Archive through December 30, 2004

[theshadow7478]

If all the mushies are growing up the sides and it is not due to light coming in the sides (I am using alum foil lasagne pan) what would cos this? A few that came out the center aborted. Also it took a long time for the casing to grow (ie 2 weeks before seeing first pin), this is from 100% colonized cakes, incubated at 78F for 5 days thenin fruiting chamber.

2 weks before pinning is pretty common,
as it fruiting from the sides.
no real problem here,
at least not anyone one could really 'fix'
now if nothing is growing in the casing itself,
just around it on the sides,
that could mean the casing is too dry or too wet
or too acidic or too basic, etc.
i'd finish the current flush,
then remove the old casing and re-case for hopefully a better 2nd flush.

[theshadow7478]

how do u dunk something so large? How do u remove it, just turn it upside down and catch with hand? This is a standard lasagne pan.

no, let it in the pan
and just submerge the entire thing
poke holes in bottom for drainage

what if you are using a plastic rubermaid container hip?

an icepick/drill to poke a few holes

My experience is heavy misting damages the mycelium in the middle of the casing, but on the sides where your mister doesn't reach, fruits form. Here's one method you can use to dunk and recase. Scroll down to the bottom to find it.

[nomoreusmc]

it seems to me that as long as your misting isn't causing water bruising, your ok, at least your probibly not stunting growth

hey guys.. i was at Lowes today and saw a 50lb bag of ryegrass seeds for like $12.. i was wondering if i should buy some... i remember RR saying they are the best thing you can use for G2G.. but i was wondering how they do as spawn or cased... i was also hoping somebody could give me a good prep tek or a link or something... i was thinking of spawing a 50lb bag of composted cow dung in a large rubbermaid... ideas and comments welcome... thanks guys
LOST

Rye grass seed is the best imo, for use as spawn or g2g. When building a casing, the grass seed goes twice as far as rye grain and four times as far as popcorn. It's just more of a pain in the ass to prepare, but worth it.

My rye grass seed tek

Don't try to soak or boil rye grass seed. For a quart jar, put 1 1/4 cup of rye grass seed in the dry jar. Add a pinch of gypsum. Just reach into the bag of gypsum and get a pinch between your thumb and forefinger. That will be the right amount for each jar. Swirl the jar around a bit to mix the gypsum into the dry grass seed. Now, add 5/8 cup of weak coffee to the grass seed. Put a solid lid on the jar and shake the hell out of it. Next, after shaking, take the solid lid off, and place a lid with one or two small holes drilled in it, and either use polyfill or filter disks, as you usually would for jars. Cover the tops with foil and PC for an hour and a half at 15lbs.

When using coffee, I get best results by using a pinch of hydrated lime into the coffee before I add to the rye. Pour four cups of normal strength coffee into a pitcher. Add an equal amount of water. To these 8 cups of liquid in your pitcher, get one pinch of hydrated lime between your thumb and forefinger and drop it in. This will neutralize the ph of the coffee. Add this mix to your rye grass seed as described earlier.

The reason for shaking the grass seed with a solid lid is that the water has not yet soaked into the grass seed, and if there are holes in the lid, the water will splash out, and even worse, get your filter wet. A wet filter disk or polyfil is almost guaranteed to grow contamination, especially if it's wet with coffee. Filters must be kept dry, or contaminants will colonize right through the middle of them.

thanks so much rodger... 3 more questions for ya... where could i find some gypsum, i know it's used to keep the clumping down, are there any other alternatives? and somebody mentioned that you use store bought manure, what brand do you use? and what's your prep for that? thanks so much
LOST

<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1>quote:</font>

misting damages the mycelium<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>
i'd have to agree with rodger,
it's best to avoid directly misting mycellia, imo.
another reason why dunking is such a nice option, cakes or casings or even logs.

I find misting in the early stages is fine but as soon as you see signs of pins, stop misting as it seems to slow down drastically....

Have some rye grass seed and hope to try soon myself. If I'm not mistaken Plaster of Paris is part gypsum and part lime. I've read where this can be subsituted for use with grains, even though I'm still ignorant of whether Rodger's recipe could be used to inoculate from a spore syringe. Anyone, please let me know, because I wouldn't mind starting with the rye grass seed, and then doing some G2G transfers with same substrate. Wouldn't this be the fastest method? Too many popcorn problems, seeking an alternate reality.

You can inoculate both rye grass seed and rye berries from a spore syringe.

Store bought manure isn't the best by itself. Use it along with coir, coffee grinds, store bought compost, worm castings, chicken manure(5% max of the total), just whatever you can find. Mix it all up, add 5% or so hydrated lime, then cut it 50% with verm.

thanks very much rodger... i found some powdered gypsum.. 5lb bag for $5.. i know i could have gotten a 50lb bag of pelitized for the same price but i don't have room for a 50lb bag.. on that note that is why i was wondering about the store bought manure, as i don't have room to have a bunch of bags of fert and growing supplys to sit around in... i was just going to buy a 50lb bag of manure and do 2 big rubbermaid containers with it, plus Dooby's recent success with straight store manure looks really good. the only other things i have on hand that i could add would be verm, coffee, peat, and straw... what do you think would be a good ratio for those? thanks again for all the info rodger... i'm am about to go put my rye grass jars in the PC as soon as it cools down from my karo jar. thanks again
LOST

Just mix those in about equal portions. The more junk you throw in the better. If you're near the coast, throw in some seaweed. It's an excellent substrate. Toss in the seeds and stems from your weed. Save the peat for the casing. The powdered gypsum is what you want. Put a few spoonfulls into your compost mix too.

thanks for the tip rodger...

cool beans... what about some hemp... i have a bunch of hemp string from making necklaces... the rye jars are in the PC right now heating up... they will get knocked up with some a Pesa clone jar tommarow... 4 will be used as spawn and one will be kept to do g2g.. thanks again for all the help rodger
LOST

(Message edited by Lost_onabbey_rd on November 28, 2004)

<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1>quote:</font>

what about some hemp... i have a bunch of hemp string from making necklaces<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>

Everybody knows you can't grow mushies on hemp string.

hehehe... ya that's what got me thinking that rodger... think i'll just run it through the blender or coffee grinder and throw some in... i can't wait to get this project going... i really want to have something to add to the big guns folder in the archives... also just found out i'm getting 3 more prints in the mail soon... 1 tex 1 EQ from 1D.. and a mystery strain from pcsilly.. man i love this hobby and i love this site... all the people here are so damn cool it blows my mind some times... and then there are those who walk that razor then line between genius and insanity ^^^^. much love to the whole mycotopia family.
LOST

I just did 6QTS via Rodger's tek, but when I opened the pressure cooker to shake the jars, I realized that maybe shaking the rye grass with water first would have been a good idea. Because what I found was the water had not completly saturated the substrate. There were dry patches along the top, while the jar's bottom still retained much of the water. So I shook the jars ver well to distribute the moisture as best as I could, and have managed to obtain a fairly equal distribution. Has anyone else had this problem, and inoculated with any reasonable success? Am tired of the countless contam problems I faced this summer. Please advise, washing out these disastrous jars by hand in the back yard has been a real bummer. Thanks.

You definitely need to shake the jars with a solid lid on them before you pc.

[nomoreusmc]

soundlike too much mosture, If you want to save em you might pc em again? or just compleatly do em over

<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1>quote:</font>

I just did 6QTS via Rodger's tek, but when I opened the pressure cooker to shake the jars, I realized that maybe shaking the rye grass with water first would have been a good idea. Because what I found was the water had not completly saturated the substrate. There were dry patches along the top, while the jar's bottom still retained much of the water. So I shook the jars ver well to distribute the moisture as best as I could, and have managed to obtain a fairly equal distribution. Has anyone else had this problem, and inoculated with any reasonable success?<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>
now that you have shaken it up good
i'd re-PC it now
then inoculate,
should be ok then.

Thanks for the advice,however, wanting to make up for lost projects during the summer, I went ahead and shook the jars for approximately 3 minutes each. When it appeared that all moisture contents were equally distributed, I innoculated two days ago. Might shoulda just went ahead and re-done per suggested; but I theorized that if all had been orginally sterlized, then, if not overly moist, why wouldn't these jars be OK. Of course I could be wrong, like proven by many of this past summer's contams. Prehaps I'll post later if sucessfull, tho no pixel photos. Still just a poor mo-fo. Be cool.

[nomoreusmc]

Lost I love your avatar brother, Thats awsome!!

[triptamine]

After doing some research on this site, many were doing extractions in which crystals precipitate from 95% alcohol solutions. These crystals melt at <100 C, test negative for indoles using p-DMAB, and are most likely sugar crystals (glucose). Any comments?

Triptamine

did you eat em'..?
because IME...if i
eat the crystals i extract
using 95% alcohol...i get
really messed up..but i'm no
chemist so what do i know..lol

[triptamine]

Do you eat just the crystals? Or do you have some alcohol with it?

Triptamine

I wouldn't be too surprised -
I've tried ingesting dried crystals on three
separate occasions, even tried smoking them once -
nothing that approached a shroom trip from any of it.

PF was rabid about those fucking crystals - my question,
which always went unanswered, was whether or not anyone
ever bioassayed his big jar 'o (sugar?) crystals.

This is your first post, yet you're clearly not new to the OMC . . .
How did you analyze the crystals? Can you explain in laymans
terms how you came to your conclusions?

p-DMAB means nothing to me - explain if you will.

For what it's worth, I gave up chasing the crystal
ship long ago, as the path seemed to go nowhere.
The alcohol has the good stuff in it - the crystals
sit in the bottom of my extraction bottles - I rarely even bother
to warm up the extract to redissolve them before dosing.
Somewhere I still have a tidy pile of crystal - couldn't throw it
out even though the bioassays produced nothing.
If it IS psychoactive, it'd take a goodly sized pile to do anything,
based on my observations.



perhaps visions and / or hatchman will come out
of the woodwork to comment on this one ?

[shedthemonkey]

<blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1>quote:</font>

After doing some research on this site, many were doing extractions in which crystals precipitate from 95% alcohol solutions. These crystals melt at <100 C, test negative for indoles using p-DMAB, and are most likely sugar crystals (glucose). Any comments?

Triptamine<!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote>

Yes, I would like to comment.

The dry crystals are VERY active and I have had a full blown mushie trip--worth every bit of 5 grams dry-- on the DRY crystals. Had 50% loss in my heat based extraction but those crystals were definately active. They degrade fast too...two months later, kept in vacuum jar, they lost most of their potency as a similar dose was only threshhold. I think the alcohol will keep them fresh longer. There was NO tummy troubles with the extractions at all, either my fruit roll up version or the dry crystals, or in small amounts of alcohol, and all came on fast and furious.

So if it is sugar? Gimme some sugar baby!

Rabid...good word...

I like extractions a lot - I've randomly given my friends shots of it ("Hey - drink this!") and they've said it's some of the better tripping done. Very pure, we say. Very clean trip. No discomfort, that's the big thing noticed most often.

Interesting indeed -

Shed - how much crystal matter do you ingest for
full effects?

[shedthemonkey]

Depends on so many things. But for me, threshhold of dry mushies is about 1.5 to 2 dry grams. Bioassay of the fruit roll up stuff showed them to be 1 gram of FRU (Fruit Roll Up) to about 1.5 gram for Mrs. Shed and me (we did more than that dose but that was the ratio). Then a month later tried the same batch again and it was down to about 0.5 to 0.75 dry equivalent. Was losing potency fairly fast.

The crystal stuff on another batch came out to be about .4 grams for a threshhold dose, so it was more concentrated. The last dose I took (1.5 months after making the crystals) SHOULD have been a 5 gram equivalent for me but it was barely threshhold after eating 2.5 grams of crystal, so I ended up eating more and had less activity. Not sure what the Psilly becomes, but it must break down or something. I think S. Peele has mentioned that the crystals will break down over time and my results confirm this.

I plan on doing more extractions after I get geared back up with extra mushie material laying around. Got some cakes planned for this weekend to kick off the new year. :-) There is much to learn, and I will share results when I get more.

[triptamine]

Hello Shed,

Are you injesting just the crystals, or the goo/crystal mix after fully evaporating the alcohol?
The goo after evaporation is active, but I am speaking of the clear crystals which form from an 95% EtOH extract. These are not active.

Soliver: p-DMAB (para Dimethoxyaminobenzaldehyde) is a chemical used to detect indoes (DMT, Psilo, etc) which reacts with Psilocybin to form a pink to purple color and with Psilocin to form a blue to purple color. It is commonly used on thin layer chromatography as a developer to make these compounds visible. The crystals were dissolved in a small quantity of water or methanol and spotted on a piece of filter paper. After drying, a drop of 5% p-DMAB in HCL was added to these spots. After developing for about 5 minutes, the paper was examined for color -- none deveoped with these crystals, but pinkish-purple color was seen in the alcohol solution.

Another important point: 95% EtOH is not an ideal solvent for extraction. Psilocin in pretty soluable in it, but Psilocybin is almost insoluable. Best to use 70% EtOH, or 5% acetic acid to grab both compounds. Note that destructive enzymes in the fungus will seriously degrade the acetic acid extraction in several hours, so it is best to limit these compounds time in this solvent.


Triptamine

[shedthemonkey]

Triptamine-

My extractions were done in the highest grade of grain alcohol I could locate around these parts which is 76.5%. I used heat in a double boiler setup and watched the temperature closely to only allow the alcohol to boil. Did three extractions from the powdered mushies and then evaporated the quart or so of liquid down to less than half a cup.

Then we speak from this point of two separate paths, both of which I have tried.

Path 1: Pour the entire liquid remains of these extractions, still hot, into a 10inch square pyrex cake pan and put in front of my flow hood to evaporate. Took about 2 days to get completely dry. This was my fruit roll up method as the result was a dark brown very mushie smelling plastic like resin.

Path 2 was to let the remaining liquid cool for a day in the fridge. Pour off the deep amber clear liquid off the tiny white crystals. Take the liquid and do the fruit roll up tec above to it, resulting in much less volume of fruit rollup material. I washed the crystals off with a little grain alcohol and put in a clear glass pan to evaporate, in a day or so had pretty clean crystals plus a depleted yet still active goo aka fruit rollup material.

http://mycotopia.net/cgi-bin/discus/...580#POST260580

Link has the gorey details and should be relied on more than my memory if details clash in this thread verses it.


(Message edited by shedthemonkey on December 04, 2004)

That link is taking me into a loop hehe

Peace...

[shedthemonkey]

Awww crap. Trying to edit the link to the right one I broke it. Here it is:

http://mycotopia.net/cgi-bin/discus/show.cgi?tpc=2 &amp;post=260580#POST260580

Sorry bout that.

[triptamine]

It looks like you (shed) were not just taking the crystals, which explains a lot. Has anyone here made an extract which was active at using several 10's of mg of extract (which would imply a psilcybin concentration of ~50%)?

Triptamine

Music is a major part of my life. I find that there's a song for every mindset, and a mood for every song. Does anybody have any good tripping songs?

I have countless stoner mixes, but they don’t really do the trick when shrooming.

Some that i have found to be very pleasant (off the top of my head) are:
Moody Blues - Tuesday Afternoon
Phish - If I could I would
Phish - The Divided Sky
Phish - You Enjoy Myself
Queen - Killer Queen
Radiohead - My iron Lung (this one gets intense)
Radiohead - Paranoid Android (as does this)
Daft Funk - Da Funk
Orb - Little Fluffy Clouds
Darude - Feel the Beat
Coldplay - Clocks
John Mayor - Neon
Beatles - Because
Rick Wakeman - Merlin the Magician

[bipolar]

I like the whole Journey To The Centre Of The Earth album by Rick Wakeman. Plus lots of Floyd, Zep, Beatles, Sabbath...... just now getting into modern rock/tripping music. I'm a child of the 60's.

[candykid420]

trance music. or some rock like Hendrix and Nirvana

i enjoy psy/goatrance very much.
peace ohm

Radiohead goes better with acid, imo. It really fucks with me on shrooms. I like Chet Atkins, personally, Floyds my favorite band, but words bother me when I am on shrooms, at least if I am peaking hard. Fantomas' directors cut will entertain you if you aren't too far gone: classic themes to movies such as the omen, rosemary's baby, the excorcist, the godfather, etc. done heavy metal style with Mike Patton on vocals and Dave Lombardo (ex-Slayer) on drums.
I like Robert Johnson, too, when you hear him it sounds like he's singing from the past directly to you, but it may take some getting used to. I love Bob Dylan, the early stuff best. I like so much music, though, I pretty much have to experiment every time I trip to find what I want, sometimes the music in my head is better.

Shpongle, Pink Floyd, Tool, and some jazz.

I've found those to be the best type of music. Concept albums are the best, since they have a more specific continuity between songs that can lay out the theme of your trip for about an hour.

I've found jazz to be great. More modern stuff though, with a smoother layed back sound. Free jazz is actually pretty damn interesting when you're tripping. I was actually able to "understand" that type of stuff. You know, Ornette Coleman and those guys... It doesn't sound random at all.

[tempest2003]

if u wanna trip, watch that modest mouse video where theres the cows underwater and they slaughter the cows and shit, first time i saw that music video i was fryin and it was such a trip, or ya gotta watch the alice in wonderland video (cartoon one) while frying, it will blow your mind

[reefer]

I usually listen to Pink Floyd, The Doors, and Tool.
And if I'm feeling brave I listen to Dillenger Escape Plan.

You know it doesn't matter what I do I always like to listen to hip hop, especially 2pac and eminem....

[nomoreusmc]

phish is the best, wading in the velvet sea is cool but any of them are cool.