Help! What's growing with my sunflowers?

[coastergirl]

I'm a complete novice and decided to try growing things with my kids this year. I bought a little growhouse and planted broccoli, 5 varieties of tomatoes, cucumber, peas, basil, carrots and sunflowers. Things have taken a little while to get going, but now almost everything is growing. Yesterday I discovered tiny mushrooms/toadstools growing in two of my sunflower pots. I've just looked again, and overnight several long stringy things with wet black blobs on the ends have appeared! What on earth are they and what do I do?

None of this is helped by the fact I absolutely despise/am grossed out by any type of mushroom or fungus.

Just pull them out!

It was probably in the compost already. I would just scoop them out and maybe keep the soil a bit drier (it looks quite wet).

I had those too in my seedling compost - just some spores I think - didn’t seem to harm the seedlings.

Pull them out or use something like the end of a pencil or and old teaspoon to stir them into the soil so that they're not visible any more.

Try to remember that if it weren't for fungi you wouldn't have either good compost or healthy plants. About 80% of all plants have a symbiotic relationship with fungi - the plant uses energy from the sun to make organic compounds such as sugars which it supplies to the fungus, which in turn supplies minerals form the soil. Other fungi help with the decomposition process which turns dead plants into good soil; and fungi also improve the texture of the soil.

@MereDintofPandiculation thank you. That's really helpful. I realise I probably sounded ridiculous, but I really am a novice and these have taken me completely by surprise! Are the long stringy things that appeared overnight fungi too? I've never seen anything like them!

Really can't tell from the photo! Could be fungi. Could be spore bodies of liverworts, except I can see any liverworts, could be very etiolated (weed) seedlings. I wouldn't worry about them. Either remove, or mash up and stir in. Or leave them and see what happens - that's what I usually do when strange things appear!

No Idea but personally I would let them go for a bit and find out. I had a wee avocado tree in a pot when something else started growing out of the compost. No idea what it was at first but it kept growing... and growing... and we now have a 4 meter tall passion flower plant climbing up the inside the house up two floors and trying to get out of the upstairs skylight - the avocado snuffed it but we got plenty more of them