Last minute mushroom growing advice/tips needed please.

[Bigfeely123]

Hi,

for the dunk & roll method I have a couple questions.

I wasn't going to at first but after reading I thought I'd consider it because supposedly it makes the yield twice as good. So I probably am going to dunk and roll my cakes even before their first flush. Risky or no?

1. the roll part - on RR's video for the PF tek, he said to put the vermiculite (before rolling onto your cake) in the over for some time to sterilize the vermiculite. Can I just put some vermiculite on a piece of tin foil and just throw it in the oven? (I was going to let the vermiculite cool down fully before coating dunked cakes.)

2. the dunk part - I plan on using spring water, like the jugs you buy at the store for drinking. Does it have to be cold or warm for the 24 hour dunk? If cold-how cold, like drinking cold? Going to put the cakes in a clean container with water inside but what can I use to submerge the cakes under water?

Any other tips (especially for the fruiting stage) would be appreciated. Thank you guys so much for the help & all.

Cheers maties.

 

[Mimraa]

Hello. SWIM is am about to embark on planting. SWIM has done countless hours of research. SWIM just simply would appreciate from anyone that is willing, to give her rabbit last minute helpful pointers/tips/advice. Basically anything you have to offer on how to be successful in this hobby. SWIM will be using the PF Tek with a SGFC. Rabbit is planning on using two smaller sized SGFC with approx. 5/6 cakes in each terrarium. Rabbit has to use two because if he use one it will be too bulky/large for the area he is working in.

If SWIM could while he is at it, put some questions in as well.

1. SWIM's PC will not fit in all of the substrate jars so rabbit will have to run it twice. After the first set of substrate jars are PC'ed should rabbit put them in an airtight container or can rabbit simply leave them out, waiting for the others to get done, then put all of them together AT ONCE in the container.

2. Will the syringe have markings on it? SWIM knows that a 10cc syringe should inject approx 10 1/2 pint jars. SWIM just don't know if Rabbit will have to eyeball shooting 1/10 of the spore liquid into each jar.

3. Is a glove box for innoculation a necessity? Rabbit knows being sterile is a MUST. the day before, Rabbit plans on moving all furniture and vaccuuming, dusting, spraying & wiping down all surfaces with disinfectent spray, removing bed sheets and pillow cases and washing them along with any of cloth materials in work area. Then give the entire room a good few minutes of spraying lysol in the air.

4. How many innoculation points should SWIM make on the jar lid. SWIM was going to do 4 holes per lid but has heard 2,3, and 4. Which is it?

5. After all the substrate jars are PC'ed where should Rabbit put them? Rabbit was planning on putting them all in an airtight hard plastic container and then wrapping the container in a black garbage bag, from there Rabbit would put this underneath a guest bed. Is this the right way to do it?

6. When PCing the substrate jars how many layers of tin foil should SWIM have on top of the jars? SWIM has read that one rectangle of tin foil folded over once (so now there are essentially two layers because of the fold.) will be sufficent enough. But then SWIM read elsewhere that on top of that first layer (which is kind of two because of the fold.) you should place one square, non folded, tin foil layer.

7. Should Rabbit use micropore tape for the innoculation holes? Rabbit was planning on using 3M paper micropore tape & covering the holes before PC'ing the jars but Rabbit read that the micropore tape melts in some cases.

Thank you so much for taking your time to read this anyone, ALL tips & answers to Rabbit's questions would be greatly appreciated by him.

THE most important thing is STERILE PROCEDURE Use a glove box at the very least. Green penicillin mold spores are everywhere. As long as you can keep it as clean as possible you should be ok. I'm only a beginer myself. And so far have only succeeded with Golden Teachers. I have 3 other strains I'm working on but they keep getting infected .It is really hard to keep unwanted spores out. I use a cardboard have box but I'm switching to a plastic one which will be hermetically sealed .
But when I put all my equipment in lots of green mold spores will be in the box. Can anyone help with this. I'm thinking of using a hover to suck air out and making a hole for some Cotten or a sponge to filter the air. Will this work?
Anyway this is your thread and my advice is KEEP IT STERILE!
Good luck mate

 

[Mimraa]

I feel your pain Yeah take the tape off the holes, I've heard a few people say getting air into them is a lot more important than the risk of infection. Apparantly the vermiculute layer on top of the substrate is enough to prevent any infection anyway.

I must've had a failure colonisation rate of 50-60% too. My heart grew heavy picking stalled jars out of the colonisation box. I think I have hit on a few tips tho - increase the flour content slightly cos I noticed the cakes were often stalling in areas that looked mostly vermiculite. Also make sure the substrate is forked into the jar equally - no gaps in the substrate as they fail there too.

The fruiting has been very disappointing. I had about 30 cakes all fully colonised. Maybe got 3 or 4 of those to fruit. How sickening is that? Back to the drawing board, knocking up another load of jars and starting again. The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary!

Have you tried selecting for risomorphic mycelium? I had great success growing mycelium on agar in Petri dishes. Then I chose the risomorphic (I'm not sure how to spell it) and I slice out a section to inoculate a jar. This means u can select for the best shrooms and they will all grow the same because they are from a single organism. Aparantly u can just cut a peice of the best shroom off and use that. But I'm not sure on that one. The risomorphic or whatever it's called is the stringy lookin myc. Not the fuzzy stuff. This makes for a greater yield as I understand it. Although I'm only a beginer. Iv been cultivating for about a year and it's a hard hobby. But that's what makes it so much fun.

 

[Ismene]

THE most important thing is STERILE PROCEDURE Use a glove box at the very least. Green penicillin mold spores are everywhere.

I've never had much problem with sterility mim - I just do it in a standard kitchen with no particular regard for ultra cleanliness. I've almost never had any contams, my bugbear is stalled growth.

 

[Bigfeely123]

Thank you Mimraa but I am past that part now-I still appreciate you taking your time to write a reply.

Well cakes have been in the SGFC since last tuesday night-approx 8 days. 4-5 inches of moist perlite in there. Mist 3x day and fan 5x a day. 6500k CFL 'day light' light. 12/12 lighting schedule. Not much, if anything, is happening though... I am worrying that these will never fruit :''( . I don't have a hygrometer but the terrarium is built per tek & I am misting & fanning on a schedule so I am not sure why I don't even have any pins yet. damn I really hope this doesn't fail after all this time & effort put into this. Should I continue to mist & fan? Or just fan? When I fan after misting I am pretty good at making sure there is no standing water left & I fan for about a minute real well. Any suggestions/tips for helping me get some pins going would be GREATLY APPRECIATED! Please! Thank you!

My light schedule: 9am-9pm

My misting/fanning schedule:
+mist&fan 9am.

+fan only 1pm.

+mist&fan 3pm.

+fan only 5pm.

+mist&fan 9pm.


things I see on my pf cakes:
-mycelium is starting to overtake verm layer that was used for the roll part of dunk n roll.
-tiny white "blobs" <--- I do not think this is a contaminate.
-tiny white bumps
-tiny single wormlike structures
-tiny fingerlike structures (not wormlike because they are in a cluster which resembles a tiny hand with the fingers.)

Have a good evening.

 

[Thomas Davie]

things I see on my pf cakes:
-mycelium is starting to overtake verm layer that was used for the roll part of dunk n roll.
-tiny white "blobs" <--- I do not think this is a contaminate.
-tiny white bumps
-tiny single wormlike structures
-tiny fingerlike structures (not wormlike because they are in a cluster which resembles a tiny hand with the fingers.)

Have a good evening.

As they say in Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy 'DON'T PANIC'

My first time in fruiting was 11 days before I saw pins.

Your bumps or blobs are primordia, and the tiny wormlike structures are more than likely very immature pins. Keep a close eye on those. The center/top of the worm could turn 'brown/red'. At that point I would say you can relax. With what you've described above *I* would relax.

It should progress very rapidly from here. Any chance you could attach a photo (turn off geolocation) and then I could say for sure.

My guess is obvious (to a first time grower) pins 2-3 days with obvious fruits 5-7 days, and harvesting in about 12 days, which would put it February 9th or so.

Tom

(if anyone knows how to recover data from a beer destroyed Macbook Air without incriminating myself, I can post complete stats for 3 grows).

Bigfeely, I think you'll be tripping on homegrown in a few weeks

 

[Bigfeely123]

Hi Tom. How are you doing? I will upload some pics today. Now i am really panicing and feeling so shitty & sad though... When I was fanning I noticed a vague smell coming from the terrarium... Almost like a sort of minty smell? Not sure how to describe it. Kind of like minty/tooth pasty maybe? It is really hard to describe.

Then I looked online & found out this could be trich. "WTF!!!? ARE YOU SERIOUS!?" So then I looked at my cakes to look for any obvious discoloration. They look like normal healthy pf cakes for the most part except two with a very small hue of a bluish color on a very small part of them. It is very small area of discoloration, the rest appears to be healthy. It is a weird blue color-vaguely similar to a bleu cheese sort of blue. I do not remember ever touching the cakes in this location so I don't think it is bruising. When I mist I do not drench my cakes in water & the room they are in I cleaned so good the whole morning before I even put them in there.

I isolated these two cakes into 2 liter terrariums immediately after noticing this. But still the odd "minty"? smell remains in the SGFC with the remaining 8 cakes. I hope it's not only a matter of time before my healthy white looking cakes turn to green, moldy shit...

Do you know of the smell I am talking about? How does trich even occur? I do not let water sit on my cakes & I cleaned everything so good I just can't imagine how these cakes could have gotten contamined when I read about others growing in dirty rooms & such. ;'( I feel so shitty right now just thinking about all the time, money, and energy I put into this and having nothing to show for it-wow.

 

[sailor bugg]

The blue on the cakes may be due to stress, to low humidity can cause this. If you want to see if it's mild take a q-tip with H2O2 on it and rub the blue spot. If the blue comes off it's mild, if not it's bluing due to stress.

 

[Bigfeely123]

Hello sailor bugg, how are you doing?

I am going to have to do this q-tip test you speak of after I am not drunk. This whole weird minty smell & discoloration has got me so confused. I don't know if it is just bruising or a contaminate. As I said to Thomas, I guess only time will tell now because there are no real obvious signs of contamination that I can see just the weird minty smell.

I even went as far as to buying a new tub & making a brand new SGFC today & placing the cakes that appear to be all white with no other color in this new SGFC & isolating the other cakes that have ANY sort of discoloration in their own 2Liter terrariums. So now i have 6 cakes in a SGFC & 4 in their own seperate 2L terrariums. (Maybe it is just brusing but I am not even going to chance it.)

Thank you everybody for helping me out, wether I fail or not, I appreciate all the help everyone has given me.

Hope everyone has a great night.

 

[Bigfeely123]

Thanks good people. Have a good day!

 

[Bigfeely123]

Just an update because I haven't written in a while...

Out of 10 cakes, 1 had to be tossed (bacteria.) & like one or two actually have not fruited at all. But the others are doing pretty good. I suspect they only have another month or so in them to fruit cause it's been a good couple months now in the SGFC. Total yield: around 20 grams dry.

Plus I have like 15 Brazilian strain PF jars that will be done consolidating next Tuesday. :D I see many more mushies coming my way in the future...

I hope everyone is doing good in life & that all of you have a wonderful day! Peace guys.

 

[Ismene]

I'm having terrible failure rates bigfeely - what's your proportion for brf/verm/water? Is it 1:2:1?

 

[Joestamper603]

I'm new at this site and new at cultivation .... I just mixed manure substrate and coco choir together and I want to know if all of that colonizes? If this doesn't work out should I just case the last 3 jars and how do I do that? I'm using popcorn tek and I mixed 2 pint jars that were fully colonized although I didn't Let the mycellium to get solid white but they were covered and I'm almost fully colonized with 3 more jars that I just shook and this will ensure full colonization but I don't want to waste them.... Thanks in advance

 

[Solipsis]

Manure needs to be cured of any urine etc present if relatively fresh / uncured...

Is it sterilized or pasteurized? If so it should work. It also needs to have a proper water content.

I don't think that with Cubensis it's worth the trouble to use manure and would rather use grains of some kind, possibly supplemented with say coffee grounds or bran, gypsum... Things like millet and rye are pretty ideal for spawn but I just use some sort of WBS mix because it is easiest to get without fungicides. I'm sure popcorn is also fine.. rye and millet are classics because of their weight per kernel which is related to their lower propensity to clump and grow together. Popcorn wouldn't be bad in this regard.

It's not clear to me from the tek, do you have a glovebox or still air box? Build one if you don't.

You could put a layer of clean wet vermiculite in the bottom of a tray - either way fill one up with your substrate and cover with a casing of choice. Casings are made of vermiculite, peat moss, coir, various other materials including sometimes crushed shells or lime for certain species.. usually they are some mix of those. The 50/50 mix is based on half vermiculite half peat moss. I'm personally switching to coco husks with verm right about now.

Personally I started growing again not all that long ago but I am deep into it, much deeper than I've been before. Mostly edibles and medicinals but also working on woodlovers right now, various kinds.