This is my second year growing King Stropharia (or Winecap)
mushrooms in the Pacific Northwest (puget sound) area. Last year, my first crop started coming up in mid-May, but this year I'm delighted to find that my patch (a large, outdoor bed of woodchips) is fruiting a little early. Buuuuuut unfortunately, none of the mushrooms that have come up have made it to my table. They've all been chewed to pieces by pests of some kind. I'm thinking slugs? I haven't seen any slugs in action, but the damage to the mushrooms seems consistent with what slugs would do. Here's a picture I took a couple days ago and you can see all these chewed up patches on the baby mushrooms...
So, if they are slugs, what can I do? I had one really crazy idea of maybe putting some road salt down? I know that would be a death knell to plants in an normal garden, but I wonder what effect it would have on a fungus like winecap mushrooms...? Obviously I would like to hear from somebody knowledgeable before I risk destroying my whole mushroom patch this way.
Anybody have any better ideas for pest/slug control?