Hi,
I was not sure where to put this post, and apologize if its in the wrong section.
I have some unknown type of fungus popping up all over my garden. Because of its appearance and the fact it can appear overnight, I thought it was the vomit of some type of animal getting into my fenced flower garden. But I now realize it only appears where I water the wood chips (around the plants) and its source is from under and not on top of the wood chips.
The big mess you see in the first picture came up just last night. You can see it also starting to come up under the Rudbeckia Goldsturm leaves in the front of the picture.
In the second picture you can clearly see it came up from under the plant and not deposited on top of the leaves by some animal's vomit. I watered this plant about 3 days ago because I don't know what this plant is and I want to identify it before I pull it up as a weed. I just noticed the fungus under it today.
The fungus doesn't seem to be hurting the plants, other than to smother them. I shoot it with the water hose to break it up. In the first few days it seems to break up like a mushroom would in the lawn when hit by the water hose. After that it becomes a hard crust and it's hard to break up - a shovel is needed. Temperatures were in the 50's*F last night and over 102*F today. First picture the plant is in full sun the entire day. Second picture the weed is in the shade a little more than half the day.
Any ideas, suggestions, or comments, anyone? Or guess what it is?
The wood chips could be from anywhere and contaminated with anything - possibly diseased trees. It's just very difficult to get any type of wood chips in my city. But I would never use these wood chips in my vegetable garden.
Pictures are in the reply below this post.
First picture - Rudbeckia with 1-day old fungus. And you can see my ground is mostly just all gravel. That's why I use all the truck loads of wood chips I can get.
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Last edited by odSteve on Wed Jul 27, 2022 12:22 am, edited 1 time in total.
Thank you for the info. How do I stop or eliminate the slime mold? If I introduce composting red wiggler worms to the area would they eat any of the decomposed wood in contact with the soil thereby slowing or stopping the slime mold? By the way, its not really slimy, it feels very dry.
I understand why it came up in the second picture. There in that area the wood chips are a couple inches thick because I did not want any weeds coming up there. (But that one did come up somehow.) But as you can see in the first picture the wood chips are very thin. And temperatures are in the 100*F plus with hot, dry breezes so I need to water every few days.
I understand why it came up in the second picture. There in that area the wood chips are a couple inches thick because I did not want any weeds coming up there. (But that one did come up somehow.) But as you can see in the first picture the wood chips are very thin. And temperatures are in the 100*F plus with hot, dry breezes so I need to water every few days.
Now that I know what it is, I just watched half a dozen videos on the stuff. Apparently it does no harm to plants. And it can move, climbing up plants, rocks, etc for better advantage to disperse its spores. Normally they are individual single cell organisms living off of decaying plant material, but they fuse together in times of stress, especially temperature fluctuations becoming one big mass and acting like one big single cell organism. Apparently they are actually beneficial in breaking down organic mulch. They just look repulsive when they fuse together. And they can be trained and that training can be passed from one glob to another. For example, they don't like the caffeine in coffee. Once one glob has tasted it, then encounter another glob, the second glob (sorry, I don't recall the proper name) will not even taste the coffee. Really weird stuff I never saw before.
Still curious if you recommend I buy some red wiggler composting worms to introduce into the garden.
Still curious if you recommend I buy some red wiggler composting worms to introduce into the garden.