Extending cake life...

[spiralout]

Would this work?  Between flushes dunk the cakes or use the double ended casing method.  After the 2nd flush, roll the cake in a mixture of sterilized brown rice flour and vermiculite.  You could just sterilize one extra jar with the rest of the initial jars, but never innoculate it with spores.  Use that jar as your "food" for the cake later on as it's dying out.

I obviously have no clue what I'm talking about, but I thought it sounded like it might work.  Has this been done before or does anyone have an opinion?

[shroomzer]

I think you are thinking to hard!! LOL .. keep it simple. I have not heard of this being done but there may 'somebody' here that has heard of/or done it.

[jrfungi]

Keep it by the BOOK or TEK. If you want try it and get back with us. Good Luck!!

[coyoteyogi]

My take is that with mushrooms you begin a growth cycle and that the work is to control the conditions of that cycle for optimum strain and yield. What you are suggesting is an interruption of the cycle at a particular point. I don't think it will work because the myc will age even if you keep giving it food. The best way is to spore the caps or clone the fruit and begin the cycle all over again. But experience is the best teacher.

[veda_sticks]

pretty close.

trying to add more food is just a contamination risk. Brown rice flour will contaminate very quickly, often in just a mater of days,

Also, as stated mycelium has a life cycle, its ages, theres only so long the cell lines can go on dividing before it slows down. its not just a case of food.

[Baphom3t]

I think I see a troll

[spiralout]

This honestly wasn't a trolling attempt.  My understanding is that fungi is a colony of organisms that continually expands as long as there is a constant source of food and water.  Dunking and rolling addresses the lack of water, but I haven't read anything about trying to "feed" the cakes.  My logic was that giving the BRF acts as the nutrient and that adding more of it might help.

Coyote suggests a different take from what I understood, which seems to be that once a cake is colonized and starts fruiting that there is no new growth as far as colony expansion is concerned.

I did an experiment on a single cake just for the hell of it.  After two successful flushes on a set of six cakes I took one and tried my experiment to see if it would make a difference in the final flush.  It's been 3 days since I rolled it in the mixture and so far there hasn't been an obvious explosion of more/larger production.  On the other hand none of the others are producing much either so maybe all of the cakes are exhausted. 

On the other hand it appears more "fuzzy" than the others, the whole cake looks like the fuzziness that you might see at the base of a mushroom.  It is a little more white in color also.  I have no idea if this is a good sign or not. 

On the negative side the cake has a different smell from the other cakes.  It doesn't smell "bad" like it is rotting, but it has a different odor for sure.  The odor seems to be the same smell as what wet BRF smells like when it's fresh, so I'm not going to be quick to freak out about the odor.  I'm keeping it in a separate chamber from the others to make sure it doesn't contaminate them.

[spiralout]

Just for the record I don't have a lot of experience with mycology or horticulture... but I do enjoy science in general so I'm just having fun following an idea with an experiment.  I know I might be way off base from what is generally known, but that's part of the fun.

[Baphom3t]

I am not refering to you spiralout, so relax bro. 

Baph

[spiralout]

No worries.  I mostly just wanted to report on my little experiment.

[veda_sticks]

experimentation is fine.

If you want to try extending cake life, the only safer method i see of doing it is crumbling and spawning to bulk substrate which isnt so cntam prone is BRF. But i have seen it tried before and its hit or miss, it usually coliniss very slow and if it does fruit it fruits poorly. or it jjust ends up contaimated. So in a sense ues you could add food, but it has no real benifit since mushroom mycelium (cubensis does other speices may live much longer) will age and slow down and performance becomes poor.

Its the same reason why its not a good idea to continually clone the same genitc cell lines, and is also why cultures that need to be stored for periods of time must be refriderator.