The last time I did a grow, I had ten half pint BRF jars, following the PF Tek very closely. I used too much of my B+ syringe and ended up inoculating 2 jars with a golden teacher syringe. The B+ Colonized quickly, and once a consolidation period had passed and I started to see pins in the Jars, I birthed them.
It took 2 weeks longer for the golden teacher jars to colonize, and when I put them in my sgfc, the B+ was well into flush #2. The GT cakes just sat there. I eventually re-dunked after about 3 weeks. I ended up getting 4+ flushes from the B+,and finally did get a small amount of fruit from the GT cakes. 4 grams dried. I ended up having to throw the cakes away before I could do another flush, which is a shame, because I've heard that GT second flushes can be very .... fruitful.

I made a liquid culture with some of the leftover GT syringe ( I know, but I was just experimenting) and got good results. I inoculated 12 PF jars and they colonized very quickly. I gave them more than a week to consolidate, BUT, I felt like my moisture content was too high, so I birthed them before I saw pinning in the jars. The cakes were looking sketchy to me, and being a noob, I was worried about contamination. I had no reason to worry, they were fine. BUT They have been sitting in my SGFC for 21 days now, with no sign of pins. This time I decided to try a double ended casing tek. Mycelium is even growing into the verm at both ends of the cakes. They look and smell healthy, despite some slight bluing from what I think might have been over misting on a couple of the cakes.
I fan 5 or more times a day and mist 3 times a day. I've cut the misting back and am only misting the sides of the sgfc. Humidity is consistently in the high 90's. Temperature 70-75 degrees fahrenheit.

Any ideas as to why these are taking so long to fruit? Old spores? Bad genetics?

I'm a shroom newb for sure, about to embark for the first time. However, I'm doing the exact same tek as you so in reading up lately I haven't seen anything that would indicate you've done anything wrong.

Surely if the mycelium can colonize rapidly and grow healthily without contamination then it should fruit given your daily attention, correct temp, and high humidity.

Does anyone know if strong mycelium growth followed by zero fruiting in seemingly perfect conditions is a telltale sign of something?

At this point if I had to guess I'd just say bad spores, cause it's easiest to blame. Or maybe just a late bloomer? Not sure how late is possible...

I'll let you know how it works out for me.

I usually waited until I saw pinning in the jars. Always wait for full colonization.

The most common form of contam, aside from bacillus cereus in wet spots,
is trich mold, it appears greenish-grey, whereas bruising appears azure blue to indigo.

cottony sectors indicates scenescense, old genetics...growth will likely stall.
once birthed, maintain a balance of high humidity and fresh air exchange; ambient light
is said to trigger pinning, you don't need much (light).

If you took a liquid culture then you could have narrowed down the genetics but only by a small degree. If this was from spores it makes almost no difference, if it was from tissue then it will probably be a mix of genetics since individual shrooms can contain multiple strains acting as one, almost like a hybrid. But if you did it from a shroom then of course it will bear fruit. As benzyme said, it could be senescence but only if this culture is very very old and has been growing during that time. If you want to preserve cultures check out master slants, RR from shroomery has a really god video out there about making them.

My guess? You mention you birthed them early so perhaps the core of the cakes wasn't fully colonized yet. You took them out and cased them, saw new growth, and now the core of the cake is being fully colonized but you'll have to wait for that to finish plus full consolidation. The core is usually the last part of a cake to colonize fully.

...So it could still take a little while, keep us posted.

they're pf cakes, you don't mention dunking them... so i must ask, did you dunk them?

Sorry, but I'm going to bump this thread to ask essentially the same question. I'm doing PF tek. The jars colonized well. I waited a week after the jars looked fully colonized before birthing them (I didn't get the memo about waiting for pinning before birthing). I dunked them for a few seconds each and put them in a tub with no holes. The humidity remains above 95% during the day according to my cheap hygrometer and I leave the lid cracked a little. I shine a fluorescent lamp on them for a few hours every night, but they are near a window so they get more indirect light during the day too. About 4 times a day I mist and fan (though they are neglected for 9 hours during work and dreaming each). I know I'm supposed to put holes in the bin, but I read that high CO2 level is actually good to encourage pinning so I figured I would do the holes later when I had time. After about a week of nothing happening, I redunked the cakes per advice on the web, coating them in vermiculite afterward this time. Now it's been another 3 days and still nothing.

I'm starting to think that I made a fatal error somewhere and I want to know what I did wrong so that I can fix it or at least prevent it next time. The only thing I can think of is that they weren't pinning when I birthed them, but I didn't know this would be so crucial. I've also read that I should scrape them with a fork to expose a fresh layer of mycelium (or activate the surface layer(?) Idk what the point was, actually), but I don't want to resort to something so extreme until I've convinced that that's the best option.

Attached is a pic of a few of the cakes. They have a bluish hue but I've confirmed that it's bruising by running it with a white cloth. In case you're wondering, the cakes are on a plastic tray inside the plastic tub. Under the tray is a layer of wet rocks.

hixidom, what about the temp drop in the box?

Indirect light is enough and because less CO2 is recommended, drill holes (as close to the ground as possible, due to CO2 is heavier than O2 and will fall to the ground) in your box and put f.e. aquarium-cotton inside or attach facemasks to have a filter, drop temp to 21°C for fruiting, scratch with a clean fork on the surface of the cake to enhance the development of primodias.

Watch shrooms grow, harvest, make clean prints and send them to frse.nl.

All the best, shroom on, tseuq

High CO2 levels can cause aerial mycelium, hinders pinning and yields. FAE is needed on most mushrooms. I think Blue Oysters require high CO2 for their color.

Golden teachers are veeerry slow growers. Just be patient a bit more. Hopefully, you'll be rewarded with a nice dense flush.

EDIT: The temperature drop that tseuq suggested, may be good to initiate pinning, but don't keep it at that low temperature for too long, as it slows down fruitbody formation and growth.

It's all about the timing and combination of light and airflow to induce pinning . High co2 not good for pinning. Patience is the real key.

Thanks for the advice. I'll drill those holes now and try the scraping. The box is at 21C, so temp is good I guess.

Thanks for the suggestion about drilling the holes lower too. That's a very clever idea.

Every time Golden Teachers come up, I see people complaining about failing with them... I guess it's just one of the harder races to grow.

About initiating fruiting, light might have a different level of importance depending on specific strain genetics... When I cased my current crop (see the invitro cased BRF topic for photos and yield reports), it sat there for over a week, slowly creeping through the coir/verm casing and no pins, even though the terrarium had a steady spot in a corner in my living room...

After a week I thought that even if it's a lit room, maybe being in a far, shady corner that never gets direct sunlight is just too dark, and I moved the terrarium in front of the window to get an hour of direct sunlight or so, and much higher levels of filtered light throughout the day. I had pins within two days.

Now it might be coincidence, and the mycelium just finished consolidating its hold by that time, or it was really the light. Cubes like light. Try adding more light.

Mine did fine first successful grow

I have seen a lot of people put a ridiculous amount of holes in their containers. I found that this made it impossible to maintain proper humidity levels. I normally punch about 6 holes on each of the six surfaces except for bottom in which I punch a few more because of the thought process that tseuq mentioned (this was on a container that can hold 90 quarts of liquid). Also, never underestimate the power of perlite!



FAE and light are important pinning triggers. I use a 12/12 light schedule, 12 hours on, 12 hours off. Of course it varies here and there due to work. Also having someone there (like my GF) to turn off/on the lights and mist/fan when I'm not able to helped a lot.

I generally try to keep my babies between 75-80 degrees fahrenheit during fruiting but no higher than 80. The temp drop suggestion from tseuq seems promising although I've never tried it. Golden teachers were the first strain I ever grew years ago and I've fallen in love with the process ever since.

Look for the little white knots over the course of the next few days as these will be your first indicator of pins. Eventually they will poke their little baby heads out and mature! From your pictures, everything seems fine. Perhaps your cakes are just taking extra time to consolidate. I think with the modifications, you should see results soon! Never surrender!

I didn't know it was important, but I guess I should've mentioned earlier that I'm growing B+. Sorry

Also, I have fruit! There are very few, actually, but something is better than nothing. They are growing out of the bottom of my cakes for some reason. What a mystery. My guess is that the bottom of the cake is pressed against something which provides heat insulation. Maybe the [hypothetical] extra heat helped because I [hypothetically] hadn't given the mycelium enough time to grow before birthing. That's my theory, at least.

Congrats to your pins/shrooms!



A cube is a cube, thus growing paramters are the same.

By thy way, you don't have to roll your fruitcakes in vermiculite. If the vermi was dry before, it will suck out the water of the cakes.

Shroom on, tseuq