Turns Out, Mushrooms Soaked in Water Is a Brilliant Way to Revive Your Dying Plants This Summer
Published July 16 2025, 1:46 p.m. ET
(L) Hand holding a bundle of cream-colored mushrooms, (R) Woman pouring fertilizer into plants. (Representative Cover Image Source: Getty Images | (L) Cover 7 Photography, (R) Westend61)
Sometimes it seems like mushrooms embody the magic of the cosmos. Take a stroll down the forest lane after summer rain and observe the wet patches of its floor. You’ll notice these umbrella-shaped fungi erupting from the decaying leafmold in hues of purples, pinks, golds, cream, and whites. Mushrooms feed and thrive on the dead tree stumps, leaf litter, and wood chips that have turned too wet and soggy.
Close-up of mushroom growing on field in a garden in Denmark
But while they do, they unwittingly help break down the nutrients trapped in this dead matter and then recycle them for the benefit of the soil, as Professor Richard Forley described in a BBC documentary. In a recent conversation with the Daily Mail, another expert shared how gardeners can utilize this potent nutrient-recycling ability of mushrooms to make their garden soil even more fertile and their plants blossom like never before.