Darklight

I so wish I could go to both these workshops, they're both critical skills I'm missing and a colleague was telling me how great Bioquisitive is when I was at Garden States last weekend Alas, I live nowhere near Melbs

He so would. It'd be logged by some old unit he got off ebay and hacked into workable with fencing wire. Was gunna say 'baling twine' instead, but Ed would never hack anything with flimsy, and he'd organise proper documentation :D It was his birthday the other day, I didn't miss it but was too gutted to post Fuck he woulda loved the last EGA, then we woulda taken the troopy somewhere steep and stupidly unsafe so he could show me a plant and then we'd drink whiskey or whisky So many lovely new people, so many lovely old people, and still there is an Ed-shaped hole in the universe May we all be his greatest experiment ever <3

Am always fulla *something* lol But at EGA I am always full of joy because EGA, you lot create the best vibes

EGA Plant Swap was lovely chaos in the best kind of way! So many people, everyone was respectful of the social bond around the sharing, people without things to swap were respectful and many of these people walked away laden with plants and with all parties happy. A few very generous people ( I have no idea who, so shout out if it was you ) turned up with HEAPS of plants to share, which got shared, and I hope they found some of the species which needed them too People milled, plants vanished, moar plants appeared, it was a whirl Did not get enough time to be properly helpful or even see who was around and what was moving, I got to talk to a few lovely individuals about mycocultures I bought with me and got sidetracked, sorry Amz and team Many thanks to @Amazonian for co-ordinating this and also for keeping the vibe cool and stopping entropy in the face of utter chaos Many thanks to lovely EGA crew for allowing the space to happen

Sorrow at the destruction of plants, population, association and habitat Thanks for your hard work, and for those who help with it Joy that you are continuing, that somebody cares and does the work so well Wishing you more power for your species and for your eagle eye data

I want to write a great big EGA love letter. Just got back last night after stopping in SYD to see fam and I still have the EGA glow :D The EGA team yet again excelled themselves on this one, there wasn't a minute in those days I wasn't enjoying myself and wishing there were 3 more of me so I didn't miss anything. The whole weekend was a highlight, but among the highlights some of the highest were: Meeting @Yeti101 who is not only bloody awesome but saved the front of house crew with a coffee run, endless thanks mate Hanging out at the Plant Swap with @Amazonian except we didn't get to chat much Seeing Aunt Frances and having a chat with her, the woman is a knife and a multidisciplinary legend, I am in awe and want to have her babies. Loved her presentation Meeting Charly Bedrossian from Cannabis College who is a complete darling Catching up with a bazillion SABbers for about 3 minutes each and wishing time would bend sufficiently to have more time Being gobsmacked by how beautifully the EGA team pulls these events together from the air- it was like watching a symphony unfold. Special thanks to Sophie Working with @obtuse, mate you are lovely, insightful and organised and a total blessing to the myco community and the community in general Wondering when @RonnySimulacrum was gunna crack the next joke that would leave me in stitches, while he simultaneously performed miracles Brief moments with Adele cracking up laughing at ourselves Seeing ppl I only see at EGAs because time is precious an I'm getting old If you regret not making this one, you should :p Go to the next one Love your work EGA ppl, and thank you <3

Geez I've been dreaming about Garden States the last few nights, it's been a Jung/ Escher mashup with a side of Freud thrown in for the guilts Very much looking forward to seeing you there, the crew have yet again excelled themselves with the lineup and the programming. I promise not to get lost or worry about nuns

For the last 4 nights I've been dreaming that I'm at EGA Garden States and miss out on giving one or another of the talks I'm involved in. Martin's pretty cross with me but I can never seem to find Ronny or Obtuse, the layout of the building keeps changing- at one point I'm wandering down some dark stairs thinking " shit these nuns had tiny feet " ( originally I thought the venue was The Convent ) and people keep pointing me at the wrong stage or distracting me by talking about their plant interests Is pretty funny when I wake up, I'm prolly the best prepared I've ever been, not terribly nervous, but even my subconscious knows it's important to me to get it right cos so many cool ppl are working so hard to make it a great event So yeah, I don't mind those dreams, hope there's no more nuns in tonight's tho :D

Wow, beautiful descriptive post mate, thank you, I'll be returning to this one a few times I reckon <3

You're one of the people I'm looking forward to catching up with! And... and...and... so many others, helping out Amz with the plant swap too :D Will meet lotsa interesting new ppl that way I reckon I read the new timetable today, it's gorgeous

What? PM me, you're a deadset legend

But bring what ya got. It doesn't need to be the flashest thing ever. You got stuff to share, bring it! Plenty of gardens ( including mine ) lost heapsa species during the dry. Geez, I even lost the bloody choko vine, my Hemia, basil, cornflower. Veggie patch is full of weird holes from missing species that carked it over summer Lots of people starting their collections too, more'n a few here have lost species moving house/ relocating If you've got cuttings, seedlings, seeds or interesting garden related things like the screened topsoil- just bring it! Is always a surprise what people want at plant swaps, which is half the fun

Orright, bringing some Pleurotus djamor ( Pink Oyster mushroom ) cultures isolated from wild NNSW fruit, they're pretty hardy for much of the year here And some local NNSW Hericium coralloides ( Coral Mushroom ) cultures And a few Pycnoporus sp.cultures I isolated from fruit across the road. I dunno why. No idea how to use them medicinally yet. I think I just like their potential, even in bush regeneration They'll all be in 1.5ml single use tubes, store in the fridge well for quite some time

That's a gift in extremely good taste. Double bonus points, a great gift she'll remember for years AND you get to hang out with plant heads OMG it's less than a month away, so excited OMG OMG I need to wash my hair, subculture the fungus, get the brakes done on the bike, finish the a/v slides for the workshop, it's panic stations for me from here on in Ronny how the hell does the EGA crew manage to fit all this excellence into a single day? Most days I can't even manage an autoclave run and a full subculture session with updated logging My main plan, work aside, is to catch up with as many ppl as possible. EGA is about the only place where I see so many of my favourite people so very close together in time and space

IME sometimes fungus can be beneficial to germination, helping break the seed coat and possibly offering useful metabolites to assist the process. It's a matter of balance. What you have there is probably a Trichoderma spp on the seed coat, attracted to the remnant of the horrible stuff that surrounds the seed while it's in the pod. Too much of it there? No idea. Trichoderma is pretty universal, and it's fucking awesome mostly. There are surface treatments you can apply to half the group, or just remove the excess with a soft cloth from half the seeds, but otherwise WC is right, sow em straight away under optimal conditions. Some species actually require fungus to germinate, and these can be a right bastard in completely sterile conditions

I need to get some samples checked for polyploidy. Apparently the best way to do this is with a flow cytometer. I know nothing of these Anyone here ever used a flow cytometer, esp for ploidy checks? Hoping to find someone who can include my samples in a run or two. Can pool the putative polyploid samples if that makes it easier. Cash or trade- trade preferred

Wow- thank you- that'd be awesome The species has been heavily modded previously as it has a long history of cultivation and may be sterile. I do have controls available from the single plant parent stock clone I used for the ploidy experiments Will PM you

Imma bring some small single-use tubes of NNSW mushrooms to help people start their edible culture libraries Dunno what I want to swap em for yet This will be fun :D

That link is dead, just checked it This is the current one https://www.troutsnotes.com/sc/snu.html ( Posted cos I caught up with an old mate at a party last night who is happy to pay for a copy rather than pirate. $AUD 12 for what's still the definitive reference for psychoactive plants is the best value ever ) I have both the pdf and the tree-book. I word search the pdf for references but I fondle the tree-book randomly for inspiration. You will only ever pry my treebook copy from my cold dead hands )

Woohoo! I love these things, thanks Amz and Ronny! Yes do check in with the plant's current owners when selecting your new babies, is only polite. Also for newbies- some species do require extra care in different climates and the original cultivators may be able to increase it's chance of survival Plus time spent talking to plant people is rarely wasted Can't wait to see you all there!

I got mine too and a t-shirt as well EGA gatherings are always excellent, Ronny I love how the whole team is so welcoming and so professional. Youse always come up with a great range of speakers too There with bells on <3

I have some really old Al backed TLC plates I'd like to use up before forking out the dosh for more. Can't find the original order, but they had been snipped up and used for alkaloids a coupla decades ago so I'm assuming they had fluorescence inbuilt There was an old thread here that mentioned that old plates were still viable if they were re-treated and dried in the oven. Google and site search here aren't being useful. SAB site search shows nothing, and Google is throwing me too much irrelevant data Anyone know the protocol or has a link to a relevant page? cheers people

Zelly this is the most beautiful thing I've seen in a while. Only heard about it a coupla days ago. Almost lost for words. Incredibly generous of you and all the bidders THANK YOU RIGHT BACK!

Tried keeping em a few times up in NNSW. Everything eats them. Wanted em for meat and eggs- the eggs are so lovely and creamy, and they're a fast and easy meal cos you can dry pluck them. But everything eats them. First. Before you get a chance to. Last try I made a ripper Fort Knox pen for em from bird mesh, ends sunk into concrete and corro put up around the sides. Goannas ripped that shit apart, let a fox in and when I went to rescue the rest I found a fat sleepy carpet snake under the floorboards with quail shaped lumps in it's guts.

Just yer smiley face :)