Today in my raised beds I noticed a few patches of
mushrooms breaking through the 1" or so of
wood chip
mulch (mixed birch, oak, and maple) I laid down last fall. After much googling, I'm fairly certain they're some kind of Amanita (though I'm really not sure which). Normally, I'd just let them be, but my dogs are young, energetic, and not so bright. If they ever decided to eat one, I couldn't stop them if they were right next to me (they're that quick and usually determined to do the worst possible thing whenever they have the opportunity, probably because they're never allowed out of their fenced-in run or off-leash). So the mushrooms will be removed posthaste.
So: How beneficial are these mushrooms to my soil? I'm thinking it's probably best to let them do their thing and just remove fruiting bodies as they appear. I would assume any fungal activity is good activity, but I just don't know enough about different species and their roles in an ecosystem; I'm hoping they're not like the fungal equivalent of crabgrass. If all the mycelia are any indication, the entire batch of wood chips was thoroughly inoculated and pretty much all of the vegetable and flower beds are now potential death traps for idiot dogs for however long the mushrooms are flushing (in flush? not sure of the proper terminology because I'm a noob). I don't relish the idea of removing and quarantining all the affected material, but if it's not providing any real benefit and posing a(n admittedly remote) hazard, then I'll just get rid of it and go back to using leaf mulch.
And another tangential question: How worried
should I be about the shiitake logs I plugged last spring? They're about 20' away from the closest affected area. Would it be better safe than sorry to move them farther away, or is that closing the barn doors after the horse is out?