major players ( no names) on the big forums said it couldnt be done.

yet annie and friends can do it!

http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/20643482#20643482

the link above, leads to the infamous " the pom pom tek"
the tek , is no longer a myth............its reality.

now you can grow fungi to scale, with plastic, nylon, and a BRF paste/ slush.
it is even possible to do this by microwave!

at some point, id like to bring the full tek, to this site.

discuss , and enjoy.

in the new age, new teks rise.

Very interesting...have many other people shared success with this approach?

Thanks for sharing!

my team has been doing it for a while.
several others on various forums can do it also.

we originally developed this tek in the 80's,
as a possible artificial sub.

it does drive peeps on some forums insane,
so some peeps that know the secrets, are skiddish on publishing.
that is changing as peeps get more comfortable with it.

although direct and easy, there is a learning curve,
as its somewhat different than traditionally taught teks.

we taught violet a few yrs ago, and she did a great job presenting it.

Nice info though i don't think the growing of full size mushrooms is the interesting part,imo this is better done on poo.

But it is interesting to make sterile spore prints and to possibly select strains on weak substrates.


Did you also try to select on different mediums? and then test for yields when going full scale? did you find significant differences between spore inoculated and the selected strains on full scale substrates?

in 35 yrs of growing, we have tested about everything we could think of.

we gave up poo back in the late 80's......
its our opinion, that grain based subs offer most power.

clones dramatically increase yield on the pom pom tek.
it has been tested to scale, and it has many advantages.


more to come on this, as we have yet to publish the main tek and details.
hopefully we will here on this site.

main point of this tek, is the ease and simplicity, and the fact that it works.

pic is full fruit, on poms and BRF slush, in polycarb .5 litre containers.
grown under 100% LED lighting .

please give us some numbers, examples



Do you have some numbers?

Also what I meant for selecting is not to select for more pompom tek style yields, but using known substrate mixtures for selection of strains that do well on straw or dung?

For example did you select 5 clean strains from a petry and then grow those out on in 5 containers for each strain with different nutritional strength mixtures to select for example for fruiting time or yield based on available nutrients?

raw data is beyond the scope of this thread.
for this thread, we merely present "it works"

we work with hundreds of strains a yr, and make agar by the gallon.
id be hard pressed to think of a nute test we HAVENT tried.

we dont do petri dishes, we do polycarb .5 litre flasks.
we converted to an "all plastics" lab about 15 yrs ago.

IMO, strains can be developed to favor a wide variety of subs.
some prefer bulks......we dont.

Unsupported claims are just that, especially when someone goes on to support there ideas with claims about the amounts of agar the boil up and the 30 years of experience they have.

Please support your claims with data, this is after all a community that loves science. And if you have data why not share it? you write that this thread is about discussing your ideas?

Finally i'm not trying to discredit your ideas, i just want to know and learn more.

as an introduction type thread,
i present the works of violet and i " as is" at the moment.

we intend to re visit this in some detail in the future.

for the moment, we present this and other variants of the tek,
do indeed produce full spore crops, fast, and with minimal sub and prep.

for the moment, should be apparent we have a substantial agar works,
and strain development capability.

we suggest people experiment with poms, and see for themselves until we
publish something more comprehensive........

I'm looking forward to another thread of yours where we can get more into detail. We can also help you here to put some structure in your thoughts and findings if needed.


Kind regards,

The Traveler

Wow, that is a very creative technique and i can fully believe that this might work. Afterall, mushrooms can pin on agar plates. Using the capillary effect of the poms to pipe liquid nutrients is just a brilliant idea.

This is like PF-Tek in a box. Half Synthetic Mono PF. Love it!

Now that you are here, let me say that i have admired you and your teams work on peyote and the whole periskiopsis forestry service thing.

major cactus thread coming up next.

just trying to get adjusted here smoothly ATM.

i was gonna do a cactus thread first,
but wanted to make note of the pom tek,
due to violets timely thread.

note we use nylon in the cacti clones also.
its useful stuff.

They look delicious
I've always wondered if grafted peyotes are as potent as regular ones. I guess the major advantage of grafting is to get over the seedling phase quickly?

As for the pom tek....I was researching suitable containers and i fear this might the major drawback of this technique - you'd need a huge pressurecooker as the containers you suggested are 14.5 inches in height. I mean, i have fruited brf cakes in vitro, but well...

So i was wondering if you have tried using wide containers. Wouldn't this be even better because of the bigger surface area ? 1 quart microboxes for instance are 6.9 long and 4.3 inches wide, come with a filter patch.

Is height of the container really important ?

with the cactus clones/ grafts , theres a paper on several forums wich shows that ,
biomass is biomass, and alks go along with that.
however,
we do suspect strong strain and individual variations from our research........


as for pom containers, anything goes really.
we have a strong preference for plastics, especially PP5 and polycarbonate.

we use AA 910 cookers ( about mid size)
smaller cookers work well also with poms.
those averse to plastic, can use glass with confidence.

personally , if given a choice, i prefer multiple mid sized cookers for general work,
and smaller cookers for agar and special things.

one thing to consider, PC with plastic is a slightly quicker turnaround, as they cook faster.

we never have problems PC-ing plastics, and have been doing it for many many yrs.
those unfamiliar with it, should experiment first, to gain confidence.
all plastics are not created equal, certain brands work better than others.

lids should be loose on all plastic containers in a PC.


picture is mycelia running on poms in a .5 liter polycarb

Thanks Anne...
So I've cooked 200g BRF with 800ml water, but all i get is a thick pap, not even a slurry. There is nothing that could settle. I also can't swirl it around because it is very thick. What am i doing wrong? I guess just add more water ?

could you do the cacti thread first? pretty please with a jar of pereskiopsis and lophs on top?

I'm really interested in trying this out. I have a pereskiopsis forest going in soil right now and they're doing well but density/space is becoming and issue.

I did some reading on other forums about your method but couldn't find answers to the following:

1) what exactly do you use for fertilizer? I kept seeing 10-10-10 but what is the concentration of that fertilizer to water? Do you use liquid or dry fertilizer?

2) Do you use rooted pereskiopsis cuttings when starting with hyrdo? Or do you root them in the hyrdo solution?

3) When grafting to hydro pereskiopsis, do the pereskiopsis juices ever make the scions fall off? I've read elsewhere that it's best to stop watering pereskiopsis a few days in advance in preparation for grafting. I have very little experience with pereskiopsis grafting.

4) Do you keep the recently grafted scions in high-humidity?

5) What do you do with the "spent" hydro solution?

6) Are algae blooms ever a problem?

Thanks in Advance,
wap

all questions and more,
answered soon in the upcoming XHTTL 6.0..........

stay tuned.

So i've tried this one a while back. Unfortunatly, i have to report, that nothing grew using spore solution. I've tried different slushs, using rice water and boiled rice flour (which was WAY to thick using the measurements found in this thread). Maybe spores just don't work. I've also had a hard time getting something to germinate on agar plates.

So I advise to try this with g2g, lc or agar transfers.

im watching as the violet pom thread develops in real time with this thread.
as of this writing it still is an active thread.

violet brings up the point that there is a pom 2.0 scale version.
eventually i will share that also........

the tek does work as shown, and there is a learning curve.
mostly , in unlearning usual assumptions about grows.

i see in the main tek where peeps think they can come up with a better substance for the base.
such as other foams , steel wools and glass wools, and floral foam.
good luck.
there are a variety of reasons we use the nylon scrubs.
otherwise we would use something else.

all teks fall under the same physical world.
operator error, handling of materials, environmental factors,
all play into a grows success.

I've used the green, hard side of a normal foam scrub (several different brands), as scrubbies are not available. I figured it's the same stuff and a quick google research seems to confirm that. Next time i'd probably try to innoculate with grain or agar as im also seeing very slow results with spoe to agar (think months before anything germinates!).

Hope to see more people on the nexus try this novel tek!