If you grow your cannabis outdoors or indoors using soil then you are probably no stranger to random things growing alongside your plants. It’s always a little bit of a shock to go into your garden and see random dandelions or mushrooms starting to come out of the soil.
Mushrooms in particular are more common than you think, especially in outdoor cannabis gardens. You’ll often see mushrooms growing in cool soil that is moist but not soaked through, much like what a cannabis plant would reside in.
Mushrooms reproduce by spores that travel through the air which can land in the soil that your cannabis plants are in. If you ever see them popping up in your indoor grow then it means that the spores were in the soil when you brought it in.
It’s a pretty cool evolutionary tactic to reproduce that way and it’s been found to have some positive effects on the cannabis plant in terms of soil health and nutrient absorption.
Mushrooms feed off the cannabis roots
Attached to the roots of whatever host plant it landed on, a mushroom will exchange nutrients with the plant. These nutrients work with your cannabis to produce the sugars that the mushroom needs to live. As you can see it is a symbiotic relationship that benefits both the plant and the mushrooms.
Mushrooms are also responsible for breaking down matter into nutrients that are available for plants to absorb. This can be anything from dead root material to actual dead animal bodies. The interesting thing is that mushrooms seem to do this more efficiently than bacteria or bugs.
Don’t remove mushrooms from the soil
You should celebrate when you see mushrooms growing around your cannabis plants as it means that you have a healthy microbiome in the soil. Some people often confuse mushrooms or fungi with mold and other unwanted pathogens.
The confusion lies in that mold development is a result of stagnation or nothing happening whereas mushroom growth is a great sign of decomposition and bioavailability opening up.
Removing any mushrooms would potentially damage the fragile root systems and ruin an efficient nutrient managing station for your cannabis plants.
Some mushrooms act as pest deterrents for your cannabis as they can be toxic to insects if ingested.
Of course, it also applies to domestic animals so if you don’t want any harm done to your pet, keep them away from your cannabis.
Mushrooms are also incredibly prolific in that as soon as you see the caps above the soil line they have already spread their spores.
If you are looking at getting rid of mushrooms you should keep this in mind as they will keep coming back. Of course, you wouldn’t want to get rid of any mushrooms in your garden because they are doing nothing negative by being there.
In the end, you could have worse things growing in your cannabis garden. At least in the case of mushrooms popping up, it means that you have healthy soil and a healthy cannabis plant.
