Hi guys,

All Pf-tek jars with vermiculite and brown rice got contaminated.

But this jar with whole oats seems healthy?


/Y

As mentioned in the chat, im still in my first shroom growing experiments, but from my limited perspective, it seems fine so far, gotta let it colonize fully.. Just watch out for weird smells or different colors.

And def check out agar for multi spore syringes or spore prints, to be able to properly isolate good mycelium from contaminants. Its really cool learning experiment to work with agar , and super useful . Id suggest a simple Still Air Box and a simple recipe.. ive been using 10g agar 10g light malt extract for 500ml water, sterilize for 20 mins in PC. So far so good for me.

It's a bit hard to tell from the photo but the top centre (with one groat visible) looks slightly suspicious. What colour is the mycelium there? It should be white. The picture makes it look a bit grey, which would indicate contamination, although it might be down to the lighting.

I checked now and it all white.

/Y

You can shake that really good and if it recovers strong in a couple days you’re good.

That's colonized enough that I wouldn't recommend shaking-- what would be the point of disrupting the growth that far along?

Shaking is usually performed to accelerate growth points when the spawn is less than/= half colonized. When it's almost done already, you'd just be damaging the mycelium and slowing final colonization while it re-establishes for little benefit-- or am I misunderstanding your intention?

It’s not fully colonized. It’s not enough.......

It must be fully colonized to move it to the next step, if you shake it now and a contam is present you’ll know sooner and waste less energy on something that will be a toss out later. If it’s not contaminated, a shake won’t hurt a bit, mycelium is very persistent in good conditions.

Also considering you generally need to shake the whole thing to remove the spawn from the jar anyways later, how harmful can it be apart from simply slowing things down for a couple of days?

I shake now and then, I have 2 jars with whole oats, 1 with with just oats (very slow colonisation) and 1 with whole oats, ground eco coffee, and powdered egg shells (almost fully colonised).

Will post pictures later.

/Y

I only shake the jar that is slow.

/Y

You can use shaking to test whether there is some contamination inside.
It is a selection step, healthy mycelium will recover, unhealthy no.
You do not want to continue with mycelium which can not withstand it.

I think your oatmeal got moldy.

Hi,

I shaken the jar a couple of times.

It’s more white than picture the show.

No bad smell or grey or any other coloured areas.
Used organic ground coffee and powdered egg shells in the substrate.

/Y

I love whole groats and steel cut oats. Way better than rolled oats. Some butter, brown sugar. A little milk. Yeah buddy.

So what’s your plan, ready to spawn?

Hi,

1 more week and than in a BOD's Easy AF UnBODified Monotub TEK.

/Y

Cool, I am actually trying that in my next run. Amazing how times change, if that actually works!

Hi guys,

Surface is drying out, mycelium is retreating, I use a portable mist/fog machine several times/day.

Should I put a layer of vermiculite to keep top layer moist?

/Y

Big no to adding verm........it will do the opposite of what you’re thinking.

Mist with water once a day if dry, just to get a damp micro climate on the surface that can evaporate within 24 hours.

Too late I've been offline so did not see your information.
I used verm and coir.

More mycelium under now, but wont grow up to the surface, should I try to get out the verm/coir layer?

Thanks

/Y