Found mushroom growing w/ herbs. good or bad?

[AZCricket]

So, for the past couple weeks, I've been finding withering and dieing sprigs in and amongst my Lime Thyme. For a while I was concerned I was either watering too much, or not enough (it lives in the same pot as my rosemary and lavender and I water them maybe every two days to give the soil enough time to dry out). I started focusing more water on just it and the rest of the plant seems to have perked up a bit, so I thought that might have been the issue...

Until I went poking around in the foliage and found this little thing growing right under it and rather close to the feeder roots:

[img]https://i54.photobucket.com/albums/g81/Miyuko142/mushroom2.jpg[/img]

I took it out right away, just in case it actually was doing something to the plant or the soil, even though it was growing on the opposite side of the plant from the one all the dieing sprigs seemed more prominent on.

Anyone have any thoughts? Mushrooms good or bad? Or completely inconsequential?

[rainbowgardener]

The mushroom won't hurt your plants, but it is probably an indication that you are still watering too much, keeping the soil too damp too much of the time. Mushrooms thrive on damp, but thyme, rosemary and lavender DON'T. Every other day sounds like too much, unless they are planted in pure sand, and maybe even then. If they are planted in regular potting soil with peat moss, I would water them thoroughly no more than once a week, making sure the soil dries out an inch or two down. My established houseplants (not seedlings!) are watered thoroughly twice a month or when they start to show some wilt/ distress from lack of water. Tough love! but they thrive that way.

The rosemary and lavender would benefit from being planted in a sandier mix, more like what they sell for cactus, or at least with some cactus soil mixed in half and half with the regular potting soil.

[AZCricket]

Hm, alright then. Too much water, got it.

They are not in a pure potting soil mix, since I did read that they liked the sandier conditions. It's maybe a half 'n' half of potting soil and sand with some gravel mixed in as well. As for the watering, I had been going off of the rosemary as an indicator (watching for yellowing leaves) but now I know to look for withering thyme as well.

[rainbowgardener]

Yellowing leaves is more often from too much water than too little.

[applestar]

IMHO, since rosemary grows deep roots and is more of a shrub, it's not a good indicator for thyme. But even if you withhold water to be appropriate for thyme, rosemary roots should still be able to find sufficient moisture. And lavender needs the least amount of water of the three so you should be fine there.

More than likely, the mushroom "roots" is also creating a more water retentive condition so you probably need to water less for that reason as well.

In most cases, mushroom in soil means the soil is actually getting enriched so I tend to be happy about it. Once you adjust the watering frequency to be more to the herbs' preference, the fungi would get stressed and decline, and become nutrients.

...hmmm the more I think about it, the less I think thyme should be in a same pot as Rosemary and Lavender. In fact I wouldn't keep them together at all. lavender needs more sun than rosemary. Rosemary is a thirsty plant actually and may in fact suck all the water in the root zone leaving little for the poor thyme. Depending on the variety, they have different cold temperature tolerances.... It could be a different scenario if they are in the ground, however, and they might happily live grouped together as long as they are winter hardy in your area.

[AZCricket]

Yellowing leaves is more often from too much water than too little.

That's what I was using it to indicate; too much water, not too little.

Applestar:

Living in Southern Arizona, our winters are usually rather mild, anyway, so I'm not too worried about the winter hardiness of the herbs.

I can see how the rosemary sucking up the moisture would be a problem, though. They're still young plants, but I'll make sure to keep an eye on them now that I know not to water them quite so much.

I have limited space, so I was hoping being able to group them together would help with that and had researched a bit to make sure they all liked similar conditions beforehand. The lavender actually seems to be the one doing the best out of the three. It faces the sun more than the other two and (so far) hasn't shown any withering or yellowing of the leaves.

Unfortunately we're stuck in this apartment for at least a year before we can get into a house (and with how things usually go with us, it might end up being longer ), so pots are what it will have to be for the time being. We do plan to do ground and raised beds once we do finally get into a house, though, so hopefully I'll be able to replant them into a more appropriate area then.

[Arizonagardener]

Those are the exact mushrooms in my garden right now! I've heard more good things about them than bad, so I may just keep them and see what happens. What's weird though is that they are only in one part of my garden, and avoid the other like the plague!

[rainbowgardener]

So maybe there's a dip there that holds water? Or I have a spot in my lawn where a circle of mushrooms pops up every spring. I'm pretty sure there was a tree there at one point, though not any time in the 11 yrs we have been here. There must still be tree roots decomposing under the soil. The mushrooms love the wood. That's just an example that there can be all kinds of local things going on that differentiate one patch of soil from another.