I've had some Natalensis colonising for the past few weeks and have just put it into fruiting. It is a rye grain cake that I've cased in about half an inch of vermiculite, though the mycelium has just flown through the casing and is rapidly making a thick blanket of overlay. It is pretty much covering the whole top and has nearly devoured the whole casing layer, what the heck do I do? Am I just going to get no fruits?

I'm also trying Natalensis cultivation - it sounds like you're a bit further along than myself. Even with a few of my agar plates I've been tempted to scrape off some mycelia to consume (it looks quite thick and blueish), ala the Myceliated Grain Tech. Although this would be more like myceliated mycelia... So anyway, if you can't get it to fruit, perhaps just try the mycelia.

Thank you for the suggestion, I've read people have been doing that. I have also read last night about peoples cakes being completely dehydrated with zero fruits, just a huge mass of overlay that bruised blue/black. The fact it's active and it used all of its water to make it suggests to me that it is on the whole as potent as the whole flush / yield would have been? Thing with taking this is though, there's not a defined dosage for it, I think. It would be nice to make this all into a conveniently preservable extract that can be tested for dosage, that would work preferably. I'm not a fan of freezing teas though, due to not having a lot of freezer space.

To add to this post, I seem to have forgotten I can search things. Apparently some people lose their grows to the overlay, sometimes it just grows fruits straight through it as if the overlay is a casing layer. I have read them apparently taking longer to fruit than cubensis, so I'll just forget it for a while and check it later.

Hey Natalensis comrade, I've only got as far as agar plates, but there's a dedicated Natalensis thread on shroomery, ridiculous number of pages to read through, but what I've noted from all that I've read so far is with the monotub grows the following was successful (these are from different people):

-the spawn/substrate ratio @ 1:4 or 1:5
-3qt spawn to 1/2 coir brick+2qts vermiculite
-4 qts:1 coir brick with 1" top layer of coir

so.. not sure if adding more verm would help produce fruits? many were still getting fruits even with the overlay, but again this was in monotubs.

Overlay can be a bit frustrating when growing Natalensis. It's possible to limit it following the points artificer mentioned above, but it's best to try to choose/isolate genetics that aren't prone to produce overlay. This can take a lot patience depending on how lucky one is, but once you eliminated the overlay trait as much as possible (doing agar work) it will have been all worth it.

My first Natalensis culture lead me straight to overlay-free tubs and abundant/potent yields. It's only after I gave this culture away and started from spore again that I realized how valuable my first culture actually was. Now I deal with a bit of overlay too.

I think it's well worth to try a 50/50 peat moss/vermiculite casing to mitigate the overlay.

Fridge, is there a way to tell if the culture has propensity for overlay on the agar plate? Or do you have to cultivate to find out if it overlays or not and keep track of which agar plate the good batch came from?

I have started to cultivate Nats a couple of times from spore and so far I couldn't tell if there's a sign whether it's going to produce overlay or not, when looking at appearance of the mycelium in the petri dish. I tried to isolate tomentose and rizomorphic mycelium, but I ended up with overlay with both, so that seems not to be an indication.
I think one really needs to play genetical lottery and hope for it to be a culture that only produces fruits. I still believe that one can clone from a good looking multispore cluster of fruits to "tame" the culture for a second run with cloned fruits only.

I never had weak fruits though, so if you're not looking for massive quantities you should be rewarded for your efforts in any case. I never had a culture that only produced overlay. The worst I got was about 50/50 fruits/overlay.

Sounds promising, I was thinking if I got no fruits I'd just shred the overlay and soak in vodka for a few days then strain and cork that with a wine preserver. There's the plan for convenient storage without freezing, and it shouldn't drop off in potency too much if there's no oxygen in the bottle right? Then I can just pour out whatever a dose is, add some lemon and boil for a moment to get rid of the alcohol. Maybe mix it with orange juice before chucking it down. Thanks for the reassurance that I should see some fruits eventually at least, think I'll try that on a small scale with some fruits first and if it's nice there'll be no waste on this grow

Update on this, they began fruiting. I've had a hidden issue with temperature which delayed them going into fruit. They are fruiting with a ton more vigour than the cubensis alongside them. Got some beauty shots of one I just picked, cap is bruised completely black throughout before ever touching it. Looks like a dilated eye