Moisture Brings Mushrooms

Peering into our organic vegetable garden yesterday, I spotted a couple of plants that don’t belong. Nestled alongside the mainline irrigation tubing were two mushrooms beneath the red cherry tomato plant.

Inspecting the garden, I spotted a few more in the same garden bed next to the mainline irrigation tubing hidden under leaves of kale.

We didn’t plant mushrooms, and they weren’t there last Friday. How did they get in the garden?

I asked Jeanne Nolan that question during her visit to the garden yesterday.

“Mushrooms are a sign of too much moisture,” Nolan said.

The appearance of mushrooms in our garden is likely due to a combination of the heavy rains experienced over the weekend as well as the increase in watering we started the previous Wednesday.

To correct this issue, we dropped the automatic watering back to 15 minutes every other day.

If gardeners notice mushrooms popping up in their gardens, she recommends they back off watering for a bit.