Unwanted mushrooms growing in my veggie garden.

In the past I've had maybe a few 'shrooms' in this garden. My husband made a couple of dumps of horse manure during the winter months, un-aged manure to be exact, but did not work it into the soil. This is the first time there's been any kind of manure in this soil.

So now I have THESE. They appear to be trying to take over the fragile, young vegetation and they are spreading like wildfire - growing by the hour literally. They've originated where he dumped the dung, and are spreading everywhere I move the plants that were started in this area of the garden. Our horses must be eating well!

A couple of peeps have told me they think these are psychedelics - I really don't care about that. My garden is just the way I want it this year, though I'm afraid the invaders will damage the tender foliage.

Please help. Thank you.

Don't worry about them....they are just decomposing the manure and other organic matter in the soil. You can knock down any that are crowding against seedlings but they won't interfere with anything in the soil....rather the opposite. I don't know of any plant-parasitic fungus that produces a mushroom, except for those growing on trees....

Excellent! Your garden is doing very well to have such a flush of mushrooms. It indicates that this particular species is nearing the end of its meal on the horse manure...and that soon those nutrients will be available to your veggies. The only thing I would do with them is to use them to inoculate any fresh manure that you plan on hauling in.

Yep, it is very very rare for a mushroom to have anything less than a wonderfully beneficial effect on a garden. Even the nasty stinkhorn musrooms, that smell like dead meat and have the lovely latin name of Phallus Phallus



P.S those are definitely not psychedelic, so don't give them to any unwitting cluster headache sufferers.

I would very definitely grow them out and compare the mature fruiting bodies to culinary examples. For all you know, you've just inherited a chanterelle colony. Pound for pound, fungi of culinary importance can be worth more than veggies. Find out what you have before you panic.

-CK

I don't know where you live, but if you join your local mycological society, you should have experienced mushroom ID people. They are indispensable, and you can find out which mushrooms do well in your climate, are non-poisonous, and taste good. All are important. Beginners ID'ing mushrooms conclusively for eating is really dangerous, but learning about them is great, and some day you could be one of those experienced mushroom ID people.
John S
PDX OR

I use a lot of woody mulch in my garden and always have mushrooms of different sorts popping up. I don't know what any of them are but I figure they are just the fruiting bodies of the various fungi digesting the wood. I like seeing the different colours and shapes, even if some do look rather peculiar.

Missi VanHorn wrote:In the past I've had maybe a few 'shrooms' in this garden. My husband made a couple of dumps of horse manure during the winter months, un-aged manure to be exact, but did not work it into the soil. This is the first time there's been any kind of manure in this soil.

So now I have THESE. They appear to be trying to take over the fragile, young vegetation and they are spreading like wildfire - growing by the hour literally. They've originated where he dumped the dung, and are spreading everywhere I move the plants that were started in this area of the garden. Our horses must be eating well!

A couple of peeps have told me they think these are psychedelics - I really don't care about that. My garden is just the way I want it this year, though I'm afraid the invaders will damage the tender foliage.

Please help. Thank you.

dont take my word for it without making some checks first but those look to me like mica caps(though they are a little more rich in color than the ones in my yard) or coprinus micaceus they are edible and after a feast or two i have been taking our flushes (i think were on our 10th, but its hard to count they just keep coming) and dehydrating them, and then throwing them into a labeled jar for later use in soups, stews, gravies and anything else that comes to mind, i personally find them to be delicious

some things to look for in identifying these are:
remnants of a universal veil (tiny white parts on every, or most, of the mushrooms in each cluster, easiest to see when young and moist)
clustered growth habits
young gills white, turning black as the mushroom ages and opens up
sometimes partially (though rarely fully in my experience) deliquescing or self digesting, turning into a tattered black mass, slimy if in a place where there is very little evaporation to dry them out
also DONT BE MAD ABOUT THEM, they are NOT hurting anything, in fact, decomposing mica caps(and most any other mushroom with the exception of the rare few) have been shown to be AMAZING for soil and plant health, they are not invaders and certainly wont be hurting your plants any

also IF they are mica caps (again please dont eat them without checking first) they are probably coming from the woodchips, not the horse manure

a lot of people have fungi phobia, this comes from old European culture bred by misunderstanding, the vast majority of mushrooms are not harmful to humans or plants and all the cautionary statements about not eating an unknown mushrooms are for the few people that may accidentally eat a deadly one, causing harm to themselves or spreading more fear of the harmless varieties that are to be found all over the place


if you cant find a mycological society close enough to stop by (i dont there is not a wyoming mycological society from my understanding) then you can borrow a couple of mushroom identification guides from the library and crosscheck those with some online resources and other guides if you would really like to find out what they are for certain

I wonder if it is okay to add another question. I have what I think are Fleecy Milk Caps growing in my small veg patch. It is my understanding that they like woodland, and I would like to move them to their more suited habitat. How do I move them without killing them?

What you are seeing are the fruiting bodies. Removing them won't remove the larger organism living in the soil, which you probably don't want to do anyway.

Transplanting the fruiting bodies will likely kill them unless you transplant a large quantity of soil too.

You should identify the type, but it's probably helping in your soil.

-CK

Looks like you brought in some wood chips from an unknowns source?

Those appear to be honey mushrooms to me. Honey mushrooms are edible, but unlike most edible mushrooms honey mushrooms are plant parasites.

Getting free wood chips can seem like a good idea, but many times the trees they came from are trees that had parasitic fungi.

I could be wrong on the ID though. IDing a mushroom just on a couple of fruit body pics is not the most reliable way to ID a mushroom.

The largest organism in the world is thought to be a network of a honey mushroom mycelium that is parasitizing an entire mountain side in an Oregon forest.