Inky Cap Eruption!

My huglekultur bed had a few inky cap mushrooms come up last year. But this year, wow! So many that the clumps are threatening to uproot vegetables and already claimed a young kale. I went through and essentially “chopped and dropped” them by breaking them off at the base and left them in the soil.

I know they’re technically edible, but I don’t like the part where they are poisonous if you consume alcohol within 3 days. I figure the fungus is still doing its job breaking down the wood, I’m just stopping the fruiting bodies from disrupting my annual veg. Would you do anything different?

I've only every had inky cap come up in my lawn, and rarely more than 3 in a group, so all I can say is, "WOW" you've got happy, happy fungi!

I've heard that there's also a chemical they tend to clean from the environment that you don't want in your body, so I will also second the, "don't eat too many", although I've never had a bad reaction. I heard that a decade ago, and can't remember what it was, but my sad memory is suggesting it was something I considered a "heavy metal". So you might want to do some research specifically about Inky Caps to see if they might be simply sequestering something you don't want in your soil, or if there's any chance something in your hugel was exposed to toxins (possibly naturally in the geology of your land, possibly introduced decades ago, possibly somehow brought in recently - this is *not* about panicking or blaming - it's about identifying and fixing).

Then again - you could make ink: https://www.instructables.com/Make-Ink-From-Decaying-Mushrooms
https://foragerchef.com/shaggy-mane-ink/#

The second link suggests there are two varieties of Shaggy Mane and one's less toxic combined with alcohol than the other.

I heard that sunflowers do something similar to the above but I don't know much about it. I find the concept very interesting. I also remember reading about plastic eating mushrooms?

Good thing I checked again last night. The number of clumps had increased 5x. Like, all over the bed. It is now mulched in mushrooms!