Mushrooms can quickly develop in areas that stay wet for extended periods. They can also inhabit your yard if you are overwatering the plants or there’s no proper drainage setup in the area. Another condition to favor their growth includes shades provided by excessive tree branches.
Fungal growth in a lawn indicates its unhealthiness and indicates that you must give your garden a thorough clean. Don’t stress if you have witnessed mushrooms’ growth in your yard. Removing them is simple if you use the right ingredients and techniques.
Read on as we enlist seven tried-and-tested methods to get rid of mushrooms in the yard. Following these techniques makes the fungi removal process quicker and simpler.
7 Effective Ways to Get Rid of Mushrooms In the Yard
1. Avoid Overwatering the Lawn
Mushrooms need wetness to survive and reproduce. A lack of skin hinders their moisture retaining capability. Hence, they require wet environments to live for extended periods and produce offspring. You can avoid water accumulation in your yard by preventing overwatering the plants. Morning hours are the ideal duration to hydrate the greenery. Following this regime once or twice a week is enough for the flourishing plant health.
In this way, you can prevent uncontrolled growth by devoiding them of the vital need for moisture. It would halt their fast reproduction while the current ones also start dying steadily. Flattening the ground also helps prevent water accumulation at various spots, giving rise to the unwanted fungi in your beautiful garden. You should also consider cleaning the mulch’s organic matter as it houses considerable water for mushrooms to grow, live, and reproduce.
2. Hand Pick Mushrooms
Taking quick action upon witnessing mushroom growth includes removing them with your hands. However, you must be careful during the task. Wearing gloves is essential to protect your skin from coming in contact with toxic elements, as it may cause a breakout of skin allergies. You should throw them in a bag and secure it with a knot before tossing the bag in the garbage bin. Many people make the mistake of mixing decayed material with handpicked mushrooms. You must avoid this activity as the spores would release at the initial rate, leading to more fungal growth.
Other options for removing mushrooms include using a mower machine or a shovel. You can run the lawnmower to pull them off from their roots. A shovel can also shatter their uncontrolled growth. You must not wait for these fungi to grow larger and start reproducing to pollute your lawn. Get on your toes instantly and use your hands to eliminate excessive fungal growth. It’s crucial to restore the beauty of your garden.
Fungal Regrowth
Don’t forget to spray a fungicide to stop the growth completely. Not following this step can lead to regrowing mushrooms as their mycelium is still present to spread spores and reproduce.
3. Use Nitrogen Fertilizer
The nitrogen fertilizer performs a two-in-one function of improving plant growth and reproduction by enhancing soil nitrogen availability. It also enhances the decaying rate of organic matter. Since mushrooms feed on organic things, they’d get devoid of the required nutrition to grow. It would lead to the quick end of their life cycle ultimately.
Be sure to use it in a limited amount, as an overdose of nitrogen fertilizer can lead to soil degradation. It can also mix with groundwater to release nitrous oxide gas, a massive contributor to the greenhouse effect and acid rain. Also, crops with a high amount of nitrogen can harm human health.
4. Try Natural Ingredients like Vinegar and Baking Soda
The most natural way of removing mushrooms in your yard is to cut off their nutrition sources, i.e., the organic matter. They’d slowly die and, finally, say goodbye to your lawn. For this purpose, you must eliminate things like an old remaining portion of a trunk, animal feces, and leftover grass. These are a few items vital in providing nutritional value to mushrooms to help their normal and quick growth.
Besides the absolute natural method, you can also try out a few ingredients to get rid of this problem. The most common choices include vinegar and baking soda. Let’s explore how both components can help you clean off your garden from mushrooms.
Vinegar
Vinegar is a common kitchen ingredient that provides richness to any dish. However, you can also use it to kill the fungal growth in your yard. Most people use regular household vinegar for this purpose but get disappointed with no results. It’s because it is highly diluted to affect mushrooms’ life cycle.
You must purchase an agricultural vinegar that’s more than 30% concentrated for ideal outcomes. Vinegar’s potent ingredient of citric acid is responsible for this action. Many topical applications also contain this element to cease bacterial and fungal populations.
How to Use Vinegar to Kill Mushrooms?
Mix water with vinegar in a ratio of 4:1 to dilute it to a specific limit. Now pour the mixture into a spray bottle to conveniently apply it to the mushrooms. Don’t forget to wear glasses and gloves, as horticultural vinegar is strong enough to leave painful burns on your skin. You must also be extremely careful when spraying it on the field, as vinegar can destroy grass or plants.
Baking Soda
If you want to avoid the harsh vinegar spraying method, then a safe solution lies with baking soda. This ingredient can’t kill mushrooms directly, but its mechanism of action indirectly affects their growing life cycle. Since soda is an alkaline material, it can raise the pH of soil. Mushrooms like inhabiting acidic environments. They usually die or become devoid of reproduction when a favorable atmosphere is snatched from them.
Baking soda is a potent fungicide and can even kill grown mushrooms, including black spots and powdery mildew. However, it’s a slow process and can’t solve the problem of fungal growth permanently, but it’s gentle on beautiful plants and greenery of your yard.
How to Use Baking Soda to Kill Mushrooms?
You should incorporate at least two tablespoons of baking soda into 3 liters of water. Keep mixing until it gets dissolved completely. Now you can apply a similar method of pouring this mixture into a spray bottle and shower the liquid on mushrooms. This step will lower their growth, and their reproduction will cease eventually.
You can skip this step to pour the powder directly over mushrooms and sprinkle water separately. However, this may not show quick results, and you must repeat the process every other day to receive satisfactory outcomes.
5. Pour Soapy Water
Dish soap comprises surfactants that can hinder the growth of mushrooms and eventually kill them. They do so by fracturing the fungal cell wall to dry it. You can use this method to witness quick results as it goes deep down the soil to eliminate even a trace of fungi with the potential to regrow.
How to Use Soap Water to Get Rid of Mushrooms in Yard?
Take around 10 liters of water and mix two tablespoons of any dishwasher to form a solution. You can use it in two equally effective ways. The first method includes handpicking the mushrooms and pouring soap water into the holes to avoid further growth.
If you don’t want to go through this hefty process, then opt for the alternative technique. It includes poking holes in the sand surrounding the fungal growth and draining the soapy liquid into them. This approach will discontinue the mushroom growth from the root.
6. Eliminate Organic Matters
Fungi are saprotrophs decomposers that feed on decayed organic matter to get the required nutrition. It can include anything from animal waste to grass clippings and compost piles. If you have any such things on your lawn, be quick to remove them, or else the mushrooms will find their way to inhabit the space.
7. Upgrade the Drainage System
Your lawn must have a proper drainage system to avoid water accumulation in the ground. Since moisture is a favorable growing condition for mushrooms, it must be avoided at all costs. You can either install a French drain system in your yard or simply avoid overwatering the plants.
Such a drainage system is effective in emptying water automatically from any space. It comprises a pit with loose aggregation of rock fragments with a perforated pipe to prevent water from pooling in your backyard. You can also DIY a french drain by purchasing the required pipes and tools, depending on the acres of your lawn.
Final Thoughts
Thinking of eliminating the mushrooms that appear as an unpleasant sight on your beautiful lawn? Try out our seven proven methods to accomplish the task. Although mushrooms benefit from their decaying activity, their presence in a yard is useless. Instead, they destroy its beauty. Don’t wait long and get on your toes to remove this nuisance from your yard by following any of the above techniques. They are simple to follow and wouldn’t cost you an arm and a leg.
