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WoodLovingShroom
Stranger

Registered: 12/22/20
Posts: 3
Last seen: 2 years, 9 months
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Wood-Loving Species Cultivation
#27102588 - 12/22/20 01:49 PM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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Hello fellow shroomers!!
I'd like to start off by saying thanks for stopping this post. Please feel free to add any opinions, experience, advice, etc.
So on to the main topic of today's discussion. A few weekends ago (finally after years of hunting and not finding anything ) I stumbled across a fairly large patch of Psilocybe allenii in front of an apartment complex in the East Bay Area CA. I couldn't help but feel extremely lucky, as I had only been looking in this area for (I kid you not) less than 1 minute. The area looked very promising, with woodchips, irrigation, and shade being abundant.
Here are some photos of the specimen:



Yes, I do realize that I picked these mushrooms along with the mycelium instead of cutting them and leaving the mycelium behind. I did this so I could transfer them to patches of woodchips in my backyard, as well as my neighborhood. I understand that doing this can harm the patch, but don't fret, there were many which I left behind. I also came back a couple weeks after I picked them, and there were many many more, so I doubt what I did had any lasting negative impact on the mycelial growth.
I currently have three areas of woodchips in my yard where I simply dug a small hole and placed the colonized woodchips / stem butts inside, then covered them with more woodchips. One question I have in regards to this experiment is, how deep should the patch of woodchips be? Also, on two of the 3 patches I put a couple mushrooms inside of a water bottle, shook it up, and splashed the concoction over the woodchips on the desired spot. I heard Alan Rockefeller talk about him doing this with having great success in one of his lecutres of Psilocybe mushroom species. I did this as well with one spot in my neighborhood, as well as the patch which I had initially got these from (to pay my respects and hopefully help them out a bit). Additionally, the spots I had created in my yard are made from the black-dyed hardwood woodchips you can find at Home Depot. Another question I have is, does it really matter what type of woodchips? I've heard countless people say hardwood woodchips are the only way, as something about them being more dense and containing more lignin, as opposed to say, bark mulch for example (which is usally made with pine or other soft-woods). I believed this myself until I recently stumbled upon another patch of Psilocybe allenii which was growing from irrigated and shaded bark mulch so, I don't really know. This spot doesn't produce nearly as many so I guess there's that.
Along with these couple outdoor patches, I made two jars: One containing solely hardwood woodchips, and the other containing containing small cut-up pieces of cardboard with the same hardwood woodchips layered on top. In each, i put a few pieces of the same colonized woodchips that I collected in between and covered them up nicely with more woodchips.
Here are the pictures of the jars:
Jar 1 (only woodchips)
 One side of jar
 Other side of jar. Looking pretty strong
 Top down view (the little white ball of growth at the bottom was a stem butt
Jar 2 (cardboard and woodchips):
 Sorry for the bad pictures, terrible lighting in my room. You can see very slight growth in the middle, and the bottom.
 Again, bad picture, but you can see some growth on the bottom on the cardboard.
Jar 2 Seems like it's not growing as quickly, but that is false. To put a long story short, When I first made this jar, I also added sawdust to the bottom layer. What happened was I ended up flooding it with too much water, and in an attempts to pour some out, the sawdust went everywhere in the jar and made it look all muddy and murky. I was able to see some growth but the murkiness made it hard to see anything. I ended up (a few days ago) pouring the whole thing out into a plastic tub and cleaning out the jar. What I saw to my amusement was tons of colonized woodchips and cardboard (from the middle of the jar where I couldn't see). So that one is doing well, It just hasn't made itself visible yet. I have these stored in a dark place in my room with filtered air at about 70-80 degrees. I've heard many people say to let it colonize at a cooler temperature which I tested in the beginning. The temperatures for the first couple weeks were anywhere from 50-60 degrees F, and I didn't see much growth. I decided to move them into my room where it was warmer and within a few days I saw the growth accelerate! So I'm going to leave them in here for now. I do know that the risk of contaminants is greater at a higher temperature, but it seems to be helping them a great deal. Also, I'd like to add that I did pasteurize the woodchips I used for the jars (by putting them in a strainer and pouring hot water over them).
Lastly, I have a small tupperware container in which I put a couple caps and a stem atop a few pieces of moist cardboard in a puddle of water (I also check them daily and mist them when needed). It's funny because this container started all because a cap that I was trying to spore print actually started to grow mycelium, so i just put it on some cardboard and it really started growing! For this one, I'm going to wait until it almost fully colonizes and then I'll add a layer of the same woodchips.
Here are the pics of this:

 the cap in pieces on the right is new, I just put it there a couple days ago. The others have been there for about 2 weeks
 closeup
So this is my little experiment thus far! It seems to be going pretty well, so I'll keep it updated. Any questions feel free to ask me, and please do provide your own thoughts, opinions, and insight!! Thank you for reading this all the way through 
Ps. A friend of mine who I've given some mycelium to is going to post his experiment as well, so stay tuned!
Edited by WoodLovingShroom (12/22/20 03:07 PM)
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TheMagicConch
MC



Registered: 09/11/20
Posts: 841
Loc: Over here
Last seen: 2 months, 21 days
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That's awesome dude! Great job and nice find!
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WizardSJ
Stranger
Registered: 08/20/20
Posts: 29
Last seen: 5 months, 18 days
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The mushrooms picked you.
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bw86
Doesn't play well with others


Registered: 11/12/06
Posts: 5,937
Loc: 7b
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Re: Wood-Loving Species Cultivation [Re: WizardSJ]
#27102653 - 12/22/20 03:06 PM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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Exactly what apartment complex in the East Bay Area did you say that was?
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WoodLovingShroom
Stranger

Registered: 12/22/20
Posts: 3
Last seen: 2 years, 9 months
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Re: Wood-Loving Species Cultivation [Re: WizardSJ]
#27103952 - 12/23/20 11:02 AM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
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that's what i was saying!!! it really does feel that way doesn't it
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WoodLovingShroom
Stranger

Registered: 12/22/20
Posts: 3
Last seen: 2 years, 9 months
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Thank you Sam! As soon as I started looking in the correct areas rather than out in regional parks, it was almost right away that I was able to find these! Happy shroom hunting to you
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