:BibleThump: I wish to thank @happybadger @ItalianMessiah and countless others for their words of wisdom. It took my dumbass 3 months to get this done, never mind my previous failed attempts.
Does this flush look sad and pathetic? I have no idea, but these shroomies are mine and I am filled with hope that their potency can help me reach communism.
looking good, maybe try a little more moisture/FAE next time they’re a little long and skinny imo, but congratulations! it’s a bit of a tricky process to get right, so don’t feel bad about taking a bit to get started, and plus now you know what works for you next time! good luck growing more comrade
they’re a little long and skinny imo
I thought so! I misted at least twice a day but yeah, I might not have given it enough FAE. I might also mist more frequently.
If you have any suggestions on getting thicker, dick looking fruits I'm all ears lol
sure! something to remember if you’re not doing it already, it’s a good idea to fan your totes briefly with the lid or something else when you mist them, like wave it to get a good breeze going for like 20-30 seconds or so. it’ll help with FAE some, blow away some of that co2 that might be sitting there, which should help with getting a nice fruit phenotype. it also causes some evaporation, the idea being that evaporation simulates the conditions at the end of the mycelium’s life cycle and causes it to form pins more/faster, at least that’s the colloquial wisdom.
past that, a big part of getting good mushrooms is getting good genetics, by selecting mycelium for favorable traits on agar and making transfers, which can be a lot more involved and time consuming process, but that’s usually how you get flushes that form a nice canopy people will post pictures of online.
Seconding the agar, I isolated some mycelium from the best fruits in my first attempt and boy did that pay off. The actual isolation is kind of a pain in the ass, but colonizing jars with chunks of agar is so much better than spore syringes. It was like 30% faster and I wound up with double the weight in shroomies.
Definitely more FAE, you might have to spritz them more often but they'll be fatbois
I should look into mycology for myself, for educational purposes only
It's a great hobby. They're so much more dynamic than houseplants, like raising ant colonies.
considering trying tripping soon, my weed guy currently has stock she* got as a windfall that she's giving out samples from. not sure how i feel about ego death but i'm thinking i'd actually quite like it potentially.
*my weed guy calls herself that and i'm not about to tell her she can't choose her title
If you've never used a psychedelic before, be careful shooting for an "ego death" level experience your very first time. That kind of thing is pretty hard to integrate even under ideal conditions, and is by no means the only worthwhile way to work with psychedelics. You might find it easier to start with a lower dose and get what you can from that before moving on to very, very high doses.
oh, no, i'm a complete coward. i just don't know anything about the "risks" of what a normal starting dose would do so i've got to be psychologically prepared for the most radical possible outcome.
It's good to be prepared, and difficult experiences are definitely always possible, but if you start small and are in a good place psychologically, you'll probably have a great time! Low doses of mushrooms are very very fun, and if you're in a comfortable place, you run relatively little risk of having a hard time. Just like with any new drug, start low and work your way up. Enjoy!
I would recommend taking maybe 2.5g the first go. Will likely just give you a solid body high and some minor visualizations, I had a pretty good hook on them for a while and would eat a low/medium dose about once a week.
“Difficult,” “scary,” and “unpleasant” experiences in the moment on psychedelics aren’t necessarily regrettable in my experience; I feel that these periods during some of my trips produced by far the most profoundly insightful breakthroughs and I consider them to be therefore worth it.
Yeah. I did two tabs the first time on psychedelics which kinda pushed me over the edge into abject horror and harrowing ordeal. Didn’t help that I’m a bit agoraphobic and socially-anxious and I did it at Coachella (way back in the day). But at the end of the day(s) I looked back very fondly on all of it. I suppose by that time I had done a decent amount of uppers and downers and empathogens, though, so the altered state in general wasn’t wholly uncharted.
Then again my girlfriend was not happy with a sensory deprivation chamber in terms of trippiness, and hasn’t even really smoked weed… she asked to do mushrooms but seems like a… not so good idea.
Ego death only becomes a possibility beyond about 3g of dried mushrooms. If you stay below that, especially at the 2g level, it's a very gentle psychedelic. Focusing on a pattern will make it shift around like a lava lamp made of Faberge eggs, clouds will twist and skip across the sky as if graphically glitching, and you'll feel like a super excited/curious six year-old discovering the world for the first time. 2g while camping or doing a gentle hike is a wonderful supercharged form of meditation, only as disorienting as 1-2 beers and a lens for reality rather than replacement for it.
Congrats comrade! That first flush is such an accomplishment. Once you have the basics of fungiculture down it becomes a lot easier to grow consistently.
With these I'm only seeing two issues. The discolouration on the caps means you might be misting too much. 80% relative humidity is the goal, wet enough for fungi but not bacteria. That can be eyeballed by just a few water droplets sticking to the container walls. They're also growing a little leggy with fuzzy feet, a symptom of high CO2/low O2. Having airholes stuffed with polyfill right below cap level will help with that. It will also make for a more consistent canopy.
it's interesting though because @chris was thinking too little misting.
And you could both have sound reasons, even though by definition you can't both be right.
But it just goes to show how tricky this stuff can be, even for experts.
Also, probably a point in favor of just buying or making a cheap gauge to check the actual humidity.
There's a fine line between the two. In this case it's the brown spotting and mottled grey on the overly-engorged caps which indicates over-misting. That's water sitting on the caps because there's too much in the tub for it to evaporate. The walls have a consistent film of moisture rather than a few stray beads which to me indicates 85-95% RH. When it's too dry the caps will be thin/leathery/split, the walls will be totally dry, the pins won't develop into full mushrooms, and the substrate will look leathery and devoid of pins.
edit: A gauge is also a good idea. Slight water beading on the walls is the rough approximation of being in the right range.
Used to be friends with a guy that had something similar happen to him from Salvia. We were sitting at a kitchen table and he thought me and the girl we were with were evil scientists plotting against him, also that he had run around the kitchen, sticking his head out the window and screaming. Dude was stuck to his seat the entire time.
I simply grow my fungi on my feet, as Vegan God intended. 🙏
Thanks! I actually first started with Uncle Ben's and a spore syringe.....it didn't work and my bags got contaminated. Uncle Ben's bags might be too moist but then again, I have never had luck with Spore syringes. So yeah, I ended up learning the 'fundamentals' and deciphering the old shroomery posts. Went to agar-> used syringe -> got contaminants.
so i said fuck syringes, I'm going straight to spore prints.
WHAT I DID HAVE SUCCESS WITH WAS BROKE BOI TEK. Similar to Uncle Ben's, it's regular brown rice but cooked for 10 mins to allow the brown rice to hold some moisture. Put them in jars, cut mycelium from agar, let it colonize, then grow in a monotub with coco coir.
Honestly, the fact that you got the bag pokey method to work probably makes you more skilled. I've failed at actually getting shrooms to grow, so many times, it's not even funny.
Way to go! Take it slow and work your way up to higher doses, I would start with 2 - 2.5 g and take it from there.
A food dehydrator is the best route for storage, definitely get one if you don't have one already. Make sure they are completely dry (you shouldn't be able to bend them at all, they should snap under pressure), then put them in a mason jar with dessicant packets.
I'll be straight with you. That flush looks kind of sad. But my first flush was pretty bad too. Eventually I had flushes so thick I had to pull the whole thing out and slice across the bottom of the shrooms with a long knife. Was truly a beautiful thing. It just takes time and patience.
That’s fair. What do you think is sad about it, that they’re skinny and dry looking? I misted twice a day but FAE….FAE might have been lacking.
So the trick is to get them to all pin at once and form a thick bunch with fatter caps and shorter legs. Best thing to kick this off is to have as smooth a surface as possible and to keep airflow lower until mycelium grows in thick. Then you start aerating and hit it with more light. Might I ask what your light source is? I set my grows under an artificial sunlight bulb and keep it on at least 12 hours a day. When I used natural light they never pinned as good as when I used the grow lights. And the lights being directly above them helped direct them straight up. Having a thick pin set keeps them more uniform and growing up instead of all over the place. It takes practice. My first grows looked a lot like this too. Bigger bins help. More surface area and more room in the bin to hold humidity and slow the drying of the substrate. I went heavy on the grain to sub mix. Usually almost half and half. I'd get fewer repeat flushes and use more grain but the myc would grow in super fast and thick. You wouldn't be able to see any substrate by the time pinning started. Just a mass of flat white myc. Here one of the few pics I had of a grow just starting to pin. Unfortunately I deleted almost all my best pics because reasons. https://files.catbox.moe/6akxpf.jpg https://files.catbox.moe/b5rj7d.jpg https://files.catbox.moe/80d1f1.jpg https://files.catbox.moe/uoy3ys.jpg
Also want to add, the bins I use. 32qt sterilite bins. If you set the lids upside down on them they keep it humid enough while the myc is growing in. THEN flip up the latches and ret the upside down lid on them. It creates an open rim around the whole lid that lets the moisture from the spraying to evaporate continually and evenly. Honestly after the myc grows in I barely did any spritzing with water and just propped the lid up on the latches and let it do it's thing. https://www.walmart.com/ip/Sterilite-32-Qt-Gasket-Box-Blue-Aquarium/39911068
This is the way. This is why I said in my first comment it's all about the practice. Once you know what these guys want you just give it to them. Our shroomy bois do what they do just fine on their own. I would get an amazing first flush. An ok second flush. Then (in the summer) I'd take the cake out and burry it under the mulch around my house and water the area. In a week I'd have another flush come up and those mushrooms were the physically strongest shrooms I have ever felt. Like I had to work to cut them off at the stem.
I dry everything in a dehydrator then toss them in a food processor/blender and turn them to powder. Got a 000 sized capsule filler and make 0.5 gram capsules you can just down. Or if you want to do the lime/lemon juice soak method and strain just measure out how much you want by popping open the capsules. Super convenient. I haven't grown in a few years now. I sold some to a few buddies that took them for anxiety purposes which is why I grew them too. I had so much excess I still have some in air tight jars in a deep freeze.
Oh and one more thing. I once forgot about a bin in a closet and 2 weeks later is had grow this fucking demigod that weighed 274grams wet weight. The thing was so big it was pushing the lid off the box.
For me it's all the sterilization for the grain jars. Even doing as much as I could I would still loose jars to thin stringy molds. I live in a very humid area where molds spores fill the air and the air quality rating for mold is ALWAYS high and extremely high. It's bad. Everything molds. So I had to be extra careful. I even had some uvc lightbulbs that made ozone and I would blast those in my sterile box for grain transfers. The second I was even a little lax I would get fucked. I would watch videos of ppl doing grain transfers with half the work I did and be fine and I was always so jealous. Locality is a big factor in how stringent you have to be with sterilizing your environment. I eventually got it down to where I had very few jars get contaminated but I just got burnt out on it after a while.
