Hey nexus

You hooked me in with the spice, and although I had visited our little mushy friends before I knew of the nexus, you are my enabler!

so ive been doing some research, and have decided that before I start, im going to make my own tek, this may sound backwards to most, but I also did this with my spice extraction which turned out beautifully. And I already know what materials I have lying around the house.

SO please! I am open to all suggestions and advice, I am new to this so anything helps
let me know how this sounds!
(these are rough details, the fine points will be added in if/when everything checks out)

Start with a spore syringe, a few local head shops and such sell them in my city.
after a thorough cleaning of everything, inject the spores into 2 oz of sterile liquid culture.
the liquid culture will sit in an incubator made from a small rubber-made bin, a reptile tank heating pad and thermostat(i have a pet snake, this stuff is already lying around) but a warm dark place will do the trick.

Allow the liquid culture to sit for 1-3 weeks, until it is 2/3 colonized.

SUBSTRATE!
4 cups vermiculite, 2 cups brown rice flour, 1.5 cups of water. enough for 2 spawn bags

mix together, put in spawn bags, and pasteurize at 85 deg C until all the material has reached that temp, allow to cool throughout.

INNOCULATION
After a thorough cleaning of everything, inject 1oz of liquid culture into each spawn bag using a sterile syringe.
place spawn bags in incubator at your strains favourite temp.
Allow to sit for 2-3 weeks, or when white mycelium growth has surrounded the whole bag.

When the growth is sufficient, its time to make the bulk substrate, which is the same as before. make enough to fill your fruiting bin 3 inches from the bottom.

I wont go into details of the fruiting container, but its a transparent bin about 2'x3' by 1.5' tall.
the bottom is lined with foil, reptile heating pad, and 3 inches of the bulk substrate. with a separate area reserved for a small bin of perlite/water.

spread the mycelium growth evenly over the bulk substrate, set the temp to 80 deg F, and let sit in the dark until the whole surface is covered with growth.

then a vermiculite casing layer is sprinkled evenly ontop to form a full 1/2 inch layer, the bin is again sealed and put in the dark.

once there is an even layer of growth coming out of the casings layer, it is time to start fruiting, leave the bin in a room with a window, where the alternating night/day light will promote fruiting, mist multiple times a day. harvest when appropriate

Thanks guys, ive been glued to my computer for some time now, so the end of this post is getting pretty lazy lol, let me know what you think

If this is your first run it may be difficult to add spawn bags to bulk substrate and get an even and accurate mycelium growth. With a lot of research I'm sure you could pull it off. You may want to add some other things to the bulk for heartier shrooms, like gypsum and coir coir. You may want to use bird seed for spawn bag and use brown rice flour and vermiculite for bulk substrate.

AS long as you watch humidity and temp for that strain your tek could work. But growing is an art that takes practice. Just go for it and learn from there.

a liquid culture may not be the most easy way to ensure success when you are starting out.

If your method isn't a success try doing some direct germination of your spores on your media and then use transfers to increase the mycelial mass

In my experience, Liquid Culture is necessary for bigger amounts of spawn. I would not try to nock up a spawn bag with spore solution! LQ is also very easy to make. Dissolve some honey in warm water, drop some spores in, shake...wait. Then, if you got the time, innoculate a test jar...if all turns out fine...proceed with the rest.

I have found a simple rye preperation work fine. 100g rye, 100g water, 1 hour pressure cook in 500ml jars with innoculation port and filter. Spawn to coco cor mono tubs.

Oh, and it's said, that Brown rice flour substrates are not really that suitable for larger amounts of spawn. I do not know. But it's propably easier too switch to grains, and reserve BRF for small scale cake growing.

I'm not a fan of liquid culture...
how can you possibly now if it's contamination free without shooting a test jar? it would be a waste to inoculate the spawn bag with a contaminated LQ...
I don't see the problem with inoculating with spore solution, just use a bit more.
Keep in mind that i've only worked with PF jars till now...but you can easily crush up cakes and use them as spawn

I tried 4 Spawn bags with Spore solution. All showed very little growth and would eventually contaminate. That's why i'm advising against it. LQ = very fast growth, gives contaminations little chance.

Well if your LQ is good, then yes, it's probably the fastest way to inoculate the bags (or putting in a piece of agar). But maybe the parameters were not right for the 4 bags..

Perhaps, 4 bags is not a pretty big dataset to draw upon. Still, It frustrated me. In the end, it comes down to improving your chances. If you are working in a sterile environment, with a clean print and clean spawn material, i see no reason why using spore syringes on bags would not work.

My environment could have been cleaner, so I have to counteract that by using liquid culture, i guess. Perhaps try what works best for you, but after losing 12lbs of spawn, i got fed up and switched to jars.

yes jars are very easy...you don't even need a pressure cooker. Not even for pans

Don't use honey for liquid culture. Instead use dextrose and malt extract (can be found in brewers shops) or just dextrose if you can't get malt. your liquid culture will grow faster IME.
Use glass shards in the liquid culture so you can break up the myc.

if your LC turns opaque you have yeast infection
I hear mold growth also looks different from myc growth but I've never seen it, so I don't know exactly. There are some pics online that can help though - just google around a bit. After about 10 days in warm climate LC is good to go. But for innocculating PF jars you really don't need LC. and you won't need a lot of spores to get a LC going, so you can do both in parallel if you like - inject some into LC and some into PF jars and see what you like better.

Personally I liked LC a lot and only had a few failed ones. Mainly the ones that failed failed because of caramelized sugars, when I used honey and PCed for too long. So to play it safe, don't use honey but use a sugar that doesn't caramelize so easily, i.e. dextrose/malt.

The thing is, there are tons of recipes and tons of "expert" opinions. some say...jars are best, some like bags, some use syringes, some lq...some say honey works best, some say karo. I think that it is pretty hard to seperate the truth from the noise at the current moment, so everyone needs to start his own trial...and perhaps error.



I thought it was essential to pressurecook grains?

Ime, that's the case. I saw some funky tek that did some insane soaks and fermented the grain/treated it somehow and then inoculated without PC'ing and had success, but that's the only such time/tek I saw this. I've always used a PC and never seen consistent results anywhere from someone not using one.

Spore syringes have contamination within. This contamination is most apparent under a microscope. It reveals itself on agar. It reveals itself on grain... But on PF cakes you can pull it off. Therefore I suggest using those as your tek.

HEY NEXUS
thanks for all the great responses, its a very busy time of year for me so i have not been able to log on much. so much great info here, and when i believe i am ready to invest time into a grow this thread shall continue! so much to think about over the next few weeks, i'll post any idea's i come up with and look forward to your opinions

Happy travels