unwanted mushrooms in the weed pots

[Opie Yutts]

stinky,

Very sorry to upset you so early in the morning. I don't want to upset you at all, and I know from personal experience that mornings suck.

You asked me, Can you just relax about changing the thread title? Yes, I absolutely will. Actually, I kind of thought that I already did when I wrote, Anyway, what the hell. It's all good. Love ya all. I'll try to relax even more though.

Thank you for the compliments. Please check your m4il soon.

[Opie Yutts]

not all halucinagenic are psilocibe. for instance the fly agaric.
but back to the subject. the best way to get rid of your mushrooms is to completly change ALL of yor soil then clean the room floor to ceiling every square inch with a strong bleach solution. you will also need to clean lights, pots, eveything. or replace it all. thats the only way to be absolutly sure that you dont get reinfected. as far as where the spores came from to begin with, well you could have brung them in after walkin in the woods , the yard , the garden almost any where. also its a good idea to change cloths before goin into grow room you can bring any number of pest and bacteria or fungus in just on your cloths. you dont have to put on a hazmat suit just clean cloths. and take off your shoes i leave a pair of flip flps next to the door

Yeah, I have pretty much written off my mother area as being infected with spores. I've seen them flying around when I've moved stuff. I am planning on having to take cuttings from all of them and restart the mother area. Just say NO to mushrooms in the weed pots.

Pictures coming soon.

[Opie Yutts]

OK, I'm not sure how much good it will do at this point, but here are pictures as promised. First, the plant, of which I trimmed off much of the dead crap.

As far as trying to knock back the fungus, I sprayed a fungicide on the inside of my wheelbarrow (in which I mix soil), on both sides of the shovel, all over the dirt as I was mixing, all over the plant, on the inside of the new container, and in the B1 solution that I watered the plant with. I saved about 2/3 of the root mass, which was infected throughout with the little white balls. The bottom inch or so of the root mass was damp and had a couple spots of mold, even though I hadnâ??t watered in more than 2 weeks. I think this is a huge testiment for the ability of clay pellets to hold moisture.

I want this soil to dry out easier than before, even though it means Iâ??ll have to check it more often. About 30% of the mix is perlite, and about 1% is Hydroton. The remainder is potting soil. Whadda ya think? Is that too much air in the soil? And most importantly, will she make it? I certainly hope so. She's the only surviving female of my WW x Jamaican Lambs Breath. Let's all say a prayer.

[Opie Yutts]

Next, the damn little white balls. What the hell is this crap? I saw it at the very bottom of one of my containers years ago when I dumped out a spent plant. I didnâ??t think anything of it, except that it was kind of weird. But that plant was healthy, if memory serves.

Is this the mycelium that people speak of? It doesnâ??t look stringy like is described in what I have read so far, so I think this is not it. On the other hand I guess I could be mistaking some for roots. So what are the balls? Has anyone seen anything like it before? Is it some kind of fungus? Since the bottom of the medium was too wet and moldy in spots, seems like it could be a fungus of some sort.

Just incase anybody is interested in reading more about mycelium, hereâ??s the biggest organism in the world, right here in my home state:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycelium

And hereâ??s an excellent article from the Australian government explaining nearly everything about mycelium, and how rhizome got his name (itâ??s got pictures folks):
http://www.anbg.gov.au/fungi/mycelium.html

[stinkyattic]

Take one of those balls, pref a largish one, and squeeze it. What's the texture? It is soft? Sticky? Crunchy? Firm?

[SMOKEnCHOKE]

That is mycelium, but that is the weirdest looking one I have ever seen. The mycelium will vary from species to species and strain to strain but it usually does look stringy althoguh I have seen some that just looks like a block of monzarella cheese. I'm amazed that it even fruited. With that new mix even if you didn't kill all the spores it should keep mycelium out.

Also cleaning with bleach is a little overkill. They are just spores not endospores. Spores can be destroyed actually quite easily with a weaker solution. Bleach is about the only way to get rid of endospores since they can survive so much more than standard spores. Peroxide or alcohol will do the trick on spores or bleach I just hate using bleach because it always seems to have a negative effect on everything.


Heres a picture just to show mycelium and it's growth speed. This is 4 day old mycelium on rye in a 1 quart jar. Sorry for the quality, I hate phone cameras.

[Opie Yutts]

stinky:

soft - no
sticky - no
crunchy - yes, very
firm - yes, very

Now keep in mind that dirt chunk has been sitting out in the sun for 3 days, and I'm not sure, but I think the little balls have lost moisture and are smaller than before. I didn't think of checking when I transplanted, but they seem quite hard at this point. I couldn't squish them with my fingers, so I tried the tip of a knife and I had a hard time crushing them without them suddenly flying somewhere else. When crushed, they turned into smaller versions.

SMOKEnCHOKE:

Thank you for the additional info and the picture. That's some weird looking stuff, and it looks like it grows pretty fast. Do you have any idea how many different kinds of mycelium exist? (Forgive me if you already gave that info, I've got a killer headache, and don't want to reread.)

[SMOKEnCHOKE]

They are approximately 38,000 different species of mycelium. That number isn't counting the different strains. Even if it is the same species the mycelium can vary quite abit from strain to strain.

[yokinazu]

the mycelum will form in "balls" . ive seen it a few times but mostly in a rice substrate that was packed very loosely.
also i would like to point out that some fungus can have a beneficial relationsip to plants, obviously these do not. i would be interested to find out if anyone has done an experiment on wich would have a simbiotic relationship with cannibis.

[stinkyattic]

Opie... sounds like... perlite! Put it in water, see what happens... nothing?