Woodlover grow experiments

[Jagube]

I've been experimenting with woodlovers. In August I made a small POC-sized Ps. azurescens bed and today I made another one - photo attached. This was covered with a sheet of cardboard, soil and landscaping fabric for now (to be removed and replaced with moss later on).

I can't say anything about the ease of fruiting, but the mycelium is super easy to grow - and I just hope fruiting happens in due course. The first bed was closer to colonized, so it may even fruit this winter.

I'm also expanding Ps. cyanescens mycelium.

My experience with the azures and cyans mycelium so far is that they're super resistant to contamination and don't require sterile work. My starting material was LC syringes. I have now expanded them to LC jars, which went better than any of my Ps. cubensis LC jar efforts.

I used the LC syringe to inoculate jars with a (sterilized) mix of brown rice and wood chips. Cardboard is a good additive too. Rice and grains are more prone to contamination, but colonize quicker than chips. Chips, on the other hand, are contam-resistant. Cardboard is reasonably contam-resistant and quick to colonize at the same time.

Once you have mycelium on chips, sterility is not a requirement; you can use it to inoculate more chips in open air. If your spawn jar is a mix of grain and chips and there is contamination, you can open the jar, use the colonized bits to inoculate more chips and discard the uncolonized bits. That's what I did and it worked.

I have also procured a Ps. serbica spore print, another woodlover. I've never worked with spore prints, so that's going to be something new to try. I'll keep you updated.

 

[grollum]

Hey jagube,

awesome project. I also realized how easy some woodlovers can be handled once established on wood. Such a strong mycel.
I was totally stoked when i saw how fast the mycel grew on sterilized woodchips.
I will try to put my spores directly onto the wood the next time. Or maybe first grow some out on agar. but will skip the grain step.

 

[Jagube]

Thanks grollum.

When expanding from wood to more wood, I don't even sterilize or pasteurize the wood. I just soak it in a dirty-ish garden bucket. It may be relevant that my chips are reptile bedding grade, which tend to be cleaner than the BBQ products.

They say spores directly on wood don't work so well though. But you may get lucky. I haven't gotten into agar, but if you have, that should be much more reliable.

 

[muladharma]

Very interesting.
I'd like to know if "Ps." should be read as Psilocybe.

Will be watching the experiment.

 

[Jagube]

I'd like to know if "Ps." should be read as Psilocybe.

Yes, people often abbreviate it that way as for example P. cyanescens could be confused with Panaeolus cyanescens.

 

[downwardsfromzero]

Hey jagube,

awesome project. I also realized how easy some woodlovers can be handled once established on wood. Such a strong mycel.
I was totally stoked when i saw how fast the mycel grew on sterilized woodchips.
I will try to put my spores directly onto the wood the next time. Or maybe first grow some out on agar. but will skip the grain step.

Some have had success starting spores on cardboard, perhaps with a tiny dash of malt extract. This latter option would have to be sterile, though.

A nice way of preparing bulk wood chip for mycelium transfer is soaking it for about 3 months in a sealed bin until it really stinks (and then some) then strain and rinse with fresh water on the inoculation day.

Moss and leaf litter are good to put on top for fruiting once fully colonised. Before then you can feed them hair - I would suggest undyed, untreated, completely natural hair.


That's a lovely project you're doing there, Jagube. Can't wait to see photos of the babies!

 

[grollum]

Some have had success starting spores on cardboard, perhaps with a tiny dash of malt extract. This latter option would have to be sterile, though.

What I realized when bringing spores of woodlovers onto agar is that it grows different than sterile cubensis spores. In my case the mycel quite fast grew into islands and then stopped growing and looked like overgrown from some bacteria or something else. This seems to be a thing because the spores are never as sterile as cubensis spores from lab or sterile grown mushrooms. But since the mycel is quite strong it after a few transferes onto new agar won over the bacteria and grew faster into the whole dish.
I am wondering how important it is to have a clean spore print when inoculating cardboard. For me it seems that the spores develop a great energy when put on wood or a similar material like cardboard and can outperform other spores and bacteria or even can fight other competitors.

 

[Scylla]

I can vouch for everything said in the OP.

Once sporulated Ps. Cyanescens can be transferred to wood chips and it will proliferate readily despite any contamination; trichoderma, black mold, bacteria, etc.

If you are in a location with any chance of frost I would strongly advise to either make the bed easily coverable, aka a hoop-house type construction, or place them in a constructed wood fabrication out of the the way of frost. Wine barrels chopped in half work well. Or simply plywood construction with 2x4's for side walls. plastic tarp, netting, or shade cloth can be stretched over the top to increase humidity and induce fruiting. Similarly a raised bed can be made with the same principle.

making a bed in the ground gives you very little flexibility to augment conditions to induce pinset.

HOWEVER here is the big elephant in the room. Wood Lovers Paralysis.

I get affected by this in my quad muscles in stronger doses, making it difficult to walk and ride a bike, and heavily in my eyes. I completely loose ability to focus my vision.

Wood Lovers Paralysis is definitely something to be aware of. Given how little we know about it wontonly consuming or giving wood lovers to people is a bit of a sketchy practice.

Currently the running theory is it is aureganicen (spelling errors I know) and the positively charged tri-methyl moeity is causing antagonism (I think) of muscular acetycholine or nicotinic receptors.

Reportedly, anti-histamines taken orally before consuming the mushrooms will completely negate this effect. This supports the theory that something is binding to acetycholine to inhibit nerve signals. Anti-histamines serve to block those receptors in some way.

I realize here my neurochemistry has gotten garbled in terms of antagonism, but anecodotal reports suggest anti-histamines do block this effect.

I have not verified this personally yet but I will soon and will report.

I am going to start a thread on psilocin extraction nuances that will also hope to touch on how active alkaloids can be extracted from wood lovers without co-extracting these neuro-muscular blocking agents.

 

[muladharma]

Currently the running theory is it is aureganicen (spelling errors I know) and the positively charged tri-methyl moeity is causing antagonism (I think) of muscular acetycholine or nicotinic receptors.

Thanks for adding this. To better understand the thread when re-reading, I'll link this post by Loveall in the current context, about aeruginascin.

 

[aruse]

Why did this thread stop? or did it change to paralysis? I guess i'm going to ruin it too, and say, I'm not sure what the OP is asking? Sounds like it's on inoculation, which sounds to be working for jagube and is fascinating! I've been reading that it doesn't need to be so sterile for wood lovers and that starting with agar or grain can be difficult to then take outside. I have had a lot of good experience transfering live mycilium straight onto fresh (unsterile) wood chips. I'm not sure my intermediate sawdust experiment helped. This works great for ps cyans and ps azures!!! If i had a sporeprint i think i've read this can go straight onto carboard? i believe buying mycilium is illegal but otherwise that would be the way to go.

On paralysis: I have 24 years of experience with ps cyans and paralysis is rare. Maybe it's just me? But it's not that bad either. I wonder a lot about entourage effect. I also wonder if my recent experiences with paralysis are really the same. The first few times it was impossible to ignore. But lately it happened again (sort of), but it occured to me as perhaps a way to let go of the body easier. All that happened recently was i just curled up and lost track of hours of time. But it wasn't uncomfortable at all, though my neck hurt after. lol. I believe at least a fair part of paralysis is psychological. I believe there is a chemical reaction in the body because many folks talk about it, but still i believe it more likely to happen if you think about it. Even more important, is how you deal with it during. "Let go" isn't always so easy, especially if one expects the worste. But I'll give you, if it's a sort of poisoning that is damaging or can be long lasting then I will have to learn more.