Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: AlaninCarlisle on October 22, 2021, 15:12
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There's an area of my vegetable garden that is overlooked by mature trees and therefore doesn't get as much sun as the rest. I've left it fallow for the last two years. It is now totally carpeted with a variety of fungi including puff-balls, field mushrooms and other fungi.
Question: Will they affect next year's scrops if I try to recultivate it?
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The fungus should have a positive effect on crops, especially if you don't disturb the soil too much and break the very fine fungal threads.
Plants and mycorrhizal fungi have been forming symbiotic relationships for 400-odd million years - plants exude sugars through their roots which feed the fungi and the fungi in return provide plants with micro nutrients, minerals and moisture from beyond the normal reach of the plant roots. The fungus will also be producing glomalin which causes the soil to hold together and form crumbs rather than remain in fine particles (healthier soil, better moisture retention, improved drainage of excess water and easier for plant roots to penetrate).
Unless it's Honey Fungus you're lucky to have fungal growth, we've worked for seven years to encourage it to colonise our whole plot.
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I'm blessed with an abundance of wild fungi in my raised beds, helping with decomposition. Every bed has little birds nest fungi, and 2 of 3 beds also have "toadstools".
I'm jealous of the puffballs; I don't know if your local ones are edible, but our giant puffball Calvatia gigantea is excellent if picked while young and white all the way through. Most of the ones I find are 20 cm across or smaller, but I once found a puffball the size of a basketball. WIkipedia says they can grow to 90 cm.