The mysterious fairy ring

Of all the maladies that affect our lawns perhaps none is as mysterious as fairy ring. How strange it is that one morning you wake up, look out at the lawn and there is a perfect half or three-quarter circle of mushrooms growing.

How did they get there? What strange circumstances were being played out on your lawn while you slept?

Fairy ring occurs when mushroom spores of certain species find a suitable environment in which to grow; one with plenty of moisture and organic matter. How does your lawn qualify?

Perhaps the soil is very rich and doesn’t drain properly. Perhaps there was wood buried in the soil during house construction.

Is there a drain field running under the lawn close to the surface? Was there a tree removed at one time, leaving roots underground to decay?

Any of these scenarios will provide the right conditions for mushroom growth. All it takes is a period of above average moisture and presto, the lawn looks like it was visited by aliens.

Chances are that if proper growing conditions exist in one area of the lawn they will in another and the problem will worsen over time.

So what can be done about it? There is no quick fix solution to rid the lawn of fairy ring.

It is never a fatal problem however and maybe if you left them alone they would form themselves into some kind of work of art that might go viral on social media! But leaving fairy ring will eventually result in dead spots in the lawn so you would do well to deal with it before then.

The most effective method of control is to aerate the affected area by poking holes through the lawn to break up the “mycelium layer” that is feeding the mushrooms and watering heavily to try and leach out the organic matter which has built up.

A piece of Redi-rod pounded into the soil will work well for this. Fertilize the area as well so that the dark green grass which is commonly seen in an area with fairy ring, fed by the mushrooms breaking down soil for their own growth, doesn’t show as much.

Pick off the mushrooms by hand because mowing them will only help to spread the spores.

Mushrooms are just the fruiting bodies of the fungi, which probably exist all the time anyway in the lawn. It’s only when we receive more rain than usual or the lawn is being irrigated to excess that the mushrooms appear above the surface.

Mushrooms can appear randomly in our lawns throughout the growing season regardless of whether the conditions exist for fairy ring.

Pick them off by hand, don’t even think about eating them and you’ll likely never see them again.