I just birthed my first set of PF cakes, and thought I would share some pictures. This container has five jars of Argentinian and one of Hawaiian (the first jars to start pinning).

Much thanks to Acolon_5 for the kindness showed in answering my questions.

Any opinions on when to pick the little pinheads?

when they mature! beautiful little pinheads you got there btw. the best time for the balance between potency, and shelf life is right when the veil starts to tear open. maybe you should also try casing/double-end casing. its very simple and gives much larger flushes.
only pick the pinheads if they abort. pick them while their caps are bruised dark blue, because blackening is a sign of rotting. aborts are the more potent in ratio to regular shrooms so don't throw them. hope this helps; i look forward to the mature pics. best of luck and trip hard!

awesome, thank you Phantastica!

Nice pins on some of yoour cakes, but what happend to the poor fella on the bottom right?

Now you only have a couple of days left to sit on your butt until harvest...happy picking!!

"happy birthing day to you, happy birthing day to you!"

Good to see you grow your own! My preferred tek however is to leave them in the jars and either wrap black foil around them or cut poster tubes to size and put them inside - keeps the light out so they all grow from the top, straight and beautiful and no messy perlite... (its a variation of PFtek covered in this book)

mythbusters:

-not necessary for potency to harvest before the veil opens. People do it because some strains spew spores and make a dark purple mess of everything!

-aborts are stronger than fully grown mushrooms - unless someone can show me documentation, I'm calling this a myth

-likewise for caps. A long held belief of mine that didn't hold up when I started growing my own and was able to test it: BUNK!

Your mushrooms should be ready for harvest in a about a week. Take pics and post!!

Cheers,

mycoJBArk

a couple of pics from my last 2 batches (autumn 09, golden teachers (cased), orissa's (PFtek))

i'm not sure if any scientific study regarding the amount of psilocin/cybin has been done on aborts (there's none that i know of); i'm new to the mycology hobby but from almost every personal experience i've read at shroomery and mycotopia, aborts are considered to be more potent in weight ratio compared to fully grown mushrooms. here's a nexus thread as well: https://www.dmt-nexus.me/forum/d....aspx?g=posts&t=2079
i love your shroom pics very much, especially the GT's. makes me wanna grab them quickly and eat the crap outta them

again, thanks so much everyone!

@obliguhl, all of the Hawaiian jars are like that! But the pinning had gotten so thick on the Argentina jars that I figured it was best to get them out. Pins have started on that one though, so I'll keep my fingers crossed.

@jbark, great suggestion with the jars. Will definitely try that the next time around.

Be cool, be well everyone!

Glad to be of service. Payback for your astute extraction advice.

Just leave the verm layer on, cover as in pics in my post above or with blackwrap (cinema gear - black foil), and keep the light source high. Mist a couple of times a day and await the tawny capped ones!!

JBArk