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It is still cold nowadays (mid-April) in east-France, so I started my vegetables inside a winter garden.

I planted some tomatoes seeds in a large pot of mine, which I had previously filled with garden earth and home-made compost. Since the compost contains various seeds, I got lot of life growing in there!

compost with garden seeds

And what a surprise when I saw there was mushrooms growing too:

They look to me as they belong to the Coprinus family.

If my experiment goes well and I am able to raise my black radishes to a point where I can eat them, is it going to be an issue to have mushrooms growing around? I was thinking it could be an issue because mushrooms root may mix together with my radishes.

Mushrooms grow close to my plants: radishes and various weeds

I ate the reddish in the end

And they do taste great! No mushroom taste.

J. Chomel
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  • related: https://gardening.stackexchange.com/questions/35767/fungi-by-a-passiflora-plant-identification – J. Chomel Oct 11 '17 at 07:21

1 Answers1

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No, it's not going to make your radishes inedible, toxic or taste funny. I agree they look like Coprinus of some variety, and Coprinus are edible, though I wouldn't recommend eating them without a definite ID. Regarding the radishes you're growing, bear in mind that, although you can see the mushrooms right now, they are only the fruiting body of underground mycelium, which is obviously present in the soil in your window box (probably came in with the garden soil or, if your garden compost had woody bits on it, with that). Soil outdoors has numbers of different mycelium in it of which we are unaware until they suddenly produce a crop of mushrooms or toadstools, so even if you'd planted your radishes outdoors, having already dug in your garden compost to the soil, they may well have been surrounded by the same mycelium present in the box. Remove the mushrooms as they appear, unless you like the look of them, they will eventually stop appearing. Over time, you may find other things appearing in the planting mix in the trough - you don't say whether you produce your garden compost using a hot, aerobic method to kill pathogens, but even if you do, adding soil straight from the garden would render the growing medium unsterile.

Bamboo
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    This is even evidenced by how soil tends to lose its looseness over time even though we haven't compacted it. It's the mycelia growing fibers through everything the knits it all together. It can happen in a little as a few days sometimes, especially as noted when you have woody loam. – Escoce Apr 13 '16 at 20:05
  • Thanks Bamboo! I will let the little Coprinus guys live, and see if they invite other friends... – J. Chomel Apr 14 '16 at 06:12