25kg sack of hardwood dowels just arrived!
The oyster spawn is nearing full colonization so that can be cracked on with soon ..
Anybody heard of psilocybe azurescens/cyanescens being grown on log culture?

So transferred the mycelium onto a second run of cardboard from the t. versicolor:
I made one pile of cardboard that wasn't touching the mushrooms directly and seemed to have no discernible contamination.
And one more pile of cardboard that was touching the mushrooms and didn't have any significant contamination.
These are layered up with small pieces, with 3 layers of cardboard in between each layer of mycelium-impregnated sheets. Therefore the middle sheet can be taken out for propagation without the contaminants.
I surmise with small pots you could do something similar to running mycelium on agar away from contaminants while still keeping the vigorous mycelium with its natural microbial culture and antibodies ready to be transplanted back into the real world.
Also trying to see if the mycelium will jump directly to dowels so got a small box and put a mycelial face on the bottom and filled it up with dowels that had been soaked in boiling water for an hour.
This strain seems to be a good vigorous grower and was fruiting very well with big fruits when collected.

+psilocybe cyanescens
two grain jars, one bag and one liquid culture jar inoculated with liquid culture 31/01/14.

Progress as below.. just need to wait for the mycelium to firm up on the bag of oyster spawn and then it can be spawned onto a big bag of dowels. The jars are just progressing along a bit, taking their time to fully colonise.

So last picture shows the first spots of growth seen today, the liquid culture really leaps off a lot faster than spores!
All of the containers with oyster mycelium seem to have a bit of an orangey tint to the outside - is this normal or should I be worried about bacterial contamination? The others do not so if so it must have come from the syringe.

I do apologise for inactivity but I have pinning now! more soon ..

thanks for the update, keep us posted.

Indeed. Please keep us informed. I am interested as well.

So below is some photos of one of the jar's contents ..
Basically it was 3/4 colonized and was starting to show what looked like some blue mould on the side so I pulled it out.
The jar was actually narrower at the top, I was expecting the grain to be looser to pour out but not so, so I had to get a clean knife and cut the cake into four and take it out with a fork.
Brushed off the uncolonised grain and cut off the mould with a clean knife.
Put all four sections into a large bag with a filter patch with a layer of wet vermiculite on the bottom, popped them in and closed the top with a paperclip.
And much to my surprise had no more contaminations! One of them seemed like it was just starting to get some mould so I pulled it out and dried it for eating as is, maybe it will do something! But actually I think it was just bluing from touching the sides of the bag, the other 'cakes' blued a little where they were touching the side but upon pulling the bag away reverted to pure white.
Since then they started pinning, and are growing larger by the hour! Last two photos taken today, other two two days ago 04/03.

In other news ..
cyanescens failed! As expected everything contaminated, I've still got one grain jar in that's only showing very light contamination so I'll see if it can overrun it long enough for anything to happen.
One was in a bag of grain that obviously had a hole in it somewhere, soon became a bag of mould...

The pleurotus spawn in the bag also has some nasty bacterial contamination so that's soon to go ..
So I only have one pleurotus jar left now which seems to be ok.
That will soon be inoculated onto dowel spawn.

So now I have:
LC of p. cubensis, p cyanescens, p. citrinopilatus .. unknown purity

Two jars of cubensis grain spawn ~85% colonised .. These took a long time because they are big jars and the grain clumped together so was not able to be shaken, next time smaller jars with CaSO4 added to prevent clumping and more frequent shaking to allow fast colonisation.
One jar of citrinopilatus spawn
Still the two boxes of t. versicolor cardboard spawn, not showing any activity.

I have a first harvest! pics soon ..

still around hummus?


can we get an update...? pics perhaps

bah probably lost the pictures by now!
Quick summary:
The cakes in the bags gave two flushes before going slightly moldy.. yield about 8g dried and still got the dried cakes..
The spawn jars that were still good were mixed with pasteurized coir/verm mix and laid out into a seed incubator tray, didn't actually case it so they came up in patchy waves, I had about 25g from the first two flushes and then gave it to a friend as I had to be away for quite a while..
Interesting experience!
All of the oyster spawn went down the road of bacterial contamination, though I've still got some logs that I'm waiting for them to fruit in the garden, they all show good signs of mycelium so still hoping.
Main problems were my spawn spent faar too long colonising, probably combination of big jars with not enough spore solution and non-vigorous strain, possibly not right humidity. Most of them did ok but a lot were going down the route of bacterial contamination that wouldn't have happened if they had been colonized quickly.
Not really done any more since, when circumstances allow it'll happen again I'm sure.
Still got phalaris on the backburner and cooking up some home opium so will post again on those some time soon!