the rains are here....

[planthelper]

hasta tarde, me gustaria buscar por los hongos.

bis spaeter, mich freut es schwammerl zu suchen.

c u l8er, id like to look for shrooms.

i am sure the last rain would have brought them on, i am off to the check it out now.

[planthelper]

uuh, nothing yet.

[Rev]

Well there is now

i lonely cubensis but lots of Panaeolus cyanescens, the mullumbimby Panaeolus, Annellaria solidipes, Giant puffballs, Field mushrooms even

But we need more rain to make the grass grow over the cowpats to make the microclimates to make me smile :D

[shroomy]

Hey rev how are you? should those little fellas start appearing in any numbers could you let me know, a weekend away is just what i need at the moment.

[Beaker]

Have you got any pics of the Giant puffballs ??..... I love just looking at those babies...

[Adrian]

Well Mullum did have a few cubes popping up back in late Nov, should be rocking where da rain is fall.

[Rev]

Strange thing

giant puffballs there one day gone the next ???

Something cleaned them all up - A cow or native animal i hop - the other unwelcome possibility is that there are other mycofiles on my patch GRRRR :D Im gonna have to pee on some fence posts

withe the Cubies i saw them coming up from Casino to Mullum until early may. Any that came up in mullum i suspect were carry overs from the season before - that is the cowpat was innoculated in autumn and dried out and the rain mositened it enough to fruit one last time

My jan december all cowpats were free of mycelial action and then after some rain in early jan i noticed 5c piece sized colonies germinating on the underside

Ive seen 1 cubensis so far so i think eiher its

1)too early

2)A bad year

3)2 years of drought has affected spore levels so its taking longer to build up again

on the other hand the Pans are plentiful - though its about a 70:20:10 split between the inactive Annelaria solidiped (syn Pan solidipes), The thin stemmed gracile 'normal cyanescens and the beefy local variant - see bluemenaies site under the pan cyan heading

A local tells me that the regular pan cyans are an unusual sight as usually this time of year its cubensis time and they havent seen the regular cyans in any numbers for many years

I was out further west and noted that high occurrence of mycelium in the cowpats - but so far no fruitings to speak of - I have my scouts

Good news is that themp have fallen to the perfect growing (veg) temps, humidity is up an dthe soil moisture has inreased to the point where the grass has overgrown the old pats

Cubes dont actually need that much moisture to grow and in fact in wet conditions they seem to lose out to the Pans.

Give them a few weesk of veg and then let the rains begin in earnest :D

[gerbil]

rev you have no idea how jelaous i am (prob the rest of the people down south too)

If you do manage to see some more of those puffballs, it would be great to see a pic if possible, don't think i've seen one before.

Hope the cubensis pick up!

[shroomy]

What was the date last year when you went os rev, there was plenty around (cubensis) than, from memory it was late feb early march and i remember at eb2 somtime mid feb there was also a compleate lack of them so maybe just a tad too early give em a couple weeks and some good rain, and hopfully we can can inspect the area together :D .

[ 14. February 2004, 10:30: Message edited by: shroomy ]

[spiders]

can someone please send me a print or gill fragment of the fat-arsed 'Bimby pan??

[Torsten]

shrromy - season pattern is late by about 6 weeks so far. We've only just had the first cyclone hit northern australia. Not much upper level activity really, and even the cyclone was weak. usually we get a cyclone around mid january and then another one a week or two later. That's the usual start to the wetseason. Instead we got a kelvin wave and hence a dry atmosphere around oz. We are so close to another el nino event it isn't funny. Anyway, I'll post a climate update as soon as things look better.

BM- that's the one I showed you a pic of? Rev has a print I think, but if not I can get one with the next lot of rain. These are the ones that gave Daniel and me really bad tummy cramps - twice.

[woof woof woof]

Hey T,.... so you recon that we are close to a El Nino? havent looked closly to the Nino / nina charts yet.

Here in the southern caribbean we have had losta rain this year. The hurricane season was a very turbulent one,.. not because there were many hurricanes (cyclones in Oz), but massive tropical depressions bringing unusual amounts of rain. usually the rains taper off in January, but it kept on raining,.... finally has it begun to rain less about a week ago.

interesing to see what Nino Nina has in store for us in the years to come.

-----------

lol reminds me of one of the discovery progrms I sometimes watch " raging planet " eeeeeek! torrential rains, deluge, tornados, cyclones, lighning :D

---------------

[Torsten]

I really hope that we won't have another one. After two years of it we are finally out and to think we might slip into another one would be disastrous. I think that rather than el nino, we are having a series of anomalies, some of which are being misread (or poorly modelled) as el nino indicators. It was rather conspicuous though that there was a 2 week period in january where there was not a single cyclone (or synonyms) anywhere in the world. This has apparently never been recorded for that time of year before.

As far as Oz is concerned, the lows aren't low enough and as such don't reach far enough south. Plenty or rain in the north and also inland, but bugger all along the subtropical coast. I guess that's the problem with subtropics... some years we get the full-on tropical climate and in others we get the temperate.

My personal feeling is that we will get a wetseason but that it will start late and finish late. Wet winters cause all sorts of problems with plants, so we are already making preparations for such a scenario.

[Rev]

Grrrr

Drought

All this lovely rich soil and no bloody water

Was hoping for a lovely summer garden but so far ive only dared plant a few pumpkins, Dioscorea, Turmeric and some Hardy bean species. If it doesnt rain soon i might miss out altogether on my sweet corn - and therefore my stropharia rugoso expermints as well

No action in the fields.... looked interesting for a while but its all dried up again and im not seeing the kind of rain we need to change that.

[planthelper]

found my first cubensis today (byron shire area),

not realy, a good magic shroom year (other sources say the same..),

this year...

productivety, seems to be down 90%, compared to previous years.

[ 09. April 2004, 15:01: Message edited by: planthelper ]

[mescalito]

The only Fungus I see here in SW NSW is on a plate at the back of the fridge.In fact the other day I went out the back to take a piss,and the grape vine grabbed my todger and redirected the stream onto it's trunk ...it's dry alright.

[Bolwarra]

/reptyle and i noticed several Pan.cyans and a small number Ps.cubensis around the Newcastle region approx 3 weeks ago.

[Humanfuel]

Any one been watching the weather forecast for the next week..... looking good.....!!!!!!!.... nice showers coming.

[mesq]

I dont think you will have much luck with mushrooms at this time of year.. but good luck anyway I have found cubensis at august on the sunshine coast...