A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2004 strange growth in dirt

Hello everyone! I am new to the forum and glad to be here! My boyfriend and I are growing basil, lavender, parsley, and hot peppers in a wooden planter/box and we seem to have these weird clusters growing in the dirt. Not sure what they are....PLEASE HELP???!!!!!

P.S. I would like to attach a picture for you all to see but I have no idea how to do so! Can anyone help with that too?? sorry

Welcome to the site!

You need to have your picture hosted somewhere on the internet...ie - webshots or photobucket, etc. Then, just post the link in your post using the image codes.

Hi Christinat809,
Welcome to The Garden Helper's Forum....
We are very glad you found us!!

Can I ask some questions???

What kind of dirt do you have in your planter box?
How old is the wooden planter box??
How much sun/shade does this area get?????

Weezie

Did what Sami tell you help at all with the pictures??
Let us know!!!

If you have potting soil in the boxes....it's probably some kind of fungus/mushroom......I had a plant years ago that would sprout yellow looking mushrooms that resembled a part of the male anatomy to be quite frank........I thought it was weird.........but they really did look like that! Sorry for being crude!

Hey everyone! Thanks for the replies!! To answer everyone's questions/comments in one reply....The dirt I use is MiracleGro flower and Vegetable. Is that not good?? And the box is only about 5 months old. The box is in our patio which faces east so it gets morning sun until about 12:30 p.m. or so and shade the rest of the afternoon. I probably won't be posting a picture but Gladys, that's exactly what some of them look like!! Some of them are yellow that resemble the male anatomy and some look like little bowls with black seeds in them. Very strange! But the plants seem to be doing fine. However, I have just recently noticed this growth and I go out to check on my plants almost everyday. So......
Anyway, thanks again for the replies and any more information anyone else can give!

Christina

*giggles* lol sorry ^.^

Hopefully you'll figure out what those are. They sound pretty though What color are they?

The main problem I always had with Miricle Grow plants is that sometimes plants become addicted in a sense, and if you stop using it they usually shrivel up and die. (I think they go through withdrawals, and I have begun referring to Miricle Grow as PlantCrack) Sooo, me personaly, I NEVER buy miracle grow, but I do use potting soil and I too get those little, shall we say, phallic mushrooms in my plants. It took weeks for them to stop growing in my carrots...lol.
I think they may be called puffballs but am not sure as I am still learning my mushrooms.
Tempest~

Christina,
I would have said it was the planter box if it was older...
Sometimes when wood breaks down that happens..
But, I am wondering about the bottom of the planter box, does it have drain holes??
Sometimes, there may be a wood material *ie; peatmoss* in potting soils which is decomposed hunks and pieces of wood, so it may be just that.
If it doesn't recieve alot of sun and it's a tad wet, it could be the combo of the two..

Is it possible to scoop out the formations?
And see if they keep coming back?

Your plants are doing okay though?

And keep us posted???

Weezie

i have lots of these in my garden too. my neighbor said they were a type of mushroom so i did a little searching on the web and found them. they are called Bird's Nest Fungus. here's a link...

http://waynesword.palomar.edu/pljune96.htm

i usually just pull out some clusters and throw them away.

Yep what you have is the fungal fruiting bodies (mushrooms) of a couple of common fungi. As pagarden points out the one is a birds nest fungi (a fairly large group of dis-similar fungi) the other is a fungi that is quite common indoors in our area (the name escapes me at the moment). However the long and short of it they represent no threat to your plants. Happy gardening.