When are your mushrooms ready?
The veil is the signal. Pick at the right moment and every flush is better.
Every guide on this site ends with the same instruction: harvest at veil tear. This page explains how to read that moment.
The veil
A young cap is joined to its stem by a thin membrane called the partial veil. As the mushroom matures, the cap opens and that membrane stretches, then tears. The moment just before or just as it tears is your harvest window.
Why not wait
Once the veil breaks the cap opens fully and drops spores. That costs you in three ways: spores make a mess of your chamber and can contaminate the next flush, the mushroom puts its energy into sporulation rather than mass, and potency does not improve with age.
Why not earlier
Picking well before the veil stretches gives you smaller mushrooms and no benefit. Mushrooms gain most of their size in the last day or two.
Picking technique
Grip the base where it meets the substrate and twist gently rather than pulling. Harvest the whole flush at once even if a few are behind — leaving stragglers slows the next flush more than the extra gram is worth.
Remove any leftover stem bases from the surface; they rot and invite contamination.
Potency varies between species, strains and flushes. A gram from one harvest is not a gram from another — see the safety guide before dosing anything you grew.