Anyone know what this is growing in my garden?

looks like turkey tail

some kinda polypore

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It almost looks like some sort of rock hard mushroom.

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If I had a dollar for every time a girl has said that to me...

We cut an oak, and that would grow there. It would first appear like foam and then harden like leather.

An LSU Ag Center horticulturist told me it would likely keep coming until the old roots rotted away. I dug in and removed as much of the roots as I could. After a couple years of ripping out the 'shrooms, they went away.

Here is part of our email exchange:

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A very large water oak in our front yard was cut down several years ago. As the yard settled over the years, parts of the stump started to stick up. I dug a huge hole and removed a great deal of stump and large roots from beneath the surface and sodded over the area with St. Augustine. That was a few years ago.

This year, following each of our frequent rains, strange mushroom type things have started to appear in the area over where the tree was. They begin like a foam on the grass, and eventually harden into a very low, leathery growth that is difficult to remove without a sharp hoe.

Removal of the mushroom also tears out the grass in the area, leaving a large divot that I have to fill with soil. The mushrooms -- if that is what they are -- come right back after the next rain.

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You’ve made an accurate diagnosis of the problem. These are the fruiting bodies of wood rotting organisms (a version of mushrooms) that are feeding on the dead wood left over from the tree removal. There is no fungicide that I am aware of that can be sprayed upon them to stop their growth. Fungicides are useful for stopping the spread of tiny, near-microscopic fungal hyphae and spores on leaves but not for large fungal structures. My best suggestion is to either get used to them popping up or to go out after the rain and remove them when they are still tender and before they harden off. The only other suggestion is to excavate some more in the area and cut out the old, decomposing roots near the surface in the grass. These wood rotting organisms are part of nature’s design to rid the world of dead, fallen wood but they sure make an unsightly lawn until their job is finished.

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You should smoke it