Mushroom Season 2012

ThHardMotherfucker said:

The situation in Queensland is real shit ATM. Rain's good, no rain's great, but the fucking rain last night ruined it for us...!

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Yep when the rain started I was like "oooooh, when that sun comes out :D"
Then the rain never stopped... and got harder.

jaurk said:

never stopped... and got harder.

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Oh you sexy thing.

^ Yeah that's what we all say. I usually end up eating all mine by the end of spring if I'm lucky

Best year I've had in a decade in northern nsw, goldies are everywhere, some huge fuckers too.

been slow drying them in the oven on the lowest temp it will go, spreading them out on cardboard instead of a metal tray seems to help heaps too, takes a good 24 hours to do it right without hurting potency too much, but if this season keeps pumping the way it is so far I'm gonna have to get a dehydrator.

They seem to be much much stronger the closer to a full moon it gets, has anyone else noticed this, just the lightest squeeze on the stem and they are going dark greeny blue, sometime its almost black, just awesome.

Drove up towards nimbin to see if I could spot any good fields too, just for the nimbin adventure really as its only a couple hours from me and i hardly ever get there , well didn't have to drive very far up into those hills until a came around a corner and saw 3 people with dreads dancing naked in the middle of a field of cows, I guess they couldn't wait to try them goldies out and just went with it, lol, gotta love hippies.

^ that's beautiful!
have you tried using a fan and desiccant to dry them? i'd be really reluctant to use an oven in case i destroyed the actives...

@webbykevin I KNOW RIGHT!
Mushrooms are everrryyywhere!

webbykevin said:

came around a corner and saw 3 people with dreads dancing naked in the middle of a field of cows

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lol

Might be looking at a bit of potency loss with the oven, putting then under a fan for a day works just fine man. Psiliocybin degrades at a pretty high temp but I wouldn't want to risk it! Plus all that oxidation will cause them to loose potency as well.

Ok well today there were so many all over the paddock it was just overwhelming

There were these huge ones at the edge of a line of trees that had caps as big as a laptop, seriously, I have never seen any gold tops as big as those ever, at first I thought no way they are cubes man, must be some freak kind of other shroom, but they were gold, they had a skirt, they were growing from cow poo and when i kicked one over the stem instantly went dark blue, scary as hell, one of these wet would weigh a few ounces, just incredible.

So I decided I would leave them as their were so many normal sized ones I had a carrier bag full in under 10 minutes anyway. I figured the big daddy or mommy shrooms were best just left to continue sporing, they will be just covering a massive area with fresh spores so in the name of sustainability I left them to do their thing.

Tomorrow I will go take pics to give you some idea of the scale of these monsters.

I am trying the fan method, I just put them all in the bottom of a cardboard box and laid a box fan on top on high, will be interesting to see the difference in drying them this way.

The ones dried in the oven don't really seem to suffer from that method though, I keep the oven to around 40 degrees and that is supposed to be well under the temp that would degrade them and they still kick your ass.

^ fucking hell! i'm jealous!
i didn't realise some people's ovens went that low in temp. should be fine i guess, i was just always very cautious about heat.
sounds like you have some psychedelic times ahead!

I went to look for some psilocybin the other day, I didn't find any - despite the recent rain and the abundance of cow poop. I also walked in to an extremely large spider web which has a dragonfly on it. So it was rather disappointing, I'm not too motivated to search for psilocybin any more.

You have to keep at it, i searched for the last 3 years every season and hardly found any, I did the same as you, found good fields that had cow poo in them, sunshine after rain, perfect locations but no mushrooms, it was heartbreaking.

this year i just got lucky, I checked a few random paddocks before xmas not really expecting to find anything and I found the magic spot, so dont give up, just have to keep looking, I have checked a few fields a few kilometers either side of the live one and they dont have any shrooms in them at all.

Good luck mate, hope you find some.

From what i'm told it's a hit and a miss as i have not had the same luck either. I'll stick to lsd until i get offered shrooms!

Subdepth said:

Might be looking at a bit of potency loss with the oven, putting then under a fan for a day works just fine man. Psiliocybin degrades at a pretty high temp but I wouldn't want to risk it! Plus all that oxidation will cause them to loose potency as well.

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Ok you are soooo right, drying them in a cardboard box under a fan is a much better way of doing it, thanks man for talking me into trying it, I owe you some mushies anytime you want some for that advice.

cheers

After shroom hunting in Victoria for the last 2 years I think it's time I tried my hand at the QLD season.

May nature bless me with her bounty

So many experienced users but no one has mentioned the best drying method??? Should ask the ex mycologist

Grab a sealable plastic tub place 6 plastic cups upside down one in each corner and some in the middle of the contaniner. Buy some Calcium Chloride (Damp rid) and pour it into the tub. Buy some splatter screens from the asian $2 shop that u use to cover ur frying pan when frying bacon and eggs. Place shrooms on the screen and close lid and forget about it for a week then re-open it and u will have cracker dry shrooms with no potency loss or oxidation. All this will cost u no more than $10. Some peoples advice is just so so bad, fans, ovens, dehydrators etc etc :S

what's wrong with using a fan? can you give a valid reason why it is "so so bad"?
it's not the method you would use? because if there is something wrong with drying mushrooms with fans and desiccant, i think you should explain what it is.

if you have a big bag full of cubensis that you've picked on a hot, humid day and they urgently need to be tried before they decompose before your eyes, i'd say a drying method using no heat and household items most people are likely to have already (or easily able to borrow/obtain) is a fair suggestion. especially when they've mentioned using an oven, which i'd be wary of because high temperatures can degrade the actives.
the method you suggest might be adequate for a few handfuls of subs, but i don't think it's realistic for the quantities of psilocybe cubensis being discussed - you'd need more than a couple of the tubs you describe. obviously you're the only person on bluelight that's ever grown shrooms so we should have come and asked you. 8)

Using a fan will cause oxidation meaning potency degradation. When you use a fan u will see that most of the shrooms will turn nearly blue! Using my method will get u cracker dry shrooms with little to no potency loss and the shrooms will remain the same color as it originally was. So you think that someone who has grown shrooms with the basic tek only has vast mycologist knowledge? Try cloning and agar work with sectoring etc etc then come back and tell me all my info is rubbish. All ur posts are against my ones but not sure why. All my knowledge is based on experience and not pulling shit out of my ass or copying someone elses stupid ideas. U dont have to use tubs there are other ways for drying mass shrooms.

my posts aren't "against your ones" - i just think people that make claims without backing them up come off as know-it-alls.
thank you for explaining that - that is all i was asking. if you're going to criticise other people's contributions, it's the least you could do.

Sorry if I didnt explain it the first time round. Im the sort of person who always looks for the best solution and I try to help every one the best I can so they dont have to go through the trial and error like I did.