Artillery Fungus
 

Our home in NJ has Artillery Fungus in the front flower bed. It is awful stuff, shooting spores onto the house and windows up to 20 feet and the stuff turns hard and sticks like glue. Only way to remove all these tiny black spots is to scrape each one individually and make sure the spore does not get on the ground. It will start the cycle all over again. The fungus feeds on decomposing wood mulch and sprouts in a moist environment between 50 and 70 degrees. I'm in the process of removing all the mulch then I plan to get to work to rid our vinyl siding of the black spore spots.

All the articles I've been reading about this fungus say that a large bark mulch is best to prevent the emergence of this pesty fungus. Annual turning of the mulch and topping off with about an inch of mulch will prevent the Artillery Fungus from sprouting.

The reason why I'm telling you my tale of woe is we have a home in The Villages and two seasons ago we had the same type of mulch added to all the flower beds. It is a black wood shredded mulch. I do plan to have all this mulch removed as I don't want this same problem to develop. Just wondering if any of you have heard of Artillery Fungus and has there been a problem with this fungus in The Villages.

Thanks.

News to me and I sincerely hope to never encounter it. Think I've had enough with butt rot, pine beetles, ticks and Army worms and let us nor forget the ever ubiquitous lovebug.

You mean there are other nasty problems I have to look forward to? We've owned a home in TV for the past 7 years and I guess we've been lucky so far. We aren't there for the love bug season though.

From what I've read about this dreaded fungus is it feeds on wood mulch but doesn't like bark mulch. I'll be using either pine bark or cedar to replace the mulch in NJ.

Butt rot comes from Queen Anne palms and is becoming very common here. Pine beetles is self explanatory, I hope. Ticks are known to thrive in pine straw. Army worms are having a ball munching on our grass from one end of TV to the other. If you have little white moths flying around your grass, call your lawn exterminator ASAP. Easy to treat but very damaging. Lovebugs just generally yucky.

[QUOTE=coffeebean;958631]Our home in NJ has Artillery Fungus in the front flower bed. It is awful stuff, shooting spores onto the house and windows up to 20 feet and the stuff turns hard and sticks like glue. Only way to remove all these tiny black spots is to scrape each one individually and make sure the spore does not get on the ground. It will start the cycle all over again. The fungus feeds on decomposing wood mulch and sprouts in a moist environment between 50 and 70 degrees. I'm in the process of removing all the mulch then I plan to get to work to rid our vinyl siding of the black spore spots.

All the articles I've been reading about this fungus say that a large bark mulch is best to prevent the emergence of this pesty fungus. Annual turning of the mulch and topping off with about an inch of mulch will prevent the Artillery Fungus from sprouting.

The reason why I'm telling you my tale of woe is we have a home in The Villages and two seasons ago we had the same type of mulch added to all the flower beds. It is a black wood shredded mulch. I do plan to have all this mulch removed as I don't want this same problem to develop. Just wondering if any of you have heard of Artillery Fungus and has there been a problem with this fungus in The Villages. QUOTE]

I've been trying to find something on this artillery fungus that would relate to central Florida. All I've been able to find about it has been in the northeastern states such as Pennsylvania, Maryland, etc.

While I realize this has been a problem up north for many years, as a Florida Master Gardner I've never heard about it and was never taught anything about it when I took the Master Gardner course.

Do you have any information that would relate to this part of Florida?

The 2 cases I have seen the last couple of years were in dyed shredded hardwood mulch. One black, one red.

Artillery Fungus.
 

My mother told me you could get fungus from the infantry too.:angel:

[OUOTE All the articles I've been reading about this fungus say that a large bark mulch is best to prevent the emergence of this pesty fungus. Annual turning of the mulch and topping off with about an inch of mulch will prevent the Artillery Fungus from sprouting.

The reason why I'm telling you my tale of woe is we have a home in The Villages and two seasons ago we had the same type of mulch added to all the flower beds. It is a black wood shredded mulch. I do plan to have all this mulch removed as I don't want this same problem to develop. Just wondering if any of you have heard of Artillery Fungus and has there been a problem with this fungus in The Villages. QUOTE]

I've been trying to find something on this artillery fungus that would relate to central Florida. All I've been able to find about it has been in the northeastern states such as Pennsylvania, Maryland, etc.

While I realize this has been a problem up north for many years, as a Florida Master Gardner I've never heard about it and was never taught anything about it when I took the Master Gardner course.

Do you have any information that would relate to this part of Florida? [/QUOTE]

We saw artillery fungus on Monday Nov 10 in the annex plant clinic. It's shredded hardwood mulch that is the culprit (often nothing more than shredded pallets). The color of the mulch is not going to change anything. The hardwood mulch needs to be removed and either eucalyptus, maleleuca, or pine bark mulch (smaller nuggets or just pine bark ) should be applied and "fluffed" a couple of times per summer.

I have it. I had cypress mulch down for the last 5 1/2 years I lived here and then last winter we put rocks down. It happened on the north side of my home which hardly ever dries out. I live in Springdale and am still dealing with it. ARGH!!!! My house washer found it a couple years ago and informed me of it.

I like the look of mulch. It took me a while to get used to rocks in the landscaping beds.

Many years ago, up north, I had a problem with dog-barf fungus. Yes. That is exactly what it looks like. Dog Barf. It is not as bad as artillery fungus because it just shows up in blobs but does not shoot.

I learned then that I needed to switch to ALL-BARK mulch. The secret ingredients are "all" and "bark."

All-bark mulch is more expensive, at first, than the dyed and shredded wooden pallets, but the all-bark lasts much longer. You do not have to add as much each year. Cypress is my favorite to use back home, but it is getting harder to find, making it even more expensive. So I started using all-bark pine nuggets, medium size. (It comes in different sizes.)

In TV I will keep the rocks. But I am assuming that if using mulch in TV, it would be best to use all-bark to avoid fungus. I am not a master gardener. I am just taking a guess based on northern fungus experience.

Be it artillery fungus or dog-barf fungus, we do not need either kind of fungus amongus.

If you like having mulch in TV, maybe using all-bark will avoid some problems. Just remember that is all-bark mulch not all-barf mulch.


EEK! I just looked at "preview post" and this thing has substituted an emoticon for the word b-a-r-f except for in one spot. I have tried to make the puking emoticon go away but it will not. While I am sure anybody reading this will figure out what it means, it is annoying that the little puking picture took over my post and will not let me get rid of it. I have tried 3 times and just do not care anymore. I fought the emoticon and the emoticon won.