Saturday and Sunday I was doing a lot of harvesting. I’ve gotten about 5 plates like this so far.  Not bad!  

The dehydrator is going nonstop. Be sure when you pop them in to dehydrate that the mushrooms aren’t touching and that you dry them to “cracker crisp.” A couple of these in my picture could benefit from some social distancing.

Now the tub looks like this, below. I think the dark color is from dropped spores, and you can still see a bit of “pee” – I’m doing all the fanning but this tub still wants more air. Weird.

The stragglers should be ready to harvest this evening, and then we’ll see if this tub has another round to go.

It’s hard to tell from this photo, but the colors are definitely yellow and brownish – not green. I don’t think there’s any contamination – and the tub smells great – earthy and mushroomy – like a forest floor. We should be good, and I’m keeping an eye and nose on the progress.

On Tuesday – I posted that the tub had pins.

Here’s where we were on Tuesday.

Yesterday (Friday), we were here.

Today (Saturday), we’re here.

This tub is still struggling with getting enough fresh air, so I’ve started fanning it (I open the lid and fan it up and down to introduce fresh air into the bin) about 3x a day. I don’t know if that’s why I’m not getting a nice canopy, or if it’s genetics, or both.

We’ll see what happens as we move into the later flushes.

How do I know the tub isn’t getting enough FAE?

1. The shrooms have fuzzy feet.

2.  I’m getting a lot of aborts.

3. All that mycelium pee at the beginning was a concern. It’s mostly gone now, but the first two symptoms are ongoing.

I’ve cranked up the fan, I’m doing actual fanning, and we’ll stay tuned.

In the meantime, these beautiful guys were ready to harvest. I’ve put them in the fridge and plan to dry them tomorrow with some of their friends.

I had a feeling this was about to happen… after 11 days, this tub looked ready to fruit, and I looked at it today, and voila – pins. I should have moved the tub to fruiting conditions last night, but I ran out of energy and just got to it today.

The yellow you see isn’t contamination – it’s mycelium “pee” which means the tub isn’t getting enough FAE (free air exchange), which totally makes sense as I had the tub taped up waiting for the mycelium to take over the substrate before I put it into fruiting conditions. The substrate was well colonized (see yesterday’s post), so I put it into fruiting conditions today, which turned out to be late, because the tub started to fruit anyway. I keep missing this changeover point, usually because I’m not home, or just getting home, but things work out ok.

What did that move to fruiting conditions entail? I’ll tell you.

1. I took off all the painter’s tape and put filters on all the large holes.
2. I covered the little holes with micropore tape.
3. I took the towel off the bin and moved the bin near a window. Shrooms don’t need light to grow, but the light keeps the mushrooms growing in the right direction.
4. I put a fan near the bin to ensure there’s lots of fresh air circulating around the bin.

Here’s what the set up looks like now.

What’s next? Since we already have pins, mushrooms are next! I haven’t grown this strain before – it’s the OG Huautla – but it shouldn’t take long.

More updates soon.

I put these in the tub the day before I left on a trip, and came home to great progress.