OMG What Happened?

Spores were dropped but everything was ok

Mushrooms love to do stuff when you're not around. Recently I left to go on a short trip, which got delayed due to a missed connection, and I knew we were going to be touch and go anyway bc the shrooms needed to harvested.... and I came home to the photo above. Yikes.

The mushrooms still had good texture, so I harvested and dried them. The ones with a ton of spores on them, I gave a quick bath. All of these I have marked to grind because I've read that spores make them unpalatable (which is interesting bc in general mushrooms taste pretty bad, so if dropping spores makes them taste worse, better to not eat these guys whole).

Now, here's the debate - will a tub flush again after a spore drop? One of mine did, one didn't. The tub you see in the photo above - that's the second flush. It did a healthy third flush, and was on it's way to a fourth but I had to stop it because I was going to be traveling again. I feel terrible dumping out healthy tubs.

The other tub - it smelled fine, (smell is a big indicator of health - your entire grow should smell good and earthy, not sweet, or sickly and FFS don't smell anything that looks moldy) but it looked weird so I threw it out. It was probably bruising, but I just don't have enough experience and risk tolerance to ride it out. So we got only two flushes from this one. Maybe folks with more experience know if I overreacted. Here's a photo before I dumped it.

You'll see pins in just a couple of days if you're going to get another flush, and eventually contamination will win. Bet on about 4 flushes. There's been talk about ways to feed mycelium with honey and flour after the fourth flush, so if you're an endurance athlete, by all means give it a whirl.