It really is awesome. I cant wait to see the progress even when I wake up tomorrow.

Question on when to pick the shrooms from the cake. Ive read "before the veil under the cap breaks"

How would a noob like myself know when?

And to remove the shrooms, its ok to remove the whole cake from the chamber with my hand? Just pick it up and out? Im timid to handle the cakes

go take a good look at pictures of mushrooms or mushroom grows.
the cap, which holds the spores of the fruit, is being held by a fragile tissue called "veil". this is holding the cap from open up and spread the spores before it's time. the best time for you to harvest your fruits (regarding the potency) is right after that veil breaks and the cap opens up (and before it starts sporulation).

don't take the cakes out, simply grab the shroom from it's base when it's time, twist and push gently. they'll come out easily. worst case scenario you'll have to use a razor to cut it but it's usually pretty smooth.

Ok thank you! I have kind of an urgent question too, im a little concerned.


My best fruiting cake right now, the top of it and sides, the fuzz (mycelium) showing thru the vermiculite appears bluish-grey. Almost like bleu cheese.

Is this something that I need to be concerned about? The fruits look awesome, beautiful color and theyre growing nicely. Im just concerned about the color of the fuzz on the cake now not being white white anymore. Im worried its some sort of bad mold or that somehow the cake just became contaminated.

Some of the other cakes have a slightly similar color, but not as intense as my best cake does, the others are mostly a clean white fuzz. This stuff looks like dirty snow kinda. Here is a photo for comparison.


Pics in order are cake in question with flash, cake in question with flash closeup, good cake (mostly white fuzz) then cake on left in question vs cake on right that doesnt have fuzz discoloration

One more good pic, I have a feeling its not good

Bottom left cake

it looks blue, not green so i'd say it's just bruising... you're fine... watch it but dont' freak out.

this is bringing back memories of my first pf grow... i was amazed that they would get bigger throughout the day... i would check on them like 50 times over a weekend bc they would get noticeably bigger... they really are just amazing little guys...

Ok great thank you for helping to calm my nerves haha... but, how would they bruise exactly? I havent touched the cake or anything. It really looks....like...dark greyish blueish very slight bluegreen lol. I cant explain it. Its not fresh healthy white looking anymore. Thats for sure. its darker and hued.


Edit - Im trying to find info on bruising on shroomery but theres SO much info on there, its hard.

I have found that handling OR high chamber temps can cause bruising. My temps have been around 76-78. Should I try to cool it off a bit? I will for the night just as a precaution.

I also read that if you take a cotton swab and touch the area in question, that if it was mold, the mold would stick to the swab and if its just bruising, then it wont rub off onto the swab. I touched the swab to one area that was pretty dark and nothing stuck to the swab.

The thing about PF tek is that it's not the same exact process for everyone in the fruiting stage. Your humidity might be high because it is warm and you have a lot of moisture in there, but it could drop because of the high temperatures evaporating your moisture too quickly. Too much heat/humidity and your fruits go hollow and weak. If it's colder it takes a lot more work to keep humidity up in the first place, but fanning a chamber when it's colder seems to make humidity take forever to build back up. Whatever your temperature, you just have to find a balance.

If you have good fruit growth, just keep doing what you're doing. You can mist the cake heavily to hydrate any dry spots which might have bruised, but you will probably waterlog your shrooms if they get too soaked. The pf tek makes this hard to avoid unless you have perfect temp and humidity at all times without fluctuation. Not the best for making picture perfect shrooms.

That said, your grow looks like it's turning out pretty well

Thanks Orion!

I see a lot of conflicting info about once there are shrooms growing between number of times a day to mist as well as whether or not to mist cakes directly and making sure not to mist the fruits.

Some say dont mist the cakes at all and dont get the shrooms wet, some say mist the cakes and its ok to mist the fruits, and then some say mist the cakes but avoid misting the shrooms.

I dont know which advice to follow at this stage lol. I know the shrooms NEED water to grow. Yesterday I was still misting as normal 3-4 times a day and I did mist the cakes and the shrooms and the one thing I noticed was like 20 minutes later, the cake looked like I never even misted it. So I presume that was because the cake was pulling the water from the verm because the shrooms were pulling the water from the cake?

In addition to my above post, I noticed my biggest shroom has done this. Is this "the veil tearing?"

Or is this just something else? This is the only one to have done this so far, and Id say this is day 3-4 of this one growing in particular. It still is small, maybe about as long as a pinky finger

That is indeed the veil tearing, this mushroom is ripe for picking

As for the info regarding misting: the way I see it, it's best to mist the walls of your fruiting chamber.
Before fruiting the cakes, you add moisture by "dunking" it (submerging the mycelium in water for 12 up to 24 hours). After this, you simply have to keep the relative humidity in the fruiting chamber up to par, by misting a few times a day.
Misting the fruits excessively over several days might cause them to rot (won't happen unless you really go overboard though).
Excessively misting the substrate might cause water to pool, introducing contaminants (although once the mycelium has established its hold on the substrate, contams will have a hard time taking over).
By spraying the walls of the fruiting chamber, you allow it to simply evaporate off the walls to increase the humidity. The way I understand it, the overall moisture content of the mycelium/substrate (by dunking) provides a steady access of water and slow, constant evaporation into the air. This, combined with a constant high relative humidity of the environment (and good air exchange, of course!) is what the little fellas love

I guess you could mist the cakes themselves just as well though. The 'dunk' should be sufficient to keep the moisture content up until the next flush, but as long as water doesn't pool on the surface of your substrate, or on the mushrooms themselves everything should be a-ok.



The bruising is a discoloration resulting from the oxidation of psilocin/psilocybin. When you handle the mushrooms or mycelium, you will expose some of the actives to oxygen, which causes the oxidation.
You will notice after picking your mushrooms and drying them, the place on the stem where you touched them will also bruise. Try not to handle the fresh fruits too much when picking, but don't worry too much about it either. It's something that just cannot be avoided. After a couple of flushes, the mycelium will have blue/green-ish spots here and there, this is perfectly normal.
From my personal experience, as long as there are no visible abnormalities when the substrate is fully colonized, you are safe from contaminations.

Thank you for the wonderful reply Namaste!

I will try to just get the perlite and container walls moist and avoid the shrooms and cakes as best I can. Im sure a light misting on them wont hurt, but I will do my best to fan hard afterwords to evap the water that does land on them.

I have a few shrooms that have unfotunately face planted and are growing down toward the perlite layer, is there anything I can do to help them try to grow up, or are they doomed?

Also, the ones that have broken the veil I will pick in a few more hours and the I will commence drying them.

What can I place them in or on to dry? I dont have a dehydrator or anything I was planning on either fanning them or oven drying and eventually storing them in a glass jar with dessicant.

Can I place them on a cookie sheet with some tin foil?

there are 100 ways for them to get bruised. did you whack them on a counter to get the cakes out of hte jar? that'll bruise them. did you hold them a bit too tightly when you did your verm roll? that'll bruise them. did they bump into each other a bit while you were doing your 24 hour dunk? that'll bruise them.

cakes can bruise very easy, just a fact of life...

ps

Likely yes to all of those I was just surprised it took a week plus for it to happen.


Side note, lets say on a cake there are 20 shrooms, 15 of which the veils have broken and 5 have not. Do I pick just the 15 with the broken veils and leave the 5 which havent? Or do I pick all of them at once even if theres still a few with veils intact?

Also, once a cake is picked, if there are a bunch of aborts and little pins, do I have to remove those prior to dunking?

take only those who are "ready" and leave the others on the cake unless they're attach to the mushrooms you're picking.

when you see aborts take them out, you can eat them if you want too but those alone won't do much unless you're eating a HUGE amount. let the little pins achieve their full potential, your cake can wait a couple more days.

So if there are 15 ready to pick and 5 not ready, maybe they need another 2 days because theyre small, would I pick the 15 and then put the cake back in the chamber and let those few continue growing? Or wait til the 5 mature fully and remove all 20 at once and then remove and dunk.


if I harvest a few that have not broken their veils yet, say they need another day or two to mature, are they still potent?

I have always harvested each individual fruit as they mature. And yes, the small ones whose veils have not yet ripped will be just as potent. Just smaller. I have actually heard it said that they are more potent (by weight) when they are picked a little bit earlier, but I do not know for a fact if this is true or not.

Reading the last posts almost brought tears to my eyes as it is humbling to see someone take their first step growing these amazing guys. Reminds me very much of my first grow, all the anxiety because of bruised cakes etc.

It looks like a good and healthy operation. I have always waited until the majority of mushrooms were right before breaking their veils, then i just harvested them all, big or small. The smaller ones are indeed more potent by weight, so you don't lose much. I'd store them seperatly for a special treat, because potent mushrooms are somehow better.

I would not give them pins and aborts more room to grow out. Just pick them. Chances are, the mycelium has already pumped most of its resources into the bigger fruit bodys for this flush. You could just pick them all and wait for the next one - which won't be as big, as these cakes only carry so much nutrients....

Last flush is sometimes just one single badass mushroom.

Curious to see how this progresses.

As for drying - get them as dry as possible to prevent rotting. You could lay them on a t-shirt with a lamp pointing at them (not LED of course, these oldschool heat emitting bulbs). Another method is to use a blowdryer for a while. Please get them somehwat dry before putting them in a drying chamber.

Thank you so much! It really is very special to be on this path.

I actually caved and I bought a food dehydrator, it was only $60. I figured it was very useful to have for making my own dried fruits for biking or hiking.

The manual that came with the dehydrator said to do 95 degrees for the first few hours and then for the last hour do 125 degreees.

I dried them for 4.5 hours total and then started to get concerned about leaving them too long. Id say the bigger ones are maybe 85-90% dry and the smaller ones are very crispy.

Does that seem right? Would leaving them for 6 hours be ok??

When we say "cracker dry" do we really mean so dry that it cant bend at all and it would just crack? Because some of mine have a very slight solid-flexy bend to them where theyre not 100% solid. I took them and put them in a mason jar with a dessicant pack hanging from a coffee filter that I secured in with the lid.


Side note, the cake I just picked had much thicker shrooms and they smelled more fungi-ish lol. Does smell relate to potency?