i have some shrooms growing and wondering if there is anything in the batch could be poison. i ordered these spores online so I know that they are a psychoactive kind and not poisonous kind,so when i pick them, is there anything that may i have gone wrong that would make them harmful to eat?
The mushrooms themselves will not be poisonous, although they may have gotten a bacteria, but if they do then they would be an odd color and you would be able to tell easily by looking at them.
The blue is just because the psilocybin is oxidating, which you should try to prevent because it destroys the potency. But if they were bad, they would look moldyish.
If you see anything that looks to be fungus, or some sort of mold anywhere on it just cut that part off and don't eat it. The mold/fungus should be very prominent and easy to see.
i've read a lot of people talking about how mushrooms can be somehow "tainted" from growing on contaminated cakes. the reasoning is this: the mushroom is built pretty much entirely out of the chemicals the mycelium has ingested from the substrate. we've witnessed how certain kinds of tryptamines added to a substrate can cause the mushroom to be far stronger, and there's even speculation that they can produce active compounds not normally found in shrooms if given just the right chemical in the substrate. however, while not a mycologist, i would lean towards saying that it is not going to magically "absorb" bacteria or mold. perhaps if a certain mold or bacteria contaminated the substrate the myc. may be able to absorb some undesired substances, but it would be far more likely for said substance to simply be on the outside of the mushroom due to external contact. that said, i've had a contaminated cake or two produce fruits regardless of their condition....in the past i've ALWAYS pitched a cake if it had a bacterial contamination (which is easy as hell to point out...the substrate gets really dark and wet looking and no myc. will grow there. it will give off a slightly funky sour smell) but just last week i picked some mushrooms off of a cake that was about 1/3 uncolonized due to bacteria. i ingested these mushrooms with absolutely NO ill effect (btw, if you want to fruit a contaminated cake, do it in vitro because there's no reason to contaminate others). i've also eaten mushrooms from cakes with your typical bread mold on them with no ill effects, but then i'm not really very allergic to penicillin or anything. basically, i've done things that go against every shred of common sense and wisdom, and suffered no consequences. this is not to say that it is safe at all, just that i've at least been lucky. most of the time contaminated cakes won't even produce mushrooms in the first place, but if they do i'm generally of the opinion that they aren't quite so dangerous as people assume. i would strongly advise against it though. but as long as you have healthy growth and your substrate is 100% colonized by the fungus with no obvious signs of contamination (mold, extreme discoloration, bad smell) then there's no way your mushrooms are going to be anything but mushrooms.
