When will mushrooms be gone?

Q: We cut down two large trees and had the stumps ground up, plus we had lots of dirt brought in to fill the holes. This summer we sodded with zoysia but now the yard is covered with mushrooms. Help what do we do to rid of them. Help! What do we do to get rid of them? We did pre emerge.

A: You won’t be rid of them until they have completed their mission on earth Earth: to decompose buried wood. You gave the naturally occurring fungi that live in soil a big meal when you ground the stumps and covered the chips with sod. The always-hungry fungi pounced on the wood particles and chowed down. After a big meal, a fungus’s mind turns to sex. But fungi don’t reproduce like mammals; instead they reproduce by spreading millions of spores across the landscape, hoping one or two will find a moist, dark space with a tiny morsel of pine to munch on. They spread their spores by sending up a white trunk that ends in a structure that houses the tiny agents of reproduction: the mushroom cap. The good news is that lawn mushrooms are usually not poisonous. In nature they would dry up and be eaten by the very fungi they contain. If you find them distasteful as lawn decorations, put on gloves, pick them up, put in a bag, and put that in the garbage. Don’t be surprised if you see another flush of mushrooms every time it rains. This will continue until all of the wood chips have been consumed.