Are these mushrooms?

Doctor Trevor

Doctor Trevor

Well-Known Member
I looked in an opened bag of FF Ocean Forest potting soil and found these little guys. There are probably six or eight more, none bigger than the big one in the photos.

Are these mushrooms? More importantly, is the soil still usable?

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It's hard to see clearly, it could be mushrooms or maybe weed (not the good kind) seedlings that smothered/couldn't make it to light. What is the texture like? Are there roots, it is hard to tell. Does the rest of the soil have obvious mycelium growth? Is it all spongy and weird smelling? If it still looks and smells like good soil it should be fine.
 
Thanks for getting back to me.

The soil smells fine. It doesn't feel spongy. There are no roots in the three I photographed. Looking closer at the big growth, I'm convinced it's just mushrooms (see photo).

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Thank for the help. I'll just scoop out the rest of the mushrooms as I see them.
 
Doctor Trevor said:
Thank for the help. I'll just scoop out the rest of the mushrooms as I see them.
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Why? They are a sign that the soil is alive and doing well. Fungus is part of a natural soil. A good sign that you have an active living soil.

Growers spend good hard earned money to add extra mycorrhizae to their soils and you have it occurring naturally. Sometimes it will look like what you have there, sometimes it looks like a fuzzy white cotton type of growth on top of the soil, sometimes it will be yellow or reddish in color and be shaped like a small tiny baseball.

We tend to overreact when we see fungus and molds because we associate all of them as if they are the same molds as show up when meat is going bad.
 
Thank you, everyone for answering my questions. I thought the mushrooms would eat the nutrients in the soil. I'll leave the rest in the bag.
 
Those mushrooms are of the species Leucocoprinus Birnbaumii. I got a bag of FFOF that had the same fungi in it last year. This particular yellow mushroom is actually very common in potting soil. I just pull them up when they show up. They seem to have run their course in my soil and I haven't seen any in a while.
 
Doctor Trevor said:
Thank you, everyone for answering my questions. I thought the mushrooms would eat the nutrients in the soil. I'll leave the rest in the bag.
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They do eat some as they are breaking down the organic materials. Same as the micro-organisms living in the soil. They eat and then either their waste or their dead bodies are a way of releasing the nutrients. Or worm castings where the earthworm eats at one end and pushes the casting out at the other end.

Predigested organic material ready for the plant to start absorbing.
 
SmokingWings said:
They do eat some as they are breaking down the organic materials. Same as the micro-organisms living in the soil. They eat and then either their waste or their dead bodies are a way of releasing the nutrients. Or worm castings where the earthworm eats at one end and pushes the casting out at the other end.

Predigested organic material ready for the plant to start absorbing.
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Yep.

What you’re witnessing op is nutrients being chelated naturally. This is the process synthetic nutrients and organic acids mimic.
 
Too many mushrooms! 🧙‍♂️ 🤣
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Youtube
 
The mycellium, the part of the mushroom that grows in the soil, is pretty much invisible most of the time, the mushrooms appear when the mycelium is stressed somehow, and that point the mushrooms (fruiting bodies) grow from the soil and drop spores. Interesting fact, under a microscope, the cells of the mycellium and the cells in the mushroom itself look exactly the same, even though they appear, to our eyes, to look totally different. The mycelium is very good at breaking down organic matter, it's a good thing!

Edit: Forgot to add, all mycelliums do not produce mushrooms, mycorrhizae is an an example of one that doesn't produce fruits (Mushrooms).
 
Right now, there are a few small caps breaking the surface. I noticed two fuzzy white spots in the bag; I assume these are future mushrooms.

Nunyabiz, I got nothing like that.
 
Doctor Trevor said:
Thank you, everyone for answering my questions. I thought the mushrooms would eat the nutrients in the soil. I'll leave the rest in the bag.
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I’m using @Bill284s method of layering bokashi,frass and myco n how you know it’s working is a white fungus starts growing. CL🍀
 
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