I inoculated a substrate of brown rice and dry oatmeal which I steralized in the oven a couple of weeks / maybe a month ago. Yesterday I decided to try and fruit the mushrooms. I smelled the myceilum and it smelled like a very pungent cheese. There was no blue or any bad fungi growing so I shook the jar to mix everything. It went from a white spoungy consistency to a goldish brown / rusty color after shaking. I poured everything out into my fruiting chamber (A ziploc tray) and my whole room smelled like fucking puky cheese. Is this a good sign or not? Does anyone have any tips?
Its contaminated. Off colored and smelly=no magic. My guess is that your problem was using the oven to sterilize to jars. I have not run across a tek that suggests oven baking for substrate. You can use a pot to steam sterilize PF tek jars. My understanding is that other teks require a pressure cooker. I'm not into growing, so I can't help, but shroomery.org has alot of good cultivation methods. It seems most beginners have luck with the PF tek. Mycology is more of a science than say, growing a houseplant, so following the grow guide closely is your best bet for success.
That was a waste of $10... By the way... If you're going to grow your own mushrooms my only advice is to associate yourself with your plan and follow through when you're not tripping fucking balls and in some space fog
Who told you to use brown rice and oatmeal? I have never heard of anyone growing on oatmeal before. My bet would be that the oatmeal (and lack of proper moisture content) slowed your mycellial growth down to a near stop, which let your already contaminated jars (because they were never sterilized or pasteurized) get taken over by mold. Just go read up on the PF Tek and the 50/50+ casing Tek.
It sounds like its your first time. Wheres the vermiculite??? It would be better if you subsituted the BRF with oatmeal but oh well, buy a new spore and go to fungifun.org thats the only place a beginner should look to grow.
Vermiculite should only be used as a casing layer. While PFTEK is sometimes the best bet for nOOb's, I will NEVER recommend their substrate. Here ya go: 35% bird seed mix 65% rye berries X amount of water pressure cook the whole thing, leave it at temp for an hour
While that does work a lot better than the PF Tek, it's a lot dirtier than BRF/verm. This poses problems for beginners, especially when they don't own a PC. My method when using the PF Tek was 2:1 field capacity vermiculite:BRF and it always gave decent results.
I've got no PC... I figure I'm smart enough to do this if I set my mind to it... If I may... It's summer time here so... If I was to buy some lysol and a plastic fish tank kind of aquarium and maybe some kind of tinting tape to sort of make a kind of green house if you will... What kind of substrate would someone use if they just wanted to be able to inoculate and pretty much walk away and let nature take it course...??? or is this to far ahead in thought?
You're not gonna be able to inoculate and let nature take its course. Look up info on the PF Tek and do that. It's the simplest way there is to grow mushrooms. I do highly suggest getting at least a cheap PC, though. It'll do wonders for you.
Don't buy an aquarium. Go to Walmart and buy a $5 plastic bin. It's about 18" by 23" and 20" deep. Substrate suggestions were made a little earlier in this thread.
Not entirely true. I have thrown many contaminated cakes/casing layers into the garden and had plenty of mushrooms to pick
