My first planned grow - am i heading in the right direction?

Started by AussieChamp, June 10, 2011, 01:33:01 AM

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AussieChamp

Foreword:
As i have never grown mushrooms before (except once as a young child in science class) i wanted to post up the plan that a friend and i have spent some time researching and planning, and basically run it by some experienced growers to see if we are heading in the right direction. I know from the research i have done that it is a very trial and error process for someone like my self with no prior knowledge. So it would be great if i could get some feed back on our first planned grow. Our plan may be completely off, and that is why i'm posting it up to see if we've got some major flaws or not.

The Plan:

The Species: We will be using Psilocybe Cubensis Combodian strain, as it seems to be a good grower and fairly resistant.

Sporing: The plan is to combine the Sporing and the growing together.
The substrate will be made by boiling Agar and Malt extract together and mixing it with brown rice and placing it in 4 containers roughly 8 X 8" (20cm x 20cm) and layering each one approx. 1 1/2" (4cm) using spore syringes we will place the spores into each container covering them with foil and placing each one inside its own larger clear container with moist peat in the bottom to keep the humidity up, for when the growing begins.

Temperature and lighting: Placed these here because the conditions for the sporing and growing wont change,as mentioned we plan on having the sporing and growing together. Mainly to cut down on contamination.
The containers will be placed in a shed that keeps a fairly consistent temperature of around 60 F (15 c) during day time, 14 hours. and 40 F (7 c) at night time. Due to having one window it get about 2 hours of late afternoon sunlight and is relatively "gloomy" the rest of the day.

Growing: Continuing on from the sporing, once the spores have started to grow. The foil will be taken off from the inside containers and bird seed will be mixed in with the spore containers. Water will be added to the peat in the larger "holding" containers to help keep the humidity as close to 90% as possible. The holding containers will be sealed and opened daily for an hour to allow air.


In short thats the plan, this is gathered purely from opinions off the internet, and there are so many and they vary so much that we kind of slapped a few main ones together. Hoping that we might be headed in a general direction.

Thanks in advance for any feedback and ideas.
And if we have gone completely the wrong way about our plan, don't be afraid to tell me what a bunch of idiots we are :P I would rather be aware of issues now then later on. I don't expect anything more then just having fun trying to grow some mushrooms, but it would be great to get a couple not just a bunch of moldy birdseed.

dub504

You shouldn't mix teks together like this. Starting with PF Tek aka BRF Cakes is a good way to go for beginners. After that you can learn how to case a crumbled BRF cake. This will add moisture for fruiting and improve yields.
Another method would be to sterilize grain and inoculate it with spores or LC then after the grain is colonized, spawn that to a bulk substrate like pasteurized horse manure or wheat straw.
You need to keep a BRF cake or the initial grain spawn very sterile. Adding birdseed to an already growing substrate would almost certainly contaminate unless you have a HEPA flowhood.

PCCP

Quote from: AussieChamp on June 10, 2011, 01:33:01 AM

Temperature and lighting:
The containers will be placed in a shed that keeps a fairly consistent temperature of around 60 F (15 c) during day time, 14 hours. and 40 F (7 c) at night time. Due to having one window it get about 2 hours of late afternoon sunlight and is relatively "gloomy" the rest of the day.

Cubensis mycelium growth temps should be way higher than you're proposing. Cooler temps are good to discourage contams but 40f-60f is gonna see virtually no growth at all. 86f is optimum but the myc generate heat also by about an extra 4f so 82f max, 80f great, 78f safe