When I looked at my raised bed garden this morning, I noticed that overnight mushrooms appeared all over the bed. I am trying to figure out what to do about it and if I need to do anything to my soil. Is the soil as it is now good enough for my vegetables or do the mushrooms indicate a major problem? They look a little scary with the white stems and black tops.
A little history about my raised bed: it's my first attempt at gardening and I prepared it in March this year. I removed the grass from the area first, then added a combination of top soil, peat moss, and compost that I bought together with an open bag of old top soil I had neglected for a year or so in a plastic container, which was wet. I probably shouldn't have used it, because it had a very unpleasant smell to it, but I added it anyway to add more volume to the soil. Maybe wasn't such a good idea.
Any suggestions on how to create the right soil conditions for my vegetables would be greatly appreciated. Below is a picture of the invading mushrooms:
[img]https://img33.imageshack.us/img33/9075/gardenmushroom.jpg[/img]
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melissapbr
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- Location: Baton Rouge, LA
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!potatoes!
- Greener Thumb
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in general mushrooms don't really suggest anything anti-vegetable about your soil. some are even marketed to be planted to help vegetable gardens. they're probably just digesting some of the organic matter in the soil, and at the same time, metabolizing some of it into more plant-available form. personally, I'd let them fruit and die off and never do anything to them.
without an ID, I definitely wouldn't eat them, though.
without an ID, I definitely wouldn't eat them, though.
Yes, they *do* look pretty awful, esp. when they get to be about 4 or 5 inches tall, right before they collapse and shrivel back to nothing.
I had TONS of them last year--the first year for my cinder-block Square Foot Garden. We used peat, vermiculite, and our own compost, plus a couple of square feet of grape compost acquired commercially. Later, we added finished compost from two local cities whose programs seem to be fairly trustworthy.
I had that exact kind of mushroom/vertical fungus growing in each pot I used my mix in as well as the 4x6x0.5 cinder-block SFG. They *eventually* went away, but I pulled them when they seemed to be too close to the roots of my veggie plants and put them into the yard waste rather than my cool-to-cold compost. (I didn't think the compost would kill this particular fungus and didn't want to deal with it again, so away it went.)
There didn't seem to be any damage to my veggies, though, and that seems to be the bottom line: they do not damage your veggie plants.
Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9
I had TONS of them last year--the first year for my cinder-block Square Foot Garden. We used peat, vermiculite, and our own compost, plus a couple of square feet of grape compost acquired commercially. Later, we added finished compost from two local cities whose programs seem to be fairly trustworthy.
I had that exact kind of mushroom/vertical fungus growing in each pot I used my mix in as well as the 4x6x0.5 cinder-block SFG. They *eventually* went away, but I pulled them when they seemed to be too close to the roots of my veggie plants and put them into the yard waste rather than my cool-to-cold compost. (I didn't think the compost would kill this particular fungus and didn't want to deal with it again, so away it went.)
There didn't seem to be any damage to my veggies, though, and that seems to be the bottom line: they do not damage your veggie plants.
Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9
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melissapbr
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- Location: Baton Rouge, LA
Thanks for the reassuring comments. As long as they don't indicate a major problem, I am fine with it, even if they look unappetizing. It is great to get feedback on this forum within the hour, it seems to be a very active forum. I'll probably have more questions as I continue to learn about gardening, but unfortunately won't have much advice that I can contribute, because I am such a gardening newbie. I love to look at my tomatoes and before this year, I would not have been able to distinguish a zucchini plant from a cucumber, so I already learned something. I have a pretty big backyard that would lend itself nicely to some more gardening, but I am starting small with one 3'x6' bed and some containers, and then once I feel a little more confident, I will add on later. The nice thing (so I was told) here in Louisiana is that you can plant certain vegetables in fall, so there will always be something fun to do! Thanks again for your help with my mushroom question.