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Seeding a new Psilocybe cyanescens patch

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Bancopuma

Bancopuma

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Hey peeps,

In November of last year I had the very very good fortune of stumbling across a fruiting woodchip bed of Psilocybe cyanescens literally a stone's throw from where I live here in the UK. It seems the mushroom spirits have got my back!! :p Well today I decided to pay them/the mushroom back in some form. I was out walking with my girlfriend at the weekend; there are some nice woodland walks not far from us, and a fair bit of forestry work going on. We found this really nice big pile of quite fresh hardwood chips near a golf course nearby, so I thought I'd seed it with a bucket of P. cyanescens mycelium from the nearby established patch. At the same time, I brought four bin bags worth of woodchips back from this newer patch to supplement the established woodchip bed, to give the mycelium in that bed some fresh fuel. Feels nice and wholesome to help spread this amazing mushroom species to say thank you for existing and providing myself and others with amazing experiences! :)
 

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Thanks dude, here's hoping! Have you experimented with this approach? So yeah I did attempt to establish my own P. cyanescens woodchip bed from scratch down in my garden at my family home which is much further south (and a fair bit drier) than where I'm based now, much further north in the UK. This attempt was not a success unfortunately, but this time I think the odds are stacked more in my favour...I know conditions are good locally because of finding the fruiting bed nearby last November, I've got access to way more woodchips due to the forestry work going on here, and I seeded that patch with far more woodchip mycelium from the established patch than when I seeded my own garden patch with mycelium. Yesterday evening I added another bucket load of mycelium woodchips to the new bed and supplemented the established bed with some more fresh woodchips for good measure.

I've heard patches can take a few years to get established, but I think this depends to some degree on the amount of mycelium you started with. I think this woodchip bed is well placed with all the forestry work going on locally, so hopefully in time the mushroom will spread out further from there. I'm not sure how long I'll be based up this way, perhaps just for the next year, so I may not be able to reap the fruitful rewards of this patch (and even so I have access to an established patch a stone's throw from where I live), but even so I'm happy to give a little something back to the mushroom, after all it has given me. :thumb_up:
 
My successful grows were in containers outside. Mostly they were started by mycelium from another patch although sometimes it may have been propagated on cardboard and slowly expanded onto increasing quantities of woodchips. The local council was kind enough to provide smallish, rectangular recycling boxes which proved to be the most fruitful.

From cardboard spawn, the mycelium was expanded onto boiled barbecue woodchips or reptile bedding in a plastic takeaway tub. When fully colonised this was used to inoculate hardwood chips (from tree surgery). These had in the meantime been soaked, fully submerged in rainwater in a large, closed bucket for about six months, then rinsed thoroughly with tap water immediately before inoculation.

The results were mind-bending.

:shock:
 
Hey dude, good stuff! They are great mushrooms. I've heard the UK dwelling variety of P. cyanescens are not as potent as their American kin, but I rate the experience they provide very highly.

This is more or less what I did on my first attempt, only I didn't pre-soak the woodchips to this degree which likely worked against me. I managed to obtain a small amount of P. cyanescens mycelium on woodchips, and I mixed this in with cardboard and alder/barbecue woodchips...I didn't pre-boil them before using them though. I dug small holes in the ground and put a cardboard box in the hole, and the mix of cardboard, woodchips and mycelium colonised woodchips inside this, and I made sure to keep this patch watered to keep moisture levels up (not sure I used rainwater though, which would likely have been a better choice than tap water, I can't imagine mushroom mycelium is a particular fan of chlorine).

I'm more optimistic about this attempt though...I know local conditions are favourable, I started off with a lot more mycelium, and the seeded patch was all relatively fresh hardwood chips, and it was nice and moist inside the pile. The issue is whether I'll still be around these here parts to reap the fungal rewards if the new patch does not fruit this autumn. But it's good to have that established patch nearby, hopefully having supplemented it with fresh hardwood chips it should improve yields and prolong the productive life span of the patch.
 
In the real world, these little blue-turning ones, are likely to be part of a complex ecosystm. They probably have some natural friends and ally's, as well as enemy's.

While controlled exposior to enemy's (like maybe instects) could maybe help the plant to produce more alkaloIds. exposior to ally's could maybe protect the mushroom, specifically against other fungi.

These things take time to figure out. But i have the feeling that we're getting there anyway.
 
Good Luck that looks awesome!! I want to do that eventually i got some Psilocybe Cyanescens and Azurescens spores in storage XD.
 
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