Mushrooms can be irritating sites in your turf of green. If you want your teeming green lawn, then it’s essential to get rid of those pesky umbrella-shaped, fingerlike, jelly, or puffballs popping up in your lawn.
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Although mushrooms help add soil nutrients that lawns require to thrive, they also have their share of flaws. Apart from the pesky sites in lawns, most of them are poisonous, thus posing a great danger to people and bets.
Should You Be Worried About the Mushrooms?
Most lawn owners don’t mind the mushrooms, but if you have children and pets, then you need to wipe off the poisonous mushrooms from your grass. Besides, if you plan on setting your house on sale, stopping mushrooms from growing in your lawn will come in handy with topping in potential customer lists.
Moreover, when the mushrooms are left to grow freely, they prevent the grass from absorbing nutrients, and your lawn will have circular patches of brown grass known as fairy rings.
Why Mushrooms Appear in Lawns
1. Organic matter
If your lawn has mushrooms popping up, don’t tense, it only shows that your garden soil has fungi; a fungus decomposes organic matter. Besides, most of these fungi don’t cause diseases, and some mushrooms are even edible, but that does not mean that they are entirely harmless.
2. Excess Moisture
Like any other plant, mushrooms have their optimum growing conditions, and excess moisture is one of the top requirements. The water comes from frequent heavy rains, overwatering the lawn, or lack of proper drainage.
3. Shade
Many mushroom types thrive well in areas with low light supply.
How to Stop Mushrooms Growing in Your Lawn
1. Enhance the Drainage of Your Lawn
If water supply exceeds what the lawn needs, then the excess water forms a damp region making your lawn more hospitable to mushrooms since they thrive well in moist areas.
You will have to enhance the drainage of your lawn to stop mushrooms from growing.
Pro-Tips:
- Water your lawn infrequently with just the right amount of water the grass needs. Furthermore, make sure that the lawn is dry before watering again.
- Water your lawn in the morning. The grass absorbs water before the sun rises and dries the remaining amount instead of watering at night, where water forms a moist and shady area ideal for mushroom growth.
- If your lawn is sloppy, adopt a drainage system that directs all the excess water to a pond. Furthermore, a pond is an attractive site that fits with any aesthetic.
- Consider an underground drainage system to drain out excess water from your lawn.
- Fix gutters at roof ends to collect and prevent excess water from flooding your lawn.
2. Improve the Soil Drainage Capacity of Your Lawn
If your lawn has a medium-soil texture, then you have nothing to worry about, but if its clay, you’ll have to make some amendments.
Clay soil has fine compact particles reducing its ability to drain water. Water stagnates on such Yards forming an excellent breeding ground for fungi, shady and humid. The mushrooms start to sprout in your lawn before you even notice it.
Pro-Tips:
- Mix your garden soil with sand to improve its water dispensing capacity. If you don’t like the idea of sand, you can opt for other super-draining materials.
- Water your lawn in the morning so that the sun dries the stagnating water.
3. Trim Down Extra-Long Tree Branches to Reduce the Shade
Mushrooms need shade to grow. Long tree branches shade your lawn, creating an ideal place for mushroom development.
Trimming down the trees allows for maximum light penetration to your lawn, thus preventing those rounded or pointed heads from growing in your lawn.
Tips:
- Trim down dead branches on trees to keep off fungus
- Cut close to the ridge downwards to prevent raindrops from stagnating on edge.
4. Maximize Air Circulation by Aerating Your Lawn
Lawns with limited air circulation have lots of moisture, creating a humid environment that supports fungi activities – Mushrooms grow in lawns due to these activities.
Going over your lawn with an aerator will maximize air circulation and reduce the grass’s moisture content. Furthermore, it reduces soil compactness.
Pro-Tip: Aerators are available in almost all hardware; you can stop mushrooms growing in your lawn with just a few dollars.
5. Rake the Lawn Regularly
Going over your lawn with a rake helps dethatch the grass, thus reduces the shade and allows for air movement.
Pro-Tip: You can rake your lawn manually or hire a power rake from a home improvement store.
6. Remove the Rotting Wood, Tree Branches, or Any Other Elements
Decaying matter feeds off fungus, which in turn leads to the growth of mushrooms.
Dead or diseased branches fall off the trees to your lawn and start decaying, providing an ideal habitable place for mushrooms.
Moreover, the grass clippings start to decompose after moving, thus supporting the existence of fungus.
Tips:
- Always keep your lawn clear of fallen tree branches or leaves
- Sweep off all the grass clippings after mowing
- Frequently clean up pet wastes from your lawn.
7. Uproot and Dispose of the Mushrooms from Your Lawn
Mushrooms spread through spores that are carried by the wind or animals.
To stop mushrooms from growing in your lawn, you’ll have to uproot them before they can mature up to produce spores.
Immediately pull out the mushrooms when they sprout and dispose of them in a plastic bag. It would be best if you tied the bag tightly to prevent spore transfer to other places of your lawn.
Pro-Tip: Dispose of the mushrooms in a secure plastic bag to prevent spore from spreading.
8. Use Nitrogen Fertilizer
Mushrooms will exist as long as there is decomposing matter. Even if you pull out those pesky heads, there will be more growing mushrooms up. It’s tiring to uproot them as frequently as possible before they produce spores.
Nobody wants to uproot mushroom thrice a fortnight!
Nitrogen fertilizer catalyzes the decomposition process leaving the mushrooms with nothing to feed. The mushrooms die off in no time, leaving your turf all green.
Tip: Apply nitrogen fertilizer on your lawn at least once per year.
9. Deal with Fairy Circles
Apart from the brown grass patches, you can identify a fairy ring by spotting the mushroom caps or patches of dark green grass in your lawn whenever you cannot spot the caps.
To stop mushrooms growing in your lawn, you will have to eliminate the fairy circles.
Steps to Eliminating the Fairy Circle
- Identify the fairy ring in your lawn
- Use a shovel to dig at the edge of the circle and determine the fungal mat’s thickness – This is the white fibrous thing.
- If the fungal mat is not too deep, thoroughly aerate the ring in a circular motion from the outer space as you make your way to the center.
- If the fungal mat is more in-depth into the ground, consider digging out the fairy ring together with the contaminated soil and disposing of them off with plastic bags to prevent the mushroom from spreading.
- Use fresh soil to fill in the plugs and scatter grass seeds on it.
You can also eliminate the fairy ring with soap. It’s probably the easiest way to stop mushrooms growing in your lawn. You will have to dilute a few tea-spoonful of soap with water then use a shovel to dig holes around the fairy ring. Fill the holes with soapy water, and the mushrooms will be dead in no time.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes! But if you see signs of fairy wings and poor turf health, it must be a sign of a problem of poor water or overwatering in cool evenings. At most time, mushrooms represent fungal reproduction but their presence sometimes mean a great healthy lawn or soil.
To permanently prevent mushroom growth is do not overwatering your lawn. Also, you can do the watering early in the day so that lawn will not sit damp through the evening.
Although some mushrooms are toxic, we do not advance to let them in your lawn if you have pets and kids.
Conclusion
The presence of mushrooms indicates a high-level combination of organic content and moisture. These conditions favor the growth of mushrooms instead of the grass you desire on your lawn.
Therefore, stopping mushroom colonies borders around removing the conditions favoring their growth. Good drainage, aeration of both soil and air, will keep off mushrooms from your lawn.
