Greenbean, yes there is, in fact, you could do it for only a few bucks, the cost of some agar agar, petri dishes, and some grains for substrate. But if you do not want to grow the spawn yourself, fungi.com sells also sawdust and grain spawn. For $20, you can inject about 50 logs with shiitake, which, properly cared, would turn into 100 lbs/year of shiitake, or close to it. If you injected stumps, that would give you more mushrooms per year over 20 years or so. You can then cut wedges from your best logs, and use them to inoculate the next generation of logs a year or two later. Now I know how to do all this after spending a lot of money in trials and errors, but really, you could have a lifetime supply for only $20. I had bad luck with stropharia in the garden, way back when I was not so experienced. I had better luck when I picked some ink caps (shaggy manes) from my secret patch and I tossed them in my garden. As you know, they melt into ink (spores soup really) in a few hours. The garden now produces a few, which I tend to ignore. My secret ink cap patch, for comparison, is about 50X50 yards, it is 5 minutes from my home, and there I can pick a pound a minute or more. The garden production is irrelevant. The ink caps have since spread in the yard, where they will occasionally produce enough for a meal in a single evening (there is a lot of buried wood under the lawn). Given the extreme perishability of this mushroom, you have to collect enough of them in one shot and eat them at once, so having three in the garden is like having nothing. Having some experience with mushrooms, I think that if you want fertilization you should buy mychorrizae (Stamets sells those also). If you want mushrooms, you should get logs, or a large pile of chips IN SHADE. The garden is not an optimal environment for mushrooms. It is too dry and too sunny. Even ink caps prefer lawns to gardens, because of the shading by the grass. Also, my guess is that the edible mushroom mixture you are interested in is supposed to approximate a succession, starting with Oyster, then getting further decay with Stropharia, and finishing with the ink caps. But then you should inoculate your pile one at a time. I have successfully inoculated spent shiitake logs with oyster, but one fungus at a time. My guess is that you can have the very same fertilizing effect, for free, by just tossing a few blackening ink caps (the last in the succession) in the garden. They do eat degraded wood, but they will eat fresh organic matter too if given the chance.

I think you can be very secure that what you are seeing is the manifestation of something beneficial. You can be certain that it arises from a parent soil-borne fungus. I have yet to hear or learn of any phytopathogneic fungus that spreads via mushrooms. The ones I know of all use other methods to spread their spores. There may be one or more, but I've never heard of them. If they exist and were prevalent I think every gardener would be looking for "the mushroom". We aren't. That leads me to believe that any such fungus, if it exists, must be quite rare. I would view those mushrooms as a good sign for your soil. What part of Japan?

The name of that mushroom is right on the tip of my tongue, but it's not coming to me! I can tell you that it stems from a decomposing fungal organism and is not harmful to anything. If the fruiting bodies (mushrooms) are disturbing to your customers, simply remove them and discard. The decomposing will still continue out of sight and out of mind.

Hi SunnyValley, From DianaMay's post on closed terrariums: "White furry mold should be rubbed gently with a finger to disturb it as soon as it is noticed. Usually it will not persist if you rub it down a few times." I had some mushrooms growing in one of mine, and then got some rust on the ferns. Let it air out a little and cut off the fronds with the rust, pulled all the mushrooms. Sounds like you might have some of that white mold Diana mentioned. I'd try to get rid of it. I see you've got an asparagus fern in there, though I'm not sure what the other plants are. I'd also get rid of the mushroom before it releases more spores. In general, it may simply be some spores that were in there or got in there, and that's what caused the mushroom to grow! No need to redo your terrarium, these things do clear up. Yours looks pretty good! Best, Judy