Hello, I'm fairly new to gardening and have a question about a recent (4 days ago) flower transplant into some store-bought flower trays. I purchased the flowers from a local nursery and planted them into a bed of Miracle-Gro Garden Soil, nothing else added other than rain water. I'm curious what this stuff is that is upon the top of the soil. The planters are on my front porch which faces west and only receives late afternoon sun. I live in Eastern North Carolina near the coast. If anyone can identify this, I would greatly appreciate to know what it is and what to do to eliminate the problem. I'm thinking the obvious and safest thing to do would be to pull the plants and discard all traces of the current soil but if these are insect eggs, I think I might be able to salvage the soil and maybe just remove or (even) burn the eggs??? Thanks, Dave
looks like a fungus to me. just stir up the top layer of soil and don't rewater it... let it dry out some... or scrape it off.
That's good to hear Carolyn. I'll scrape it off and let it dry out well before watering again. Thank you! Whew, I thought I was in for a long battle Dave
After you scrape it off, try sprinkling some talcum powder on the soil. For some reason, that seems to deter fungi, plus your plant smells great! I use the talcum powder on container plants that I water often.
Dave, I agree with Carolyn, dog vomit fungus. When my plants have had it, it has been harmless. Unsightly but harmless.
This is disgusting looking. I have never heard of this stuff...so..I went out and googled in images. Yuck....A wide array of colors and textures even pink...I don't like them..
The verdict is in with a unanimous decision... dog vomit fungus it is. You guys are great here, and so I'm looking forward to learning and improving my understanding of gardening during my future visits to this site. Thanks again, Dave
How are your plants now? Hope so they are in healthy condition. Not this one but we have faced the Fire Blight fungus problem in our garden and this was a real headache for us. It was very important to do pruning regularly to cut down the infected branch and taking it away from the rest of the plant. Other than this we were unable to guess the other methods. For the help, we consulted pest control for the suggestions. They told us to burn the infected branches once you have pruned them as the Fire Blight is very contagious. They also told us to sanitize the garden shears in alcohol to prevent the fungus from spreading. And this worked. For now, the situation is under control and our garden seems healthy.
I am assuming the fire blight was on fruit trees ? Fire blight does not hit stone fruit ! Have no idea who you consulted with but had you checked with the major universities you would have gotten a different answer ! Once fire blight hits there is little you can do except deal with the aftermath as I did ! It hit all our apple trees and the 40+ year old pear tree !! The consensus was just to leave them alone as long as the blight did not get into the trunk of the tree ! This is exactly what I did !! They said to not prune at all ! That was two years ago ! The next year fruit was minimal and had the brown spots that goes along with the blight but the branches had started to produce new leaves at the tip ! With fire blight the leaves do not drop off the tree but just turn a rusty red color as if burnt and dead. They also said leave them alone they will eventually be replaced with new leaves ! They were correct ! This is the second year and all the branches have regenerated and fruit production is almost back to normal ! I would advise not not ask local pest control people but go to the website of any major university for correct information !
Oh my God, what is that? I didn't even know this stuff existed. I used to grow vegetables in wooden crates and then I was going to transplant them. I saw something that looked like mould in the ground and it smelled awful. Is that some kind of pest? If I were you, I would order specialists to deal with these crop and flower killers. Fungus can also be caused by mould, it's a fungal infestation. And by the way, it's not eggs, it's yellow spores. Then there's a sack like a bird's nest. And from there a new generation of pests grows.
I was interested to read that a fungus has a cell wall and exudes enzymes to digest food externally but the molds like dog vomit slime mold envelope their food source and digest it internally more like an amoeba. DG eats refuse organic matter and proteins and so can show up in richer soil.
This thread was started quite some time ago I notice. It puzzles me that anyone should be concerned with a little fungal activity on the soil. It is nearly always just a naturally occurring garden help, as it cleans up the dead litter left on the ground and works at it to turn it into good rich soil. I cannot see how it can cause such panic. All part of nature!
Oh -The Island Life! You can be forgiven since you live safely across the pond but over here we grew up with this:
