Could anyone tell me what this is? I was planting bulbs and when I pulled back the mulch and I found this stuff. Lots of tiny little white balls that look like eggs? There's tons of it. I'm crossing my fingers that it's just a benign mold but am creeped out by the possibilities,...
eggs? mold? What is in my mulch?!
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Elo, I’m not sure what it is, but I have found it in bags of mulch also. I went ahead and used the mulch with no negative effects.
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The round balls look like spider egg sacs and the other white stuff looks like hatched egg sacs. The spiders will be very very tiny. Tear one of the round balls apart over a sheet of white paper and use a magnifying glass to look at the results.
That is the stuff of NIGHTMARES!! LOL If that's spider eggs I don't want to know as there are literally millions of them covering almost every inch of a 40' garden!!! I actually don't think that's it though as each one is smaller than a pin head. But thanks!
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No, I would be very surprised if they were harmful as the only really "harmful" spider around here is black widow and these are definitely NOT that. But the thought of each of these (millions) of tiny balls encasing hundreds of tiny spider babies is too creepy for words. Except Arachnophobia II LOL. I'm pretty positive they aren't spider eggs, but possibly some other little bugger like earwigs (shudder).
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Yeah, I actually checked out earwigs and decided not, but maybe some other creepy crawly. Actually I've pretty much decided it's just some sort of mold / decomposition.
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It may very well be some type of fungus. Myself, I would have to make sure of what it is and not worry about thousands of unknowns.
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Look up stinkhorn mushroom. I got these in my garden when I started mulching with wood chips. The "eggs" are what the mushroom springs from. Blew my mind when I first found them. Now when I find some I just throw them in the burn barrel. I don't really like the things and they serve no useful purpose in my garden that I'm aware of.