I'd leave them unless they are in the way. 'Shrooms are decomposers and should just help in converting organics (like straw) into fertile soil. You might ask a local mushroom expert to ID them for you (there should be plenty in your area). If the mushrooms are edibles, like the bluets I had in my garden leaf mold a few years ago, pluck 'em and eat 'em. But don't eat them unless you're SURE.

Thank you!

Where in your garden are they growing? I've been told that edible mushrooms are found growing around old tree trunks or some sort of bark and those found growing in a field should be avoided like the plague. Someone suggested boiling them with a coin and if the water turns black, discard. Could be an old wives tale but unless one is truly knowledgeable in recognizing an edible mushroom, I'd be very very careful experimenting.

Thank you. We have deadly ones in the area and I have no experience, so eating them is out of the question. They just grew in the garden soil. After an unusual spring with 6 weeks of near-daily rain, cold and even hail, when it warmed up, we saw mushrooms we'd never seen before all over - in the garden, around the exterior house drainage, in the woods.

Mushrooms are much maligned and mis-understood. Don't rely on old-wives tales -- do the research. Fact, is, there are relatively few deadly mushrooms. Most are not really edible but fun to look at and study, and a number are excellent eating and are pretty easy to identify if you take the time and effort to study them.

If you wnat to learn about mushrooms for eating, first learn to identify those few that are deadly. Many of us who are not expert mushroom hunters avoid "LBMs" (little brown mushrooms) because there are so many types and are so hard to identify, including the deadly galerina.

The next step is to learn the truely choice mushrooms that are hard to confuse with the deadly or in-edible -- these include hen of the woods, oyster mushroom, sulpher shelf, and morrels. Once you have some confidence, you can move on to some of the big families that can be a little confusing like the boletes, including the delectable porchini. It is important to note whether they grow on wood or in soil but that information is pertinent only to correct identification and does not give any indication of edibility.

I often get mushroom compost from the local mushroom plant. Sometimes there are live spores in there. One year we dug out (from my 24" deep bed) a whole clump of them, they were just like the white ones we buy in the store from that plant -- except, they were like 10" diameter... I had no idea those things could get so monstrous! They tasted the same though.