These strange looking characters have been growning out of my straw bale garden.
They are just in the one bale, and the tomato plant in this bale is small and sickly looking compared to the others, Im beginning to blame the fungus.
Is this fungus harmful??? What is its name???
Any help would be so much appreciated, as well as any advice on how to remove it (pref organically).
Thank you! Lena
I have had this in my own yard too!
Did it cause any trouble? This is what its doing to my poor little Brandywine!
Im a fungi friend myself, so at first I found it was beautiful and fascinating, but now Im not sure I like it anymore... if its hurting my plant....
Oh dear,
I live in the woods, it was not in my perennial beds. so I was not concerned about it.
that is really too bad about your plants. Can you dig it up and throw it out, so it doesn't spread anymore?
Your mushrooms look like peziza vesiculosa.
It grows on manure, rotting straw, garden waste and fertile soil.
Don't worry that it could harm your plants, because it doesn't and it is certainly not the cause of the poor growth of your tomato plant.
Perhaps the manure was not ripened enough for it ?
http://images.google.be/images?hl=nl&q=peziza+vesiculosa&btnG=Afbeeldingen+zoeken&gbv=2
Thankyou Bonitin. Im relieved to hear it is not harmful.
Somebody else suggested poor aeration as a cause. I have since poked some airholes into the bale, and am hoping the plants health will improve. Its just the one plant, all other 113 plants seem ok.
Thanks again,
Lena
You're welcome Lena!
In general mushrooms and fungi are very beneficial, they help break down organic matter into useful nutrients for plants. They play a very important role in a healthy ecosystem.
There are some harmful parasitic species though that can infect trees that are already weakened. One of them is Armillaria mellea, once infected the tree can not be rescued. Don't know though if this specie also occurs in New Zealand.
but then again there are others that live in a beneficial symbiosis with the trees where both parties benefit from each other.
This message was edited Dec 6, 2007 12:18 PM
More plant disease are caused by fungi than any other organisms. The root-rot feared by all gardeners is caused, generally, by one fungus or another, mediated by over watering poor drainage, etc. The spots one sees on leaves of plants are usually caused by a fungus, although bacteria and physiological reactions to environmental phenomena often cause spots also.
We always called these Puff Balls. Boys have fun stomping on them when they are ripe to see the dark colored cloud of spores shoot out of them. There are many species, and some get quite large. Some are edible, but don' t taste like something to ear. Frank
These aren't puffballs, although they resemble them in some ways. These belong to the order Pezizales, I believe. Non-pathogens.
It is kind of hard to tell for me. I grew peziza in the green house one winter. I was doing an experiment with rooting difficult cuttings in the sawdust of black willow. With bottom heat, the bloom of Pig Ears, was quite a spectacle. The got so large, they obliterated everything else.
They smelled very mushroomy. I ate some and they were quite tasty. They were a wet shamois color, and were like a 4 to 5 " undulating umbrella. Guess they like harwoods. Frank
There are a lot of Peziza species, from little tiny, inconspicuous things to really big floppy affairs. I don't know anything about their edibility.
