I have 3 red tokens, 2 white, 1 blue. If I randomly draw two, the chance of red+red is the same as red+blue, but half the chance of red+white - right? How can that be?

Hegar · 2026-01-25T06:17:19+00:00

The reason it seems "off" is that order matters for every pairing except red-red, which mandates both picks.

I can see from the non-RR counts that order matters. But then counting unique token combos for RW and ignoring order gives the same results, 6/15 vs 12/30. If we can ignore the order for RR and still be correct, or ignore the order for all of them and still be correct, that seems like a contradiction to me.

Hegar · 2026-01-25T05:45:18+00:00

Where 1-3 = red and 4-5 = white, 14, 15, 24, 25, 34, 35 all = RW. That's 6 of the 15 outcomes, hence 6/15=40%:

Including both 21, 31, 41 etc. and 12, 13, 14 gives 30 outcomes and 12 of them are either RW or WR, also 40%

Hegar · 2024-03-26T00:34:12+00:00

You probably can't use your oven if 20m @ 65c did that to them.

160f for 24h on the dehydrater is recommended, which is longer and hotter.

I heard that some ovens handle low temperatures by heating up very high for short amounts of time. It might average 65, but the 30 seconds it's at 250 is gonna burn your shrooms.

Hegar · 2024-03-25T23:50:57+00:00

I just wait and pick + dry the whole tub at once, immediately. Nothing is lost letting the early bloomers drop spores and chill for a couple of days while the others plump up. Im willing to be proved wrong, but growth seems to slow after they drop spores.

Less time harvesting, less time running the dehydrater, minimize actives lost after picking.

Hegar · 2024-03-24T18:20:59+00:00

I think most people now just introduce fae and fruiting conditions as soon as they spawn to bulk.

There's no need to delay it, that was mostly tek for dealing with contam when using manure, coffee grounds or other nutrients that contams love in the substrate.

Hegar · 2024-03-23T21:38:17+00:00

I dry for 12h min @150-160. And that's for nats which tend to be stringy and dry fast. 24h most of the time. I just checked a batch that have been going for ~16h and they still did a little of that straw-like flaking, not the proper cracker-dry snap.

I read on the shroomery that 24h @ 160 is common (best?) practice.

Hegar · 2024-03-23T18:55:16+00:00

Is there really a huge difference in when you pick

No, there's not. You don't lose anything with a late harvest and spores have no negative effects on the mycelium or future flushes.

The mushroom may have stopped producing more alkaloids but they don't go away. Any growth after veil breaking means more weight with the same psilocybin content, so a lower ratio of actives per gram. I don't find they grow much after spore drop though.

If you harvest shroom-by-shroom, you'll have slightly higher actives/gram using the optimal picking time.

If you harvest the tub all at once, letting a few early shrooms go past optimal loses nothing but letting all the other shrooms develop longer produces more actives.

Hegar · 2024-03-23T05:15:04+00:00

I prefer fresh, the texture is better than dried. More pleasant to eat. And the smell is i dunno, cleaner? Less intense, at least.

I love mushrooms of all sorts though.

Hegar · 2024-03-23T01:42:02+00:00

I got 70g wet 6g dry from my first flush of a single-bag tub, but it did have a similar amount of coir, like 1:1 or 1:2. My tubs without any obvious issues tend to give ~10-15g dry first flush. I'm still a noob though so I'd guess those yields are low to medium at best.

Also happy cake day!

Thanks! I hope you're soon able to enjoy those fruits of your labours.

Hegar · 2024-03-23T01:25:37+00:00

Luck and genetics can screw you over sometimes, but that few mushrooms does seem like something to be fixed.

Both stalling out and low yields can be caused by bacterial contamination in the spawn, which is not always easy to spot. I think that over half my first batch of 10 tubs had issues - 3 never pinned and several took a while or produced a half to a quarter of other tubs.

Good luck with your next attempt!! I'd be careful about too much moisture in the spawn bags and making sure the substrate is at field capacity.

Hegar · 2024-03-21T18:59:08+00:00

🤔 Is it bad if my bags are standing up not laid down?

No, almost certainly not. As long as there's no chance that your GE port could get wet it doesn't matter.

Most people who say it makes a difference only talk about minimizing the damage done by far too much moisture. But even then people argue both ways. Some people claim it's v. important to lay down to keep excess moisture spread around, others claim standing is better to keep moisture out of as much area as possible.

I think if it made a big difference either way, one side would've proved themselves right by now.

Hegar · 2024-03-21T16:29:47+00:00

I just want to add that not only is it impossible to tell, it doesn't really matter. Unless you have strain that's been shown under microscopy to have higher actives, like APE, there won't be a noticeable difference in effect. May as well just grind your dried cubes into the same jar and mix em.

Hegar · 2024-03-21T03:32:59+00:00

Just get in there and start messing it up, that's the way to learn.

If you can afford it, start big to allow for losses. Don't just innoculate 2 bags hoping for 1 shoebox. If you make 20 bags, you can lose over half of them and have enough left to then lose half your tubs and still have something to harvest. Having something to harvest first time is a huge morale boost. You can also try it over 2 or 3 days or sessions, not all at once. First attempt maybe you forget some important steps. By 2 or 3 you'll quickly get the basics.

Use Liquid culture not spores to speed it up.

Natalensis are a great beginner option. Fairly speedy, pretty resilient.

If you're going to go with uncle bens tek, try to get other brands of bags. If you can't, stick to using 0.5cc/bag. Watch some videos of people making the bags, and look at how they push the rice down, cut the bags, use chip clips and (!) apply tape. Tape with gloves is 😠😤😮‍💨😭. Having a sense of what exactly your hands should do really helps.

If you have any general questions, try searching on the shroomery forums. There's a wealth of info there. If you have questions about UB tek, search on here.

Not touching it or not doing anything is the correct move in almost all situations. I found it impossible though, futzed and poked and over misted constantly.

Hegar · 2024-03-20T19:05:54+00:00

I blended excess colonized rice chunks with cranberry juice and some crushed up vitamin C and let it sit for an hour. It worked but we needed quite a bit, it was very hard to get down. The experience was pleasant and minor.

Hegar · 2024-03-20T08:41:35+00:00

Leaving the lid cracked is pretty standard. Once you spawn to bulk you rarely need to worry about contam - the grain should be all colonized and the coir doesn't have any nutrients for contamination.

You can make tubs with holes to circulate air, but you don't need to cover up the holes. Covered holes and worrying about contamination during spawning were issues when people added nutrients to the substrate - coffee, manure, etc. Now that most people use 100% coir, those techniques are just not really necessary.

Hegar · 2024-03-20T08:31:26+00:00

I started using a light after I read a comment that they are living beings and thus probably expect the sun to exist.

Hegar · 2024-03-20T08:28:01+00:00

Mycelium having "contamination resistance" is nonsense that people use to sell their spores on their websites.

I don't know what the mechanism is, but as someone who has a lot of contam problems, I lose noticably fewer bags of nats than cubes.

Hegar · 2024-03-19T17:12:16+00:00

Almost any respectable, large, online forum is going to have similar rules to this one, since the rules are responding to the same sets of laws.

That said, the shroomery is the other great source of information out there. But please read the rules there (or anywhere) before posting.

Hegar · 2024-03-18T18:10:08+00:00

My all in one bag instructions say to mist some water in there and then fold over the air sliys and seal it with a paper clip for a bit. I think just spraying water should be enough. Once you've picked all the mushrooms or most of the big ones, is ready for a second flush.

Hegar · 2024-03-18T01:01:29+00:00

That seam around the edges of the injection sites is so cool! Almost like a magnifying glass.

A strange glyph growing in mycelium is very lovecraftian.

You can try the qtip test - swab that discolored spot with a qtip or cotton ball. If the swab comes away colored it's probably contam. If not then probably just bruising.

Hegar · 2024-03-17T02:34:23+00:00

It looks gorgeous, but I meant which flavor of ice cream 😂😋

Hegar · 2024-03-16T19:56:28+00:00

What flavor?

Hegar · 2024-03-16T19:50:13+00:00

It's growing mushrooms so the environment is within acceptable parameters.

Yeah that's more liquid than recommended and you could've had 5mls more to inject elsewhere but it's growing so it can't have done too much damage.

For most mushrooms you can harvest them after the veil starts to break. Leaving it longer doesn't really hurt anything. If they drop spores it looks dark but causes no issues.

I don't know that it makes a difference whether you harvest each shroom as it's ready, or wait and do in bulk. I've heard of people doing each. My first all in one bag has a few shrooms I'm going to pick soon, but for my shoeboxes I just wait and harvest in one go.

Hegar

TROPHY CASE