Successfully growing =)

I'm a first time mushroom grower and following the PF-tek I'm actually doing it! I usually fail horribly at first times but things are going good so far =D> I'm excited so I thought I'd share.

It's been like 5-8 days, I'll say a week for simplicity.

http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/9517/week1generalsr3.jpg

It's Psilocybe Cubensis B+ eek! So excited!

Should I dunk the cakes before birthing?

 

wait till the cakes are very very white, like you can't see any verm at all then dunk if you want and grow! =D


J.C

 

hahah im currently in the same exact stage as you

using the same exact tek

using the same exact jars

and using the exact same strain as you

i would say lets make a competition out of it, but i feel like we are both going to be winners in this one.

good luck

 

guys pls pls pls tel me how 2 grow dis fungus magic mushrooms,wat i need? nd wat 2 do

 

shroomery.org has a lot of info but I don't think someone with your mental capability would be able to grow them.

Good luck with the grow OP

 

God, this guy weed-head is an idiot. I have a suggestion for your weed-head. Go out and find some wild mushrooms. The first ones you find will be the best. Doesn't matter what they look like or anything, just eat the first ones you find.

 

That's awesome. I have 6 jars in total, and right now they're just sitting behind my desk. It's usually like 68-75 down here. Not optimal, but it'll work.

How long until the cakes are fully colonized?

 

i'm not sure but its been taking me a long ass time.


i just moved them from my room into my attic, which is considerably hotter.

i did that a couple of days ago and growth has already noticeably quickened so i would most definitely recommend trying to get your temperature up to like 80 at least---especially if you dont feel like waiting forever.

right now i have 3 jars starting to colonize, 3 jars yet to show any sign, and 1 jar that has colonized much faster than the others (about half the jar thus far) but there is also a little bit of mold growing.

to all those experienced: is it safe to say that the mycelium will overtake the mold eventually or is that cake just fucked? i have separated that jar from the others for the time being, but i'd like to know what options i have at this point---i'd really like to salvage it some how. i've already thrown away 5 for molding, i dont feel like losing any more haha

i love shrooms

 

You should find out why your jars keep getting moldy. Possibly not sealed or sterilization problems.

 

i took the proper precautions originally and inoculated the jars with the spore solution, but nothing happened for weeks. so i took the remaining solution and took no special precautions in regards to sterility while re-inoculating the jars.

i knew the mold issue would arise, i was just being lazy about it.

what should i do about the jar that has a large colonization of mycelium and a small amount of mold?

 

I don't know. I'm a first time grower. =P

 

isolate as much clean mycelium as you can and give it a clean up with some peroxide, i dont suggest it though, if your cakes are contam'd toss em and try again.

 

alright so if i was to remove the cake from the jar, i would just scrape off any sections contaminated by the mold and then soak the remaining cake in hydrogen peroxide?

 

I really dont suggest doing what I said, you only really do that if you're uber desperate and have a clean room type setting, one jar isnt really worth bothering with in such a way, and instead of risking contamination of your working space try to figure out why your jar is contaminated instead of overhandling a sad depressed cake with contaminant spores bouncing out all over the place, either figure out the source of your contamination of try to inoculate as many jars as you can manage in order to have a few that come out of colonization healthy and clean. if you're desperate as hell my suggestion is to take some peroxide and dilute to about half with distilled water and shoot some of that into your cakes 'specialy around infected regions, wrap that jar in foil and toss er in the fridge.

Peroxide can kill many types of contamination but the mushroom mycelium being cooler and more badass than the molds and whatnot actualy secrete a peroxide like substance that can only really relate to us as piss and therefor have the ability to happily live in a peroxide soaked environment.

I keep my jars in my vegi crisper.

im up to the autoclaveable "space bags" full of shit and straw for the cubies and grain cardboard paper coffee grounds and sawdust for the oysters, had a good flush of shitakes a while back but now I am having troubling getting them to run out onto plug spawn.

We have a strong happy healthy sulpher shelf culture we're ramping up, it fucking chiken of the woods man.

gonna cut some agar next week from a friend's culture stock, thinking jack-o-lantern mushrooms cause they glow in the dark and though inedible they are a dye mushroom so we can do some natural tye dye.

 

Search liquid culters on shroomey.org read up about. Make a jar of it using the atv sealent stuff not cotten. After 6 weeks the culter will have a whiteich cloud when shooken and fill syringes with that and innoculate and 2-3 weeks later you have a colnized jar provided the culter is clean.

The advantage to this tek is you can put a small amount of hydrogen proxcide in the culter after it grows a bit. Also the actual colonizing is faster giving mold less of a chance to grow, but can still happen.

J.C

 

this is what my friend from arizona does.

get a bigass tub from walmart. drill 4x 2" holes on each wide side of the tub, all above 5" from the bottom. duct tape the sides completely (foil works too). create a way for light to come in through the top (saran wrap and duct tape for me). stuff the holes with polyfill (100% polyester, wal-mart or joanns fabrics). wipe the insides with rubbing alcohol quickly, and put a big black trash bag in the bottom.

broke up 9 fully colonized BRF/verm cakes and lay them evenly on the bottom, then put a 3" layer of straight pasteurized coco-coir (shouldv'e added spent coffee grounds in 20% of it) over it spread evenly, then let sit in the dark until the top is fully white.

steal some Miracle Grow Moisture Control from wal-mart and buy some calcium carbonate from the reptile section in petsmart, vermiculite from home depot. mix into this ratio:

10% verm
5% calcium
85% MGMC

added water until i could firmly squeeze it and it dripped a little bit. it was then loaded into pint jars, lids on with foil over it. put in my pressure cooker with the lid on, turned on stove until steam escaped for 5 minutes then the stove was turned off and i left the lid on for 1 hour 20 minutes to let it pasteurize. after cooling over night it was added on top of the colonized BRF/Coir and let to colonize in the dark until white spots are visible, then light will be introduced and fruiting will start.

he will let you know how it turns out as he just added the casing layer last night.

 

One of my jars has been lost to green moldy shit =(. One of them is in the terrarium already though. Here's hoping the other 4 stay clean as they finish up.

Pic: http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/3456/dsc07152gf1.jpg

Will incandescent light (desk lamps....on my desk) work for initiating pinning?

 

yes, pretty much any type of light works.

 

Is blue light what the mushrooms use to begin pinning? I read that somewhere about another mushrooms but I'm not sure about Psilocybe Cubensis. Incandescent lights don't produce much blue light at all according to the spectrum. Fluorescent can be full spectrum and are much closer to daylight. They save a lot of energy too. Expensive though.

I bring the terrarium upstairs for an hour or so every day (mostly to exchange air and monitor humidity) but once I'm done with that I leave it in the living room to collect some indirect sunlight. I suppose that's beneficial for the mycelium.

The one cake that's been in there for four days (in 68-70 degrees, and 90%+ humidity) has gotten pretty fluffy and there are quite a few mycelium knots. Weeee!

Also, I tripped up the stairs on the way to the kitchen and the cake fell over and rolled around on the wet paper towels. I washed my hands hardcore and carefully picked it up and placed it back where it was with two fingers. It's still 100% in tact. Did I damage it?

 

I tried different lights and it doesn't seem to make much difference, blue light looks cooler I guess. the mushroom doesn't use light as a source of energy like a plant does, it is more of a signal.