I have very soft water, and I don't tend to use clay pots. So about the film, I know nothing. Mineral salts or fungus - I don't know, but I would have guessed "minerals" solely from the way it looks.
If there is a way to clean it off completely without affecting the soil, you could try that and then see how it fast it comes back. If it's fungus, it ought to keep coming back even if you scrape and scrub. If it's minerals, a couple of good cleanings ought to make it come back very slowly.
Thanks for explaining about the Dawn. In the past, I only knew about using it (greatly diluted) as a spray on leaves, to get rid of aphids ... and using a bit in the water used to rehydrate peat moss (as a wetting agent or "surfactant").
>> But i cant remember if the dawn worked allthe time for the compacted soil.. hmmm. Do yall get that hard soil? Lke i have to puncture it to get the water to absorb sometimes.
I have clay, and water takes a long time to soak in to it (very slow perk). But I would totally NEVER use that hard clay in pots.
>> have to puncture it to get the water to absorb sometimes.
I don't understand that, or just mine isn't like that. If I puncture hard, dry clay with a pick (outside) and watered, the water would fill the hole the pick created but not soak any faster into the clay because of that.
I think we must have different kinds of soil. I don't recognize yours. It sounds bad - REALLY bad for pots.
>> today tgis is what it looks like.. and i just pulled the two mushrooms out. Its never ever had issues was seperate and never outside..
I think that spores float in air everywhere, including indoors. When it comes to microbes, "everything is everywhere". If conditions become good for a fungus to grow, rely on a couple of spores from a couple of varieties to find their way to that surface and multiply.
Hey, unless your inside air is triple HEPA-filtered, every surface already has a few microscopic dust particles (or, in my house, dust balls). So unless you scrub daily with bleach, there were already at least a few fungal spores on every square inch.
With mold and fungus, it's all about conditions that favor them or conditions that discourage them. Plus, "prevention is easier than cure". Once you've had a blooming growth of some fungus, its spores will be DENSELY everywhere nearby.
But again - I'm not experienced with clay pots and hard, compacted soil so I don't know what you have there.
I only have clay soil in the ground, outdoors, partly amended in spots, with raised beds and drainage ditches. Some of the concrete paving stone walls of my raised beds do have mineral stains, mainly in the summer when lots of ground water diffuses or wicks through them and then evaporates.
But I water with soft water and only very seldom add chemical fertilizer (usually just manure compost). So the water doesn't add lots of minerals, and my build-ups aren't thick.
