I wonder if you have a liverwort. In my damp climate, it's a pain to remove, I've even sliced it off soil with my old garden knife. (and I now remove about a half inch of soil of any containerized plant I buy and discard that top material before planting in my garden)

Spraying it with Safer brand algae killer works, but that can damage foliage of plants you don't want injured if you aren't very careful. I find it dies out and doesn't return if you cover with a couple of inches of mulch or compost.

Here is a link that might be useful: liverwort

Dounds like dog vomit fungus to me.
Linda C

Here is a link that might be useful: Ick!!

Morz and Linda,

Thanks for those links...truly some gross stuff but alas not what I'm finding in my flowerbed :(

Morz the stuff in my garden is not green, it's tan in color.

Linda, this stuff in my garden doesn't lay on top it is in the ground but does not appear to have any roots. It's a mass not at all slimy like the one you showed me.

I have some spare time right now, so I'm going to dig around the internet and see if I can find it.

I'll share when I discover the cause of the fugliness in my garden.

Thanks to both of you for your attempts :)

I found it...it's called Peziza vesiculosa.

Here is what I could find about it:

Sporocarp: Fruiting body 2-5 cm broad, sessile, globose, becoming urn-shaped, often contorted when clustered; margin incurved, remaining so in age, at times eroded or cracked in age; hymenium (inner surface) light-brown, pale yellow-brown to medium brown, frequently convoluted or wrinkled; outer surface granulose to furfuraceous, sometimes indistinctly so when weathered, tan, pale-buff, to nearly white; flesh thin, pale yellow-brown, fragile; odor and taste mild.

Spores: Spores 20-24 x 11-13 µm, elliptical, smooth, lacking oil droplets; white in deposit.

Habitat: Scattered to clustered on manure (especially horse manure), and composted straw; common around stables and horse pastures; fruiting fall, winter and spring.

Edibility: Unknown.

Comments: A combination of characters make this Peziza relatively easy to identify. Most obvious is its preference for fruiting in clusters on horse dung or decayed straw. While many other cup fungi also occur on dung, in our area all are smaller, differently colored, or have hairs on the cup margin. Peziza vesiculosa is additionally distinguished by an urn-shaped cup with a margin incurved even at maturity, a wrinkled yellowish-brown hymenial inner surface and a pale tan furfuraceous outer surface.

Here's its self portrait

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:1055850}}

Ack!! The evil people eating fungus!
That is almost worst than dog vomit fungus.....notice I sald almost!! LOL!
Linda C

lemon poppy, one year in Spring, one time, I did find a 'row' of that 'creature' in your photograph right at the back of a perennial bed against the cement foundation to my house. West side, where all the winter rains off the ocean are blown against the siding, bed really stays saturated.

I never did learn what it was, but raked it apart and it didn't return.

And I've never added horse manure or straw as soil amendments, so those aren't the only things that contribute to it's growth :)

LindaC, Evil people eating fungus huh?? LOL...geez the names we come up for this fugly stuff :)Whatever it is, it sure is gross...blech! I found some more of it today, scooped it and tossed it. Hopefully it goes away soon! As my granddaughter would said...that's naaaaaasty!

morz... This is probably a silly question...but what animal should the manure we put in our soil come from? (*please do not say human*) The compost/manure we purchased and put in our beds was in bags, I had no idea where the manure came from. I assumed cows...but didn't ask. Seemed like a silly question to ask the folks at the garden center. "Ummm...would that be cow poop or horse poop in them thar bags?" LOL!!

Chicken and steer are the two most commonly found here, along with compost made from undigested by any animal plant remains. Mushroom compost (the medium in which commercial mushrooms have been grown, not composted mushrooms), although the PH of that one is high for acid loving plants and it's expensive.

The one I buy most often is a combination of very aged steer manure and decomposed sawdust (it's odorfree, looks about like soilless potting mix). But also available are horse, llama, rabbit and zoo animals! Well, actually products originating from city waste facilities too, but I've stayed away from those myself. They might be perfectly acceptable, it's just the idea....