Lasagna Garden mushrooms

16 years ago

I have had such wonderful success with my first try at lasagna gardening that I thought I would expand it to get some beds ready for next year. So, I put down cardboard and topped it with a layer of mixed wood chips, then grass clippings, then the contents of a finished compost box. Since my composting is a cold compost it gets a lot of viable seeds so I thought I would water it to sprout the seeds to get rid of them. It's been a couple of weeks and I have the biggest crop of mushrooms you've ever seen! I don't know what kind they are so I'm not about to try them but I've never seen so many. Anyone else growing mushrooms?

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Comments (14)

dorisl
16 years ago
Ive got TONS! I used lots of cardboard, newspapers and phone books and Ive got about three different looking kinds of mushrooms coming up. Like you, Im not about to go eating them, but hoping the pests will eat them and drop over legs up. hee!
Kimmsr
16 years ago
Any time you put a lot of woody material into your soil (or make a Lasagna bed) soil fungi will be dominant and most often the result will be mushrooms. Not very long ago many people thought the presence of mushrooms which indicates that fungi are active in your soil was bad and fungicides needed to be applied, but today most people know that fungi are a normal part of the Soil Food Web and are working at converting the organic matter in your soil into nutrients your plants can use.
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Hi Magnoliasouth, I just wanted to say that last summer I built my new garden based on that exact idea and got lots of tips from that website. You can make it very simple- we made one box- 8 feet by 3 feet. The sides were 2 pieces of wood, held together by a bracket and some screws, that were 2x6, so it was 12 inches tall. I did not dig or til and there is no need to. I put down a layer of cardboard first, layer of alfalfa hay (found someone close by who sold it for like $4 bale), layer compost, layer wheat straw, layer compost. Everytime I plant, I add a few scoops of compost. Mulched with wood chips. After starting the garden, we started a very simple compost area. Four metal posts with chicken wire wrapped around the edges. The compost has been minimal effort and at first I was worried about all the 'greens and browns' and percentages... we just put stuff in, watered every now and then and the compost is almost done :) The garden did great, I had watermelon (it grew out of the box and over the yard), tons of cukes, tomatoes, basil, marigolds, lettuce. The point of my long story is to advise you not to worry too much about exact things- just follow the basic idea with whatever supplies you can get easily and cheap :) The lasagna gardening idea mixed with the square foot gardening idea works great and makes gardening alot less stressful in my opinion, especially for a new gardener. You can plant one square at a time. Last weekend I wanted to plant something, so I planted radishes. You can plant like 12 per square and they are ready in 30 days! By then I can plant another spring/summer crop. All I did was add some compost to the top of the box in a square foot area. Added seeds and covered with more compost. Another great part of this gardening method is NO digging!
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I tend to think that many people believe they can "recycle" better than large corporations. IOW, just bury newspapers and cardboard boxes, turn it into compost and skip the middle man, since you are using it as decomposing material. You are saving energy, recycling, saving the landfills, and promoting an Organic garden with natural materials. I don't believe it for a second, now. As a teen I worked at a warehouse and we stacked broken down cardboard boxes outside the doors. After a rain, especially multiple rains this gooey slime would drip down the sides of the freight dock. It was nasty and sticky that never seemed to go away after the cardboard was picked up. Then years later using cardboard in my garden, thinking the way most do, I found cardboard two years later in the ground and even detected the gooey slime. That caused me to do some research and I found out that I was very far from Organic. I would have been more organic using Miracle-Gro. Here is what I found: Cardboard in cardboard boxes: Semi-Chem (semi-chemical fluting medium) is applied to stretch" the fibers, making it stronger and stiffer. Where the corrugated short fiber paper are usually used for peaks and valleys of each flute, then glued using starch adhesives. While these adhesives sound innocent enough since they are called, "starch adhesives" (usually shipped to the cardboard manufacturer as a powder) they are seldom made up of Tapioca dextrin, the adhesive used for postage stamps. They most likely will be incorporated with 5 to 15% resins, such as urea formaldehyde, and especially used for cartons where water resistance is helpful. Most dextrin combinations are heated upward of 600 degrees to create a stronger bonding agent. If the paper lacks the amount of wax necessary for good fluting, wax bars are introduced in the process. Newspaper ink: Since 2004, 95% of American newspaper ink is now soy based, as opposed to petroleum based. To make soy ink, soybean oil is slightly refined and then blended with pigment, resins, and waxes. Even though soybean oil is an edible vegetable oil, soy ink is not edible or 100% biodegradable because the pigments and other additives that are mixed with the oil are the same as those used in petroleum-based inks. However it does degrade four times as completely as standard petroleum inks. The fact that this newer ink has rave reviews how it can be "recycled" easier, doesn't mean it is safe for consumption. It only means the soy ink can be removed more easily than regular ink from recycled newspaper during the de-inking process. Maybe less of a concern, but still a concern is that 92% of soybean acreage in the US is planted with genetically-modified soybeans, which some believe can pose environmental and human health risks. I just don't think working so hard on my garden to get it right, I want to introduce consumer products into the soil if it's not necessary. The only motivation that I can see is that it makes you feel like you are recycling on the most basic level and saving a tiny bit of money. My cardboard and newspaper needs to go to a recycling plant or landfill and let dirt in my garden do the rest.
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You can also cover the garden with 'lumber wrap'. It is the tarp which covers lumber during transport. We get it for free at any building supply store. It comes in various sizes from 8x10 to 16x20 approx. and is stronger than most tarps you can buy. You can cover the garden area...secure corners and centre edges with rocks etc. and within 2 months, earlier if it's hot, most all weeds will be killed or well on their way and then are very easy to remove. Be sure to put the black side up to heat the soil better. Or you can cover the bed and cut holes for planting and remove the plastic after several months. I use if for my paths and it works great. I also covered my vegy garden this year in May as I was unable to plant it. I checked at the end of August and it was still moist underneath, obviously without any watering. But then we are cooler up here. Once you remove the plastic you'll have to keep on top of any weed seeds that sprout. The easiest, quickest way I've found is a 'Hula Hoe'. You can scuff a large area in no time...just make sure you don't let the weeds get very big. Easier to do a light scuffing weekly which will take 5-10 minutes than to fight larger weeds. Or you could then put down your feed bags and cover with mulch. Mushroom manure is the best as it is weed free. With the bags covering the weed seeds presently in your soil and a weed free mulch, your bed will be virtually weed free other than some that may get blown in. Good Luck, Krystyna
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Comments (2)
I usually pull them out and throw them in the compost pile, but I don't know if it really matters. I found some in the mulch nect to my daughters sand box that were rather phallic looking it was unlike any mushroom I had ever seen. I definitely felt I needed to remove it before my neighbors started making too many jokes about what I was growing these days.
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arjo_reich
16 years ago
Still, you should post pictures of them, I'd love to see what's been springing up. ;-p
dottyinduncan
Original Author
16 years ago
I've taken a few pictures of the mushrooms and my wonderful lasagna garden. Hope it works!

Here is a link that might be useful:
mommyandme
16 years ago
No mushrooms in my lasagna, but lots of disgusting dog vomit fungus.
haplo_wm
16 years ago
I have the dog-vomit fungus, too! What do I do with that stuff? It's been appearing around my shrubs, in the mulch. Can I/should I toss it in the compost bin? Leave it alone?

Is it harmful?

I'm new to the boards and very new to composting (and, actually, to even owning a house and having a yard), although the first thing I did was to build a compost bin in the back of the yard. :-)
haplo_wm
16 years ago
Never mind. I did some additional research and found out that this "dog-vomit fungus" is not a fungus, but a slime mold (Fuligo Septica). It doesn't harm anything and is pretty much impossible to get rid of.

I guess I'll just have to let dry out on its own.
gardenlen
16 years ago
dotty those mushrooms look decidedly in-edible (poisonous), but they are helping break down you organic material just like all the other fungii related organisms mentioned in other posts, when you garden organically you get all sorts of surprises.

len

Here is a link that might be useful: len's garden page
arjo_reich
16 years ago
The mushrooms in question look like The Common Inkcap.
permacycle
16 years ago
What color were these mushrooms? I shredded some of those investment reports and got some !!bad!! looking yellow mushrooms. First time. I was wondering if the compost would be harmed by their presence.
arjo_reich
16 years ago
Sounds like The Flower Pot Parasol, or "Spirit Cap" (latin name: Lecocoprinus Birnbaumii).

Those yellow mushrooms are beautiful and harmless to the composting process, or your flowerpots, should you ever catch them growing there...as that's the most common place to appear.

While the reports on it's actual toxicity are still out, they should be considered inedible because a small percentage of people have reported severe gastrointestinal upset from consuming them.

But no, they won't harm your composting and in fact, they're helping speed it along by breaking down complex carbohydrates and cellulose into simpler sugars which will be further consumed when they, themselves begin to rot.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Wikipedia link on Leucocoprinus Birnbaumii
dottyinduncan
Original Author
16 years ago
arjo reich, I thought they were ink caps but usually I see them closed up tightly at first, then opening before they turn inky. These seem to open into parasols quickly, but perhaps that is because it is summertime and usually they grow here in the autumn when it is cooler. After reading your link though, I'll certainly give them a miss and won't eat them while consuming a cool glass of white wine!
The mushrooms are still springing up, but I have not put a row of compost down and planted some parsnips it it for the wintertime. Another little experiment. This is so much fun and for $1.69 worth of seeds it doesn't matter if it isn't successful.
arjo_reich
16 years ago
The picture you linked us definally looks like an ink-cap to me. Permacycle (a couple posts before this one) mentioned "some !!bad!! looking yellow mushrooms" which sounded like a case of flowerpot parasols...

which is closely related to ink caps, with the biggest difference being that "leuco" means white and "white-spored ink cap" doesn't make a whole lot of sense, heh.

Not that I really know much about what I'm talking about, I'm just fascinated by fungi in general.
permacycle
16 years ago
Thanks, arjo reich. Started the final stage of that compost pile today with more aeration. Smelled great and felt great. Lots of little creatures still running around was really good news. On the other hand, those mushrooms did not look like anything resembling The Flower Pot, except for the yellow! Flatter tops and uglier.

Lasagna Garden mushrooms

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Lasagna Garden mushrooms

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