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This is my first #fungifriday post and what better way than to show of my Amanita muscaria harvest from this week.
It seemed like the season was ending here in Northern Germany, but Wednesday after the full moon I thought I would just drive by the woods and have a look.
Well I didn’t have to look far, growing right near the road were some of the best specimens I have seen this year (minus the haul I got from the kindergarten).
I didn’t have my camera with me in the woods, but check out these beauties once I got them home.
I saw a guy on YouTube eat of bunch of these mushrooms and he said he didn’t feel anything then went into a huge rant about how beautiful they are, pretty funny. So I made a gif for the “shimmering turbine blades”.
After screwing around making videos and taking pictures, I got them cleaned up and put them out to dry.
I have updated my drying technique a little bit, I skipped the window screen this time and put them right by the fire. This seemed to work much better and faster! Once you get the feel of it, you can learn how to keep the fire just right so they don’t get burnt.
Here they are all dried up, you can see after the dying process they lose quite a bit of volume.
I think that should be enough to get me through the year. I don’t want to over harvest and damage the crop next year, (post edit: this is ignorance on my part because you can't damage the crop by over-harvesting, this mushroom was made to be picked to spread its spores!) but I try to only pick the ones that have dropped their spores. When the Amanita’s reach maturity a skirt drops from under the gills releasing spores to fertilize the mycorrhiza in the soil, then they are good to pick.
Check out the funny video I was talking about, I love this guys videos.
Hope you all enjoyed another Amanita muscaria post! If you missed any in the past check them out!