at any convenient time in early summer, the beds will come into bearing in due course. Perhaps they may do so when mushrooms are found abundantly in the fields; but there are thousands of persons possessing gardens who have no fields in which to cull mushrooms, and who would like to gather them fresh in summer or autumn, if they could not afford to grow them in any covered structure in winter. And this is but one way in which they may be grown with summer garden crops, as will appear from the following communication, by Mr. Ayres, to the _Field_:-- “The finest crop and the best mushrooms I ever saw were grown in the open ground, and without any protection at all. I will tell you how it happened. Some years back I had the charge of the garden of a noted hunting establishment in Northamptonshire, one of the aids to success being that the manure of an average of nearly fifty highly-fed horses went to the garden, the owner remarking that, whatever other things I might run short of, there would be plenty of ‘muck.’ Well, the best of the hunters during the summer were soiled in loose boxes, principally under cover, and in these boxes the manure was allowed to accumulate until it began to grow too hot for the feet of the horses; then it was indispensable that it should be removed. About midsummer it so happened that nearly three acres of ground had been cleared of the spring crop, spinach, early peas, beans, &c., and I had determined to devote the whole plot to winter brassicas, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, &c. The ground was brashy and very poor, and consequently I determined to clear the boxes and put the whole of the manure upon it. It was carted away so rich in ammonia that the men who loaded it shed tears, not from sentiment, but from compulsion; and when the manure was spread upon the surface it was nothing less than a foot thick--so thick, that the proprietor said it was impossible for it to be dug into the ground. However, clearing a trench at one end of the piece, thirty inches wide and nearly a foot deep, the subsoil was broken up with strong steel forks, and upon that the dung covering the next strip was placed, and covered with the surface soil of the next trench; and so the work proceeded until the manure was put out of sight. I may remark that the dung, especially that around the walls, contained evidence of being strongly impregnated with mushroom spawn, though this was not regarded as being likely to produce a crop of the esculent. A soaking rain falling, the ground was immediately planted with brassicas, which grew