Forget about Komodo Dragons, The Flu Formerly Known As Swine, Bernie Madoff, Scammers and Spammers, ATT, Tagged.com, Stalling Politicians, Bad Filmmakers, Camera-Eating Ponds, Moving Doors, Voles, Shrews and Poppy-Eating Mice.
This is our real enemy. Vexer of gardeners and destroyer of lawns. The fungi known as toadstools. And all my sources of gardening expertise can tell me is: Try to rake them out of your lawn. There is no cure. Nothing to do. Make your peace with them, Billy Glad.
They grow where the previous owner cut down a big tree, ground down the stump, but left the roots in the ground to rot. He planted new grass over the fungi-infested ground and sold the house to me, a charter member of the A-list. I guess word gets around.
9 comments:
Mushrooms. Slugs. Slime stuff. How about some smacking some weed killer down?
You think you have a problem. This is why I left Austin.
You're right! I forgot about the cacti. Been away too long.
Don't you all have any asphalt down there?
It's either that or dig yourself a pond. Twenty foot down should get you past the roots. Tom might have some advice.
Not Cacti, PRICKS.
Jeez Basking, you've definitely come to the wrong place. This place is full of pricks.
Billy, maybe you better put a sign up.
Raking them seems like the last thing you want to do if the gills are all ready opening up. You're just going to spread them around the yard even more.
They themselves don't hurt grass, rather, they are a sign that something is there that won't let other things grow, like um, grass. In your case, it is the wood from the tree. They are decomposing it, once they are done, they will go away because they have nothing left to eat and grass can grow there again. In other people's case, the soil there might be wrong, for one example. Or you get them with new sod because you have to keep it so wet and has clay, but they go away once it is established.
So you can wait years to let them do the work or you can dig up the decomposing wood and replace the soil. If you buy grass soil at Home Depot, the mushroom spores won't grow there. If you want to use your own, make sure you test what you use for the right PH for grass.
Don't get me wrong, I am a mold hating person (allergic to the spores,) so there is no love lost by me for their disgusting fungi relatives. I don't know how I lucked out on not being allergic to fungi, as the yeast relatives do a number on me, too. Ok, so I will eat them on a pizza but I'd rather they weren't there if I had my druthers, they are boring and slimy. You made me recall that my Polish grandpa was an expert wild mushroom picker, thankfully I inherited the gardening thing instead from grandma.
P.S. I will just say it: lawn grass is the fucking hardest thing to grow, it really is. There's always something going wrong with it. It's heartbreaking and backbreaking, the desire for a lush green carpet in front of the plants is worse monkey on your back than being a heroin junkie. But oh the high when it looks nice...
--artappraiser
It is truly maddening. I have tried digging up the mushrooms and replacing the earth with topsoil from Ace Hardware. They come up in the middle of that, but for all I know the insidious little bastards work their way up from far beneath the topsoil. If I had a flamethrower, I'd use it I'm thinking of replacing the dirt and grass where the mushrooms are with sod. Maybe I should try grass soil from HD first.
I had a friend in Portland who hunted wild mushrooms. Fed me some in an omelette without telling me they were wild. About a month later, he turned up in Seattle with what I would call a wry expression on his face, and wouldn't talk to me. Turns out he couldn't. He'd tied into something that had paralyzed one side of his face! I would like to say I managed to keep from laughing, but I can't.
I saw some catnip at a garden center today. I'll go get it tomorrow.
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