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Toadstools in your coco substrate? · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hello there, welcome back to Hydroponics Daily. Today's subject is what to do
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  when you find toadstools and mushrooms growing in your grow media, in your compost.
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  You might panic, you might think, oh my god, I've got a disease,
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  or you might think, oh it's okay, it's mycorrhizal fungi, they are of benefit to my plants.
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  However, neither are really true.
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  So by far the most common species
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  you'll find is a fungus that's.
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  Yellow and it grows in cocoa substrates normally.
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  And it's called the flowerpot parasol or
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  the yellow parasol or the
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  flowerpot parasol or the plant pot
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  dappling that's nice isn't it the plant pot dappling it's
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  a species of gilled mushroom in the agaraceae family
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  so the same family as the fly agaric a hallucinogenic red
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  and white toadstool that is famous
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  for both being poisonous and hallucinogenic however
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  its scientific name is leukocoprinus burn
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  balmy easy for me to
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  say it is toxic so don't eat it
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  don't just pick up a few mushrooms and try to eat it what they
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  say about mushrooms and when someone says can i eat this and
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  a mycologist will often say a mycologist
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  is somebody who studies mushrooms will say you can eat anything
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  once and but yeah don't eat
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  leukocoprunus burn balmia because
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  it's poisonous however it's not doing your plants any
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  harm it's not doing them pretty much any good
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  either what it's doing is just eating your
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  grow media it's what plant scientists used to call a saprophite which means
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  eats dead material however it's now called a saprotroth and that's because fungi
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  are not plants and phyte means plants so it's not a saprophite it's a saprotroth
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  meaning it eats dead material.
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  Mushrooms and toadstools are more closely related to
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  you than they are a plant so traditionally before we knew this people used to
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  think just lump plants and fungi together but now when you eat a mushroom you're
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  more closely related to eating to meat than you are to a plant interesting it's
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  basically it's basically,
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  fungi are like animals but they just stay still
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  they don't photosynthesize they don't make their
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  own meat they eat anyway back to the flowerpot parasol it's it's it's normally
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  occurring when the growing media is a bit too wet and so it's decomposing and
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  it's the conditions are right for fungal growth and then the fun the the toadstool
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  appears when it's when it's matured.
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  And the toadstool represents only a
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  tiny fraction a couple of percent of the actual biomass of
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  the whole plant so if you've got the toadstools a vast quantity
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  of them is in the grow media growing and eating your grow media so
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  not doing a massive amount of damage but probably degrading
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  your grow media over time and i wouldn't worry about it it's a sign that you've
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  not put anything on your grow media that's going to kill your plants there are
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  a lot of chemicals and additives that are sold to hydroponic growers or tried
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  to be sold to hydroponic growers that are really poisonous to soil biology.
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  So if you were applying, say, a copper-based fertilizer,
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  there's a number of these that have appeared on the market recently,
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  which is pissing me off because I hate copper-based fertilizers because they
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  are extremely toxic and bad for biology and bad for plants and bad for users.
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  If you were applying one of those copper-based products, then you wouldn't have
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  the flower pot parasol it would have killed it off and you would have killed
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  off all the good other good biology that you never get to see things like springtails
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  and planktonic bacteria and.
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  Protozoa and things like that so i wouldn't worry about it
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  i'd use it a bit like springtails as a sign that
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  your your grow media is healthy and you've
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  not killed off the soil biology yes it might be in your grow media just
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  like springtails might be a bit but don't worry obviously spores
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  can be an issue if you inhale a shed load of spores into
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  your lungs then you can get
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  something called farmer's lung but you can get that from mildew like
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  if you shook all your plants that had mildew then you
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  can get something called farmer's lung it doesn't have to be a toxic fungus
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  to do that it just suddenly your body takes in so much fungus that your lungs
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  get coated in spores so don't do that as I say so the the flowerpot parasol
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  is a yellow fungus I have seen it in hydroponic distributors'
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  warehouses, where they've stored rack upon rack of cocoa.
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  And the cocoa they've brought in has been too wet and all
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  the parasol fungus has grown
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  out of the bags out of the holes the little
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  air pockets in the bags it's really interesting and but
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  nothing to worry about and you probably couldn't sell
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  that that bag of cocoa if it had you'd probably want
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  to remove that before you tried to sell it one issue
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  where this fungus can be a problem is in
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  pot plants and houseplants because it produces
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  something called sclerotia and if you
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  listen to my other podcast serial killers you know sclerotia are
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  a mass of spores that
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  develop in fungus in certain parts of its life cycle they're fairly
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  big and they sit on the soil surface and with the problem with the the parasol
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  dappling or you know the flowerpot parasol is that these because it's from a
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  yellow fungus they sit on the surface and they sort of look like dust.
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  Or i don't know i don't know what you describe it as like
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  tiny little blobs on the surface and they just look unsightly
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  so if you're going something like an orchid then people won't
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  buy it if they've got this on it so that's
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  something to consider as well if you're growing a plant that's where you're
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  also selling the grow media these can be a big
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  problem and it's it's a fungus common throughout
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  the tropics and subtropics and you think well why is
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  it growing in you know scotland or ohio or
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  you know ireland and that's because it's coming
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  in on bags of cocoa so it's coming in from sri lanka and indonesia and places
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  like that so that's why you're getting it in england and australia and north
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  america europe places like that so it's very common so you might I often find
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  it peaks in July and August in these places when it's really hot.
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  What else can we say about it? Toxicity, it all cause stomach upset.
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  And gastrointestinal irritant the north
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  carolina state university classifies the species as
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  having a medium severity poison characteristics so it's
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  not like the deadly you know what death cap or something like that you know
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  that that woman tried to in australia killed all her family with or allegedly
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  so the trial is currently ongoing let's say yeah she's accused of killing her
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  family with the deadly caps of some species.
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  This one is medium severity.
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  Wouldn't be my weapon of choice if I was going to knock someone off.
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  The yellow colour is from an alkaloid known as burn bimans.
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  So it's got its own type of chemical for its pigment, which is pretty cool.
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  I mean, not many funguses have that.
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  I mean, not sure if anyone's actually looked
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  at usefulness of that of that pigment but it'd
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  be it's interesting to know you know could be a side project for
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  anyone who's got loads of these fungi growing and we've we've
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  had certainly had lots of it in our grow room when we've been growing in cocoa
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  and it starts to contain a number of interesting antimicrobial compounds
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  and the you know scientific community
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  is on the lookout for new antibiotics because of antibiotic resistance
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  and so it could be a new source of antibiotic antibiotics
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  other fungi you might find in
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  plants coming from around the world the number of mycorrhizae have
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  been found growing like at kew gardens they
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  in their australian plants and things they find amazing
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  and wacky toadstools appearing every now.
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  And again and normally they're completely harmless
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  i don't know of any fungi that have been introduced that
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  massive issue mycorrhizae wise but you
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  could get a plant disease that is infected comes
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  in on an infected plant disease infected plant grow media
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  things like sudden oak death ash dieback
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  what's the big one in grapes and olives xylella something
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  like that xylella something like that and all
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  and grapes as well olives grapes grapes
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  was phyloxera the yeah so
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  need to be you need to be careful when it comes to importing plants and that's
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  why plants come with a phytosanitary certificate but grow media doesn't interestingly
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  so you often you will get these saprotros but they're not plant diseases so
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  nothing to worry about that's been hydroponics daily for today what to do if you get a crazy,
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  toadstool yellow toadstool appearing in your grow room don't eat it it's not
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  a magic mushroom it's not edible just chill out really that's been hydroponics
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  daily for today i'm off home to eat some fish and chips.
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  See you again tomorrow. Thank you very much for listening.