Hi guys. So, I've been trying to grow some golden teachers in jars of lightly boiled brown rice.

After the mycelium had colonized about 1/3 of the jars, I gave them all a good shake.

They've lately started developing a gooey ... accumulation on the bottom of the jars, and the rice grains themselves are turning a deep brown. Meanwhile the mycelium is still growing well in some parts. The cupboard I keep them has a bit of a strange smell to it, which I have heard is a bad sign.

Is this bad, or is it normal? If it is bad, is there any way to save this batch?

Did you dry the rice properly after boiling?
I'm not really sure but this might help
-Recognizing and dealing with contamination
https://www.shroomery.or...flat.php/Number/23130868

Was the rice sterilized in a pressure cooker [PC]? "Lightly boiled" seems to suggest that this wasn't the case but I could be taking things too literally from the small amount of information given.

The mycelium should smell more or less classically "mushroomy" - reasonably fresh, I suppose - so a "strange smell" sounds like contamination to me - although it's hard to guess exactly what you might mean by "strange". The gooey accretion at the bottom of the jar also hints towards bacterial contamination. Normal practice is to soak the rice overnight before the cook and the PC process in order to activate bacterial endospores which otherwise would be resistant to sterilization.

You should never see anything slimy or gooey in a spawn jar. Definitely bacterial-- send it to the trash. There is no way to separate the good from the bad.

As DFZ said-- we need to know if you actually pressure cooked the grain. As in, 15 lbs pressure for 90 -- 120 minutes. Or did you think boiling like you'd cook it to eat would sterilize it? (It won't)

How did you inoculate the jars? Just sprayed a spore syringe in them?
Or did you isolate clean mycelium on agar plates and nock up with that?

Give us a better picture of your methods and we can help you improve your results next time...

Some great questions have been offered for you to ponder.
But no 'question' about where you might have gone wrong is going to help this batch I'm afraid.
I know virtually nothing about DMT and only learned it existed via my 40 year mushroom cultivation experiment.

Every one of those questions will be gold for your next grow when you discover where your technique needs improvement.

Ive learned from every grow good or bad and expect to always.

The one constant in those 40 years is smell.
Rather the absence of smell.

Hopefully the only smell you detect (if anything and less is more here)is a subtle yet paradoxically deep earthy smell.
Some would say 'mushroomy' but it is a light fragrance.
If it smells throw it out. On my bumper must be true.
Sorry brother, best grieve and retry immediately (hopefully after your 'learning experience' this time.) If not then it was just an experience.
cheers
bb

Wow, thats a lot of replies really quickly, thanks guys!

I followed the Broke boy tek to the letter, for what it's worth. It doesn't use a pressure cooker, it just steams the jars for a long period.

Although, I think it's a moot point now. Judging by the comments, this batch is completely dead. I think I'll have to try again with a more advanced technique.

Thanks for the help.

Yeah, get a pressure cooker if you want to succeed in this endeavour.

Best of luck!

Every grow morphs into something with its own personality I have found.
I try to convince myself I have the variables covered and tend to think nature will bow or bend a little just like god makes some sport teams score more often when a believer asks god to intervene specifically on their behalf and on their terms.
I am not a believer personally but I have seen the touchdowns happen 'occasionally'
Many of my proud early successes were accidental and many dead ends followed Post grad level lab skill proficiency.
Mushrooms, you gotta love them.

I'm not sure if the mushrooms I grow remind me of my kids or vice versa.
I am sure many mycologists have nailed it way better than me.
Yet occasionally fruit happens.
Stay curious and good luck.
Im sure you are well on your way.
It will be that much sweeter when you birth the next brood.

[/quote] downwardsfromzero
Yeah, get a pressure cooker if you want to succeed in this endeavour.

/quote]

Pretty much my definitive epistemological axiom.
Absolutely!

THEY'RE ALIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, it was pretty apparent that my jars were contaminated. But, in the spirit of learning and curiosity, I decided to see if I could save them.

I put on a mask and gloves, sterilized everything, and opened up the jars. They smelt awful, I wanted to vomit. They were definitely contaminated. There were some chunks of healthy-looking mycelium that had formed before the rice started to rot. So I took them out, and with a sterile knife, I gently cut off all the lumps of mouldy contaminated rice. This left me with a few small nuggets of mycelium.

I put them in the spawning box and covered them with coco coir and vermiculite. I positioned all the chunks separately from one another, that way I figured that if one of them succumbs to contamination, the others will still live.

Now, a few weeks later, they're pinning!!!! I'm really proud of these little guys.

I was thinking, after this flush, I could maybe cover the mycelium with some substrate that has a bit more "food" in it, so the mycelium could grow more before the next flush. At the moment the substrate is mostly coir and very little rice. Could I mix some sort of uncooked grains or wheat flour into the substrate? Something that doesn't require sterilization.

P.S. my second batch of pressure-cooked jars are colonizing in the cupboard now

No. That would be asking for trouble. There's very little chance that any kind of grain wouldn't contaminate, even if it had been sterilised. The best hope for supplementation would be pasteurised dung and straw, and even then I'd urge you simply to be patient and wait until your next batch of spawn is ready instead. Ride the the learning curve gracefully. There may still be contaminants lurking in your seemingly happy spawn box.

Although your experiment in saving the healthy mycelium seems to have worked, best practice is to toss contaminated substrate. Some of these contaminants can make you really sick. I recall a post many years ago from someone who smelled the bacterial contamination and he ended up going to the hospital. You also risk spreading mold spores around your grow area, making future contaminations more likely.

Aside from that, congratulations on getting some pins!

Question is now, how did they get contaminated. Lack of attention to cleanliness, or perhaps the innoculation medium?

@Hank Scorpio

you said:

Hi guys. So, I've been trying to grow some golden teachers in jars of lightly boiled brown rice.

you are supposed to use pressure cooker for 90min and at 15 PSI

you can get away with 'ligtly boiling only' if you do PF-tek brown rice flour-increased surface area this is not grain -

I use pressure cooker at 80kpa which is 11.6PSI for 30min-even my pressure cooker isn't good enough to fully sterilize grains-rye,rice in big jars