How to Get Rid of Mushrooms in Houseplants? Best Practical Ways

If you are searching for a practical way to kill mushrooms in potted plants, welcome to this post. I’m a horticultural advisor (my academic major is plant protection) and want to tell you how to get rid of mushrooms in houseplants. keep reading.

Although in my previous post, I discussed mushrooms growing in houseplants including their types (yellow mushrooms, indoor brown mushrooms, white mushrooms, and grey mushrooms), before diving into their removal, let’s have a brief overview of them by answering some of the most frequent questions that people often ask me.

Is it Bad if Mushrooms Are Growing in My Potted Plants?

You must know that not only are mushrooms not harmful to your potted plants, but they are also beneficial for houseplants. They feed on decayed material in soil and convert it to nutrient food for your potted plant. Thanks to mushrooms.

However, mushrooms in houseplants are hazards for your family, pets, and you. you must assume they as toxic mushrooms and that eating them can cause various problems. So, if you have curious kids or playful pets, you have to take them away from mushrooms in houseplants.

In addition, mushrooms produce thousands of tiny spores that fly in your house’s atmosphere. They can cause allergic reactions in some people. Additionally, these tiny spores will spread throughout your house. so, after a while, you may spot mushrooms growing in humid places such as bathrooms, kitchens, carpets, etc.

By and large, is it bad if mushrooms are growing in my potted plants? In some cultures, people believe that growing mushrooms in houseplants is good luck. If you are interested to know “Are mushrooms in houseplants good luck?”, I discussed it in my previous post with almost all mushroom superstitions. Reading it can be fun for you.

Should I Remove Mushrooms from My Plants?

Based on the notes mentioned above, it’s dependent on you whether remove mushrooms from your plants or not. If you have kids or pets, a history of respiratory allergy in your family members, or there are various humid places in your house, you should kill mushrooms in houseplants. Otherwise, you can leave them to do their things.

Mushrooms will be beneficial for your house plant. They will provide nutrition for your plant. In addition, they will give a touch of beauty and naturality to your indoor decor. You can find them in various colours. Anyway, if you think you should get rid of them, keep reading.

How to Get Rid of Mushrooms in Houseplants?

Here, I will help you to kill mushrooms in your houseplant soil and tell you how to prevent their spread to other houseplant pots. let’s get going.

To kill mushrooms in houseplant soil, you must know two points about them:

•  ➡ What you see on top of the soil is their fruit body (cap and stem). Their main body of mushrooms lives inside the soil and is spread through all of it. You can see a complete mushroom in the below image. Hence, when you cut mushrooms, you don’t eradicate them, you only cut their fruit body. So, The mushrooms will pop up again soon.

•  ➡ When you see the caps of mushrooms in your houseplant soil, it means they will spread thousands of tiny spores in the atmosphere of your house soon that will infect other potting soils and humid places of your home.

So, how we must deal with mushrooms in houseplant soil?

You can get rid of mushrooms in houseplants by doing the following remedies:

•  💡 Change the infested potted soil: it is the best way. You must repot your plant with new uninfected soil. You should wash roots to ensure that don’t maintain any infected soil around them. In addition, clean and wash pot to remove stuck hyphae and spores.
•  💡 Change the topsoil: repotting plants and washing their roots may get them shocked and your plant will be hit. If you are concerned about this, you can remove the topsoil and replace it with new uninfected soil.

Most population of the mushroom hyphae are concentrated in topsoil, hence, if you repeat it several times, you will get rid of mushrooms in your houseplant. However, you must be patient to see notable results.

• 💡 Prevent spreading mushrooms by cutting the caps. When you spot mushrooms in potted plants, you must immediately cut the caps to prevent their increasing. If you pill them up completely with a few soils around them, you will decrease their population significantly.
•  💡  Prevent their growth by changing their favourite conditions. Do you know what mushrooms need to grow? A rich and wet soil along with warm environments. You can stop growing mushrooms in houseplant soils if you keep drying out the topsoil or remove decayed material from it and provide a cooler condition.

How to Prevent Mushrooms in Houseplants?

Please notice to below infographic. It is a Disease Triangle. For every infection, must three factors be provided:

• Host
• A Pathogen
• A suitable environmental condition for infection.

 💡 To prevent any disease, you have to remove at least one of the corners of the Disease Triangle.

Although mushrooms in houseplants are not pathogens and the potted soil is not a living host, we can use this triangle to design a strategy to prevent growing mushrooms in potted plants. How? keep reading.

To prevent mushrooms in houseplant soils, you must focus on the corners of mushrooms and a suitable environment of the Triangle and try to remove them (due to you cannot remove soil and grow your indoor plant in water).

To break the mushroom corner of the triangle, you must use uninfected soils for your houseplant. However, if a lot of mushrooms are in your yard, their spores will fly into the house from a window and will infest the soil. In this situation, you must pill up their caps from the garden or yard before producing thousands of spores.

Another way is considering the “Suitable environment” corner of the triangle and trying to change it. for example, by decreasing soil humidity, providing a cooler environment or removing decaying materials from the soil.

Conclusion

In this article, I told you how to get rid of mushrooms in houseplants. Although mushrooms are beneficial friends of plants and provide nutrient foods for them, they can be dangerous for your family or pets.

I think the best way to kill mushrooms in potted plants is reporting with uninfected soil or pill up mushrooms with their around topsoil. What do you think? Do you know a homemade fungicide that can help us with this issue? please share your ideas and experiences with our readers below this page.