Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of fungi. Plants form mutually beneficial relationships with fungi. Mushrooms are the evidence that your soil has a healthy environment for fungi.

I would leave the mushrooms alone - leave them where they are so that they can drop spores into the soil. Or, after the mushroom has dropped its spores, I might take the soil from where the mushroom grew (and dropped its spores) and spread it around in the garden bed to inoculate the rest of the soil with the fungi. It might not be the exact right fungi for a particular plant, but the presence of mushrooms is definitely a good thing.

Agree but if the growth is abundant it may also be telling you that the bed is being kept too wet.

Dave

Toadstools. They aren't for dinner. ;)

digdirst - I know, I am not eating any of them. We are having yet another wet sprint in Virginia this year, rains 3 days out of a week. Glad I have raised beds and they drain well.

Yeah...So There... Digdirst ;-)

they looked like they were about to burst yesterday, so I sprayed them over the other two beds and burried left overs in the soil

It is a clear puffball, and puffballs inhabit relatively dry habitats, so it is not a clear sign of overwatering. For example, I have puffballs on sandy prairie land which is dry to at least 8 ft in a normal August, yet they flush (sometimes) in September. Prairie and prairie edges are in fact the normal habitat for them, though a neighbor did get one under the hostas. The timing is unusual, these strongly prefer early Fall fruiting.

The smooth one and this one (lycoperdon perlatum I think) are choice edibles, but I have never been able to eat one. They soon become a huge mass of spores, 1 trillion per mushroom. If the inside is anything but creamy white, and firm, no good. Most often it will just past its prime, greenish or yellow, and spongy.

The puff part of the name comes from their ejection of noticeable plumes of spores about 1 week later. I have myself injected some rotting wood behind my house with chunks of puffballs, in the hope of getting some in a visible place. Those hiding in the tall grass are too tough to find in time. Anyway, all soil dwelling mushrooms are good news in the garden.

This particular fungus forms a crust like surface on my raised bed. It goes down about an inch in depth. I don't know what it is.
Mike

I have mushrooms and other fruiting fungi all over my garden because we use a lot of wood mulch, and beds are terraced with untreated wood. The mycelium is excellent for the soil, even provides N as it breaks down. I have never seen an edible species in the garden, but I like the colors and forms of the fruiting bodies, and how they change with the seasons.

Pmiker- Pretty sure that's artillery fungus, pretty common in wood mulch. Harmless to you plants, potentially a nuisance to your house if the bed in question is right up against it. Here's a link with more info.

Here is a link that might be useful: Fungus

pmiker, I think what you have is birds nest fungus. I see some "eggs" in some of the "nests" in your photo.
http://botit.botany.wisc.edu/toms_fungi/may2006.html

[You can also do an image search for "birds nest fungus" to see photos of different types. I have a lot of these in my mulch, which is ground-up silver maple branches.]

This is his entry for the "artillery fungus:"
http://botit.botany.wisc.edu/toms_fungi/jul2005.html

can anyone identify this. I think it is a type of mushroom/fungus in our straw raised bed. We like is such a dry climate I didn't think this would happen. And is is OK?

first time using the forum, it looks terrific.

If you don't get a good answer here, try the mushroom forum:

Here is a link that might be useful: Mushroom Forum

Ll, yours appears to be a new 'stinkhorn ' fungus. Post pictures in a day or so in order that we can see the progress.

Does anyone know what this might be. We are in North Texas and it just randomly showed up over night in our raised bed

Don't know what kind of mushroom it is but if you don't want it just kick it over or hoe it off.

Rodney