CaMo said:

Well I saw some fruit on the side of the road here in tauranga and stopped to pick a few.  I looked down at my feet and was surprised to see these little guys! Pretty sure they are subs, bit smaller than the ones I get up Auckland way

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Matai said:

Well, I just came back from one of the best mushroom hunting days of my life! I found a new patch, and when I first saw it from afar I literally felt weak at the knees. Finding a massive haul of mushrooms is almost as much of a rush as eating them! I left quite a few, because it was in a pretty public place -- I'll have to make sure to go back and get some more over the next couple of days. Because of said publicness, there aren't many habitat shots sorry. 

There's about 2 times the mushrooms that are visible hidden under the surrounding bushes.

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Cracked it Matai, happy for you man, finally aye. An untouched spot just for you

xkazus said:

are the majority of these finds on here lately are where there have been rain recently?

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slavit said:

Cracked it Matai, happy for you man, finally aye. An untouched spot just for you

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milkbot said:

Apologies if this is the wrong thread. It's my first ever season of gathering so obviously I want to be safe and thorough. I was wondering if there is some sort of nz specific cheat sheet I can take out into the wild while I'm hunting so I know what to look for, or even know what sort of habitats to look in.

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Welcome to the Shroomery. Is there a cheat sheet? Not that I know of, If there is I wish that I had found it as it would of saved me hours of reading. What you will most commonly find will likely depend on where you are in NZ. Most people hunt for Psilocybe subaeruginosa Use the Search Box below and read this thread and last years thread and get out and look. Please do come back and make an ID Request if you find anything. There are dangerous look-a-likes that you DON'T want to eat. We will help you out as much as we can Sorry about shouting.

hxrb04 said:

Nice Matai, epic find. I get that feeling when I see any haha.

I think I've got the same dehydrator that you have, what setting do you normally use to dry em out?

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Only use level 3, full blast.
Level 1 and 2 is a waste of time.
Turn it on for 15 minutes - half an hour, then turn it off, check on all the fruits and remove the ones that are cracker dry, then turn it back on again.
If some or all of the specimens still contain moisture in them, then turn it back on and wait a little longer, then turn it off again and check on all the specimens again to see if any are cracker dry.
Repeat until all of them are cracker dry.

To tell if a specimen is cracker dry, you just very gently touch the stipe and cap, and if the stipe and cap feel solid then the mushroom is cracker dry.
Put all the cracker dry specimens in an airtight plastic container or glass jar and keep the containers or jars in a cool, dry and dark place.

The sunbeam dehydrator is a shit design for mushrooms, honestly.
The trays are far too close together for mushrooms and you have to use the top or the bottom of the dehydrator for large fruits that wont fit in between the trays and even medium sized fruits are too big to fit in between the trays.
I like pristine cracker dried fruits, and this can not be achieved if you are carelessly stuffing mushrooms in between those stupid trays with fuckall space in between them, you will end up with squished cracker dry specimens, those trays un-modified have like 1 inch of space between them, fucking useless for mushrooms and will squish most of them.

So I modified my dehydrator, and I strongly recommend that all of you copy me and do the same.
Simply put, you take just two of your trays and a toothed knife, then proceed to cut one of the trays out with the toothed knife so that only the ring remains, then repeat with the other rack.
Congratulations, you now have 3 trays and 2 spacers!

Then build the dehydrator back up as follows.
BOTTOM - TRAY - SPACER - TRAY - SPACER - TRAY - TOP
Now you have 4 large sections to dry mushrooms in.

I will make a pictorial later when I can be fucked, I know alot of people are going to appreciate this, you will all see.

On another note, this is the worst season ever, fucking gay.
I have not even seen a single pin, fucking bullshit, very angry and upset.

NZ John said:

chipsandwich said:

I'm feeling pretty lucky about my Dunedin scores, everyone else seems to be really struggling.

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Found a sub and libs :P

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Huzar said:

Something went wrong with first upload

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Hashed said:

On another note, this is the worst season ever, fucking gay.
I have not even seen a single pin, fucking bullshit, very angry and upset.

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