Silk Road forums
Discussion => Newbie discussion => Topic started by: danster3k on September 05, 2013, 02:54 pm
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so first time growing shrooms... and i messed up... i dried the first flush by putting them on a plate covered by a cloth and leaving them next to an open window for 3 days. I then put 50 sachets of desiccant covered by some tissue in tupperware and the shrooms on top... sealed the tupperware and left in a closet... instead of "cracker dry" shrooms, i have shrroms with white mold ... nasty!
what i do wrong? can i wash and try to get them cracker dry or should i bin?
second flush didn't give me many shrooms, but how should i dry them properly?
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aren't all mushrooms just mold?
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@MrsKing -- no mushrooms are not mold...they're fungi.
After harvesting your shrooms you want to immediately place them in a dehydrator (either purchased or diy homebuilt...easy to make). This is to rapidly dry most of the moisture out of the shrooms. But they're still not necessarily "cracker-dry" at that point. After drying in the dehydrator, you want to then place them into an airtight container with sufficient desiccant to remove that last few percent of moisture.
Dehydrators will only remove moisture down to a certain percentage - which depends on your atmospheric conditions of temperature and relative-humidity. If you live in an fairly arid climate then the dehydrator method is possibly all you need. But even then, the more moisture that can be removed from the harvest the better.
--If the mold that you observed is from contaminants that were introduced from the covering-cloth or the open air...then the likely reason for such mold is because the moisture in the shrooms was not being reduced fast enough. Sometimes leaving shrooms out in the open air doesn't provide fast enough moisture release.
-- If the mold on your shrooms was originally initiated from conditions within your growing chamber itself, then you have other problems that need to be dealt with before worrying about your drying procedures post harvesting.
Since you claim you've successfully grown a harvest of shrooms...then it's difficult to understand how you were able to do so without gaining sufficient knowledge from someplace like shroomery.com -- Which further begs the question of why are you seeking such answers here on SR?
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I have also successfully grown shooms on my own and then came to the point when it seemed harder to dry them without much loss of psilocybin and much more fragile to oxygen exposure psilocin...
If you have chosen this way to dry them, it seems to me that the pre-dry stage should last longer to harden the mold spores to sprout later. And then, when you put them in a box with hygroscopic material, you should check on them more often, get some air in there. This a hard topic, seek for answers and other ways on shroomery, that's some good advice.
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thanks for the replies, i have been getting informed on shroomery, that's were i got my initial method from. just had no luck with the first flush... i asked both here and there, as i like the variety of replies ^_^
i had no mold problem until i put them in the "desiccant chamber", which is just a tupperware with standard lid, in which i put 50 small sachets of desiccant under some tissue at the bottom of the tupper and the shrooms on top of the tissue.
i managed to grow the shrooms easily because it was an easy growing kit i purchased ^_^ drying has been more difficult, i suppose its because i live next to the sea and there is a fair bit of humidity here. although i think they were dryer before i put them in the tupperware. might be because i need one that sucks all the air out when i close it?
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Hoo! Hoo! Growkit... :o
In the stage of drying it is very tough to avoid oxygen cause mold likes when there is no air and dark. I don't know how the psylocibin and psilocin react to light, maybe dig in that direction. No oxygen presence is required for storing, you can also get some chemicals that absorb oxygen. But when drying... well, it depends on your budget, I havent got that, my print came form freesporering and my first flush was also wasted...You have to train on something, I guess, what a pity.
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hopefully this helps. http://www.erowid.org/plants/mushrooms/mushrooms_mmgg.shtml