so here's what i've been up to thats kept me away from the nexus recently

First Flush




That's what I'd call a good flush! Did I mention this was only my 2nd grow attempt?!

Second Flush



Not quit so many, but boy aren't they sexy?! Total weight(dry) was a little over 5oz. I've got it in fruiting again so here's hoping it puts out some more.

For those myco-geeks on here, this was 3qt rye spawned to about 9qts of 60/40 coir/verm and cased with 50/50+ casing soil with calcium carbonate as the buffer

oh nice!

I am trying to get my jars to colonize..2 of the 6 had some contam and the other 4 still show now signs of myc growth after 4 weeks..but they dont show any contamination either..so I just wait..

Sorry your having contam issues fractal. that makes me a saaaad panda. Are you doing grain or brf cakes? Are you using a glovebox for inoculation, are you flame sterilizing your syringe between EVERY jar? Yeah that's simple stuff, and your probly following all the rules, sometimes it just happened. I recently started 21 rye jars, doing 7 at a time. Each 7 I was doing was 6 of one strain of cubes and 1 panaeolus combodigenisis(spelling?). I did them all EXACTLY the same, still from one batch I got 2 contamed cube jars, yet the rest were fine. Anything can happen I suppose.

Namaste

good gardening,frater!...so now we know what you're playing with when you're not posting.. ...Good to see the lighter in the shots for comparison. Those are the "penis envy" type , are they not?, and damned potent aren't they??

Yes you are correct in all that you just said! I put a powdered gram in chocolates and eat one to trip heavy balls, like elephant balls.

Goddamn stain the mattress, nice one, they're be some nice regular sizes too.... -_-.... as in uniformly sized....

Very well don frater.

me like

muy gracias amigos y amigas. wait til my panaeolus mini-monos fruit here in a couple of weeks!!

very nice grow!! fractal i dunno if you have experience with shrooms growing but i found very usefull to do a glovebox and do your own syringe of spores...swim did a 250ml jar of stock solution very concentrated and his grain jars fully colonize within 5 days from inoculations.. showing very vigorous groth already the first day after inoculation in the whole jar...he usually inject about 2.5ml of huatla strain spores,they get very rhizomorphic from 5th day

Swim loves the taste of fresh veils.... Mmmmm

Wow! LOVELY! Friggin' awesome job frater.

Can you tell us: a) Where did you get the spores, b) a somewhat detailed account of your process from start to finish? I REALLY want to grow some mushrooms like this!

Beautiful flush!!! PE ftw

I'm don't think I'm supposed to say vendor names outside of the suppliers subforum, but I can tell you that if you look at the shr00m3ry sponsors list, and find one that has something to do with a bird of prey, thats the guy I'd get spores from. Also if youre interested in growing the aforementioned forum is the place to go for help. They really know their mycology over there, in fact one of the main mods is a professor of mycology I believe.

I can give you a basic rundown.

Preparing rye:
1. Add 1-1.5 cups of organic rye b3rri3s for each quart jar you want to do to a pot that will accomodate. Rinse these well. Stirring them up in the pot with water you'll notice the water gets nasty brown looking. Dump all the water out and repeat as necessary for to make the water mostly clear.

2. Fill once again with water and leave to soak for 12-24 hours. There are some spores that are on rye that can survive pressure cooking, letting the rye soak germinates these spores, thus making them vulnerable to sterilization.

3. After 12-24 hours, boil the rye for 10 minutes. Don't start the timer until its fully boiling. Pour through a strainer/colander and allow to steam off. I like adding a little coffee and gypsum to the water at this point. This is a really important step. You don't want extra moisture on the outside of your grains, all the needed moisture is inside the berries. Take a teaspoon or so and put it on a square of TP; if it leaves a wet spot then it needs a little longer.

4. Once dry on the outside load up your jars. Only fill them between 2/3-3/4 full as you'll want to shake them later. Put on your lids(see below) and tighten them hand tight then back it off a little so no nutrient rich steam goes through your filter; this could leech in contaminants.

5. Pressure cook your jars at 15psi for 1.5 hours. First cap them with aluminum foil so water doesn't drip on them from above during sterilization. Don't start the timer until it is up to pressure. Once this is done and the PC has had time to return to normal pressure, you wanna take em out and tighten the lids down and set them aside to cool. Let them cool overnight.

note on how to make lids
I make mine with self healing injection ports and tyvek filters. You can go to any automotive dpt and pick up RTV high temp silicon, the red tube, and your post office will have tyvek envelopes for free(i ordered 800, for free) Drill 2 holes in each lid, one small(just under 1/4" and one bigger(around 1/2" Put a glob of RTV on either side of the smaller hole and let them sit somewhere standing up, not flat(I cut slits in styrofoam plates to hole them upright sideways) for an hour for the rtv to cure, then take more rtv and bead around the larger hole and glue down a small peice of tyvek. Leave these alone for 24hours for the silicone to fully dry and your in business.

Inoculation
1. either make a glove box/still air box(safer) by cutting holes in the side of a clear tub and load all your sterilized jars, spore syringes, lighter and paper towel inside and spray down with oust/lysol. Or you could use a small, breeze free room, but for your first time i'd go w a SAB.
2. Take a shower, put on freshly laundered clothes, wash your hands, put on latex gloves and wipe down your hands and arms w/ 70% iso. Also put an iso soaked paper towel in the glovebox.
3. FLAME YOUR SYRINGE AND SHAKE TO MIX UP THE SPORES BETWEEN EVERY JAR!!!! You can then cool it down with one half of the iso-towel and wipe the injection port with the other half(I do this all at once, but take your time and be careful, you don't wanna push a contaminant from the top of the port into the jar)
4. Push your needle through the silicone and inject 1cc per jar in a small circle on the top of the rye. You can use more and it will colonize faster but I'm more of a conservative. DON'T FORGET TO FLAME STERILIZED AND MIX UP THE SPORES BY SHAKING AFTER EACH INJECTION.
5. Put your jars away somewhere with a steady temperature between 75-80 F. Check daily for contamination. With any luck, and depending of the genetics of the strain youre working with, you can expect 25% visible colonization anywhere between 2-3days and a week.
6. Once they are around 25% beat a rolled up phone book on them to break up whats been colonized and mix up the colonized and uncolonized grains by shaking. By the next day the mycelia will have recovered and will grow exponentially; generally reaching 100% within a week to 10 days.

Bulk Substrate Pasturization, the easy way
1. Take one brick of eco-earth or equivalent reptile bedding(compressed coconut fiber) and 2 quarts of vermiculite and place in a 5 gal bucket.
2. Boil 4-4.5 quarts of water. Bring to a rolling boil and then pour into the bucket and close the lid.
3. After 30min-1hour go back and mix this up well, you want a pretty uniform consitency
4. Replace lid and leave for 4-6 hours to cool. Don't move forward until it is room temp again.
(this will keep the temperature high enough, for long enough, to kill of any mold spores but leave bacteria alone, bacteria can actually be a mushrooms frien)
5. The tub used in these pictures is actually deeper than a usual tray. It's a 12 quart dish tub. I used 3 quarts of spawn and 9 quarts of bulk sub, you could just as easily do 6/6 or even 8/4, and may even get better results as >spawn generally means >yield. To mix dump in some bulk and even it out, then a jar of spawn and mix it up, then a layer of bulk, and a jar of spawn and mix it up, until you fill your tub up to 1/2" from the top.
6. Put aluminum foil or plastic wrap on top, plastic wrap allows you to check on it but if you use it instead of foil make sure it is super tight and doesn't hang down anywhere or water will build up and drop on the colonizing substrate, which could cause contamination. Either way you go you need a few small holes in the covering for gas exchange(myc produces co2 en masse while colonizing and you want the levels high, however to high co2 levels can cause it to stall out and contaminate)

After 7-10 days check. If you see pins galore then its time to put into fruiting(please look up how to make a shotgun fruiting chamber as I don't want to type too much more) If just a few pins or now pins leave it longer. I didn't do this b/c I used a casing layer, however cubes don't really need a casing layer I later found out, so wait until you see tons of pins and then fruit and you should have a great flush.

Thats how I did it.

Namaste

Thanks frater!

I am starting up another grow with Panaeolous Cambodigenisis "Goliath" on Rye spawning to my homemade Horse Poo/straw compost. Will be posting a tek with step by step pics. This will be a Pan grow but the principles can be carried to any species that's not a wood'loving species or such, which I have no experience with yet. I will start a new thread tomorrow after I get pictures of the boiling/jar-loading/sterilizing parts. Stay tuned!

P.S. Sorry nexus for ignoring the attitude section in making vulgar title to this thread. I float on so many different forums that its hard to keep up with which one has which rules on which subjects. Sorry trav, and the hole nexus mod team.

Gorgeous!