Duuuuhhhh

Thanks Anne

Annie your teks always totally blow my mind.

Too bad that I only read this recently, I already have a few PF-style BRF cakes colonizing. I guess I'll try your approach for the next cycle! I'm wondering though if doing the BRF cake dunk in a fertilizer solution could improve the yield.

I do have one thing I'm not sure I understand correctly. You said the jars are bottom watered... Does this mean you pour water directly into the jars? I remember seeing a video by Roger Rabbit / Roadkill where he showed a shiitake BRF tek, leaving the cake in the jar and pouring water on it between flushes...

(I'm not Anne but here is my .02 for what it is worth )

Yep, you pour water into the container (I tilt it a bit so it pours along the sides instead of directly on top.) until it comes up about halfway up the cake. Over the next few days, the water will be absorbed by the cake. If it does not absorb after a few days, it usually means that the cake has enough water at the moment and you can just pour out the excess if needed. A good time to do this is when the cake has formed pins and has contracted/shrunk a bit and has pulled away from the sides of the container usually during or after the first flush. Violet from the shroomery board has some good information on bottom watering if you care to give it a read:

https://www.shroomery.or...umber/19167516#19167516

If that link brings you to the top of the page, just scroll down until you see BOTTOM-WATERING.

bottom watering is a good thing.

the key here is the pom pom tek.
pom tek essentially proves they can transfer huge amounts of water across mycelia.

bottom watering negates the need for extreme humidity, and field capacity BS.
your always at 100% , without damage to the crop surface.

this tek was engineered for speed, reliability, supply, and crop handling,
it holds for a few cups , or scale.

Does this method also work for pan cambs and cyans, I remember somewhere someone mentioned they are a little trickier. Looking to do these very soon, and was wondering if this was the best route.

Thanks Anne

so far its worked on all types of cubes,
mexicanas and variants, and galindois.

i suspect with some mods other things would work also.

I know I'm like a year late to the party here, but have just seen this...fantastic tek Anne, thanks a lot for sharing!!

My next grow will be with Psilocybe mexicana, and from research it seems that blue light is recommended by some growers to help initiate healthy and bountiful pinning and fruitings. Species P. hoogshagenii, P. galindoi and Panaeolus cambodginiensis are also of interest, and I'm liking this set up.

Up until now, I've only used glass jars in my grows, intrigued to see that you are using PP5/polycarbonate plastics...I'm assuming these can take repeated PC sessions without issue over the long term? In the past, I have lost a few jars to cracking when pressure cooking which obviously isn't going to be an issue with plastics. For my jars (250/500ml) I used a PC time of 90 mins...is your 30 min PC time a reflection of the smaller volumes used with your tubs, or do you think a 30 min PC time will cover any given tub volume (of substrate) when using plastic?

Also I have a definite noob question, what are you doing for air exchange in the lids of the plastic tubs?

And, just out of pure curiosity, do you have a particularly cherished or fave species?

Peace & Blissings

I gotta admit, I was completely sold when I first read this Tek. It seemed clean, simple, idiot-proof and efficient. Well, I just want to let everyone know, that 'Annie Style' V-tek is definitely not as "easy" as advertised. I started working with this tek back in early January of this year and have exactly "0" yield for my efforts. That's 4 1/2 solid months of straightup failure. I have gone through probably 12 or so different attempts using the tek step by step and have only gotten about 5% of my containers to fill out with healthy mycellium. And before those few containers even have a chance to pin, mold just wrecks them. Most end up with a nasty sour smell (bacterial growth from overly saturated substrate) and the agar wedges that were tossed in fizzle out within 7-10 days of innoculation.
Maybe I'm doing something wrong along the way. I have Fact checked all of my issues with V-Tek on the shroomery and still cannot get this goddamn tek to work. Along with trying to troubleshoot my V-Tek problems, I could not help but notice the sizable amount of ppl on the shroomery.org who are staunch critics of Anne H. and her methods.
So just a warning to my fellow nexians, this tek is NOT as simple as is claimed. My advice ... Stick with PF tek.... a tried and true method that always works.

I tried the pan cambos with this method, and I couldn't get it to work, I had no problems with the myc colonizing the sub, but after casing it would stall out every single time, no tams but I would just toss them after 20 days of not doing anything. I did not use scotch bright pads in the bottom and did not add water to the pp5 as it seemed to be moist enough.

The containers work fine in the PC, you can either crack the lids or make a hole in the top and cover with tyvek or micropore tape for air exchange. I've since moved on to ztubs and have been having way better success.

AH has been mia for almost a year now, maybe she will chime in one day to defend her tek.

What species were you working with? Have you grown successfully with other methods?





Not particularly standing up for annie here, but...




Then again, she evaporated a while back - "are these things perchance related"?

I was working with Golden Teacher. I have had average success with pf tek in the past. V-tek just seemed like a fresh new way to grow. I also started using an TIT incubator set @ 82 and it seems to work very well... at least with growing agar. I ended up with 2 out of maybe 80 or so containers that did actually make it all the way through to the fruiting chamber, but they stalled out as well.

I just don't see any successful grow pics from anyone other than her.... seems odd for something that apparently grows massive mushies.

Like I said, Im going back to I know what works.... mason jars, verm and BRF... good ol' PF tek style. Except this time the incubator should just about double my colonization time.

Im sorry to say this but this whole "tek" has reeked of troll bait to me since day 1. I do not have much growing experience but why else would well known members of various OMC forums so vehemently disagree with her methods? If they worked as well as annie claims & boosted yeilds in relation to materials used im sure the growers at shroomery & topia would be all over it & not trying to distance themselves from this style of growing.

Yeah, I agree with conc. Never understood the attraction to her tek/s, and I always found it funny that so many people through other forums had disagreement with her methods. Something never seemed right.

Though I know Violet had posted a tek some time ago on shroomery regarding cubes done in those plastic clear style cups, which seemed relatively straight forward and somewhat different from annes methods, which I'd thought about doing for awhile, though I've just ended up sticking with what's worked for me all these years - PF style grows.

I'm a long term monotub grower, started with pf tek just like everyone else and moved on to rye-poo tubs. I have to say my experience has been quite the opposite of you folks. I decided to give Violet's tek a try, and frankly, I'm never going back. I yielded moar weight per smaller area that I ever have before with the monos and I really enjoy the simplicity and scalability of the little ziplock containers. Not having to spawn to a bulk substrate and thus not risking losing a whole batch to a trich contam are huge pluses in my book.

I tried some of annie's tricks re adding the "poms" or scrubby pads to the v-tek and was not impressed, separating your fruits from those little plastic fibers is tedious and well nigh impossible to to achieve completely. My agar results were sub-par as well when I included in the scrubbies in there, I got much better results just using straight agar the old fashioned way.

I'm just one case study so take that for what it's worth, but I am most assuredly on board with the v-tek.

I may try again with some cubes at some time. I only tried with pan cambos, with a variation between hers and waylit Jim's pan cyan tek using the containers. I liked all the same things though, maximizing yield in such a small foot print, being able to isolate tams should I get any without wasting the bulk and having to start over, etc. If I could get the Jalisco's to do what hers did I'd be quite happy using that tek!

I've run straight grain jars alongside PF with the same direct multispore inoc and, let me tell you, PF is a total waste of space in terms of yield and effort, IMHO. Having good, fresh spores helps.