Good day ladies and gentlemen of the nexus. I have some P.Galindoi truffles growing and I am wondering if there is an optimum time to harvest.

I innoculated 3 mycobags of organic rye (600-700 grams each) at the end of September 2017. Initial colonisation stalled because of low temperatures but there was no visible or smell-able contamination. At the end of October 2017, I moved the bags to my warm airing cupboard and colonisation took off like nobody's business and all the bags were fully colonised in a week.

I have kept them in the warm and dark airing cupboard since then and periodic inspections seem to suggest all is going well. I see conflicting pieces of information regarding potency vs growth period for sclerotia with some people suggesting that leaving them longer makes them bigger but less potent and others suggesting that the super strong varieties sold in Amsterdam are simply the same sclerotia as the regular strength versions left to grow longer.

Does anyone have good information on what would be the best time to harvest for a good potency to yield ratio?

If I dry my harvest in a food dehydrator, would I have to slice up the bigger lumps to allow it to dry internally?

Hi, a good guide here on producing sclerotia/truffles and fruiting the Psilocybe species that produce them. In this guide it recommends leaving one's jars for two months at least following colonisation, but one can leave them for longer. I've heard of people reporting greater potency when harvesting at 3-4 months. The general consensus I've got from mycological forums is that longer substrate incubation times will increase potency. It sounds like your jars could be at optimal harvesting time from what I've read so far. I have some P. galindoi jars (with a substrate of whole oats) that are around the same age that I can see are producing ample sclerotia...I will be fruiting them first though as my main interest is the mushrooms.

http://en.psilosophy.inf...l#harvesting_the_stones

Like the P. cubensis strains, there is lots of hyping up of sclerotia "strains" by vendors for marketing. Any sclerotia will be produced by P. galindoi. P. mexicana or P. tampanensis...although according to some recent genetic research, there are actually all regional substrain variants of P. mexicana.

I think the sclerotia will dry out fine in a food dehydrator whole, unless they are unusually large chunks.

Thanks for that link . I haven't come across it before. There is a whole treasure trove of information on that website.