Mushroom aborts

What are mushroom aborts?

Abort - a small pinning mushroom that ceases to grow and never reaches full maturity, don't produce spores. The cap of aborted shroom turn black color

How to identify mushroom aborts?

🔴 The distinctive feature of mushroom aborts are totally black caps or dark-blue caps

🔴 The growth of such mushrooms stops completely. In 2-4 days you can notice that the size of mushrooms doesn't change at all

🔴 Stalled pins can be found on cakes with mycelium overlay

🔴 Recommended article: Overlay and Stroma in mushroom cultivation

Main causes of mushroom aborts

Single abort or small amount of aborts throughout the mushroom cake is absolutely normal case.

More than 20% of aborted shrooms is a symptom of sudden changes in fruiting conditions, poor environmental conditions overall or genetic issues.

Let's figure out main causes of mushroom aborts

⛔️ sharp and/or frequent temperature changes during fruiting period (more than 10°)

⛔️ drafts, hard fanning, extreme air flows

⛔️ lack of fresh air exchange, high CO₂ concentration in fruiting chamber and low relative humidity (RH)

⛔️ imbalanced fruiting chamber environment; CO2 and RH too high.

Use air quality monitor to track and maintain proper fruiting conditions (Amazon)

⛔️ overlay

⛔️ strain mutation

⛔️ old genetic, bad strain. Acquire new strain

⛔️ competition for nutrients between fungi colonies (multiculture)

⛔️ rich pinning and competition for nutrients between mushrooms in the same cluster

⛔️ lack of nutritions (usually on the last flushes and it considered normal)

⛔️ contamination competitors: molds (Mycogone, Verticillium, Trichoderma) and bacteria

⛔️ small amount of abortions often appear after soaking in water for flushing aka rehydration due to a sharp changes of temperature; or after rehydration with cold shocking

🔴 Recommended: All you need to know about cold shock for magic mushrooms

Are mushroom aborts safe or not

✅ Mushroom abort is NOT a contamination! Aborts don't spread contamination on the substrate, safe for neighboring healthy mushrooms.

⛔️ It is considered mushroom aborts is a common point of origin for cobweb mold. There is a clear correlation between the development of cobweb mold and the presence of aborts. However, it is hard to say that the aborts are the direct cause of cobweb disease or even if the cobweb mold was the underlying cause of the aborts.

✅ Pick mushroom aborts when you are harvest all other mature healthy mushrooms.

✅ Aborted shrooms can be dried and stored with the other harvested mushrooms.

✅ Mushroom aborts are safe for both microdosing and trips. Moreover, such aborted shrooms are more potent than full-grown mushrooms. In fact, every single mushroom has different alkaloids concentration, thus different psychoactivity. However, take into account, that aborted shrooms are extremely powerful!

❗️ Aborts are much stronger and especially psychoactive

If you find this guide helpful support my work and 🍄 Buy Shroomok a mushroom as a donation.

Have a happy growing and healthy shrooms!

📸 More examples: Mushroom Aborts photo gallery