Hi, thanks for the forum. I'm in the 4th day on my first batch of 5 jars. There is definite mycelium growth in all 5 jars and I'm feeling pretty good about that. I'll probably start another 5 jars tonight - inoculation tomorrow and then wait and see how it goes. Thanks so much for the easy to follow instructions!
Good to hear, good luck and make sure to post your results when they are ready.
I took this picture last night, 4 days after inoculating. This is one of the better jars though they all had definite growth in them. I just found out that I'll be leaving town 1 week from today for a period of 1 week. Any suggestions for my work in progress?
Looks good for 4 days, keep it nice and warm and they will be doing ok.
I don?t think they will be overly colonized in 14 days, so you can leave the in the incubator while you are not there.
If you should notice in 1 week that they are nearly colonized, then take them out and let them finish outside somewhere where they get some light.
Ok, after 8 days I have Mr/Mrs Slowpoke on the left, and the star athlete on the right. Anno, I have a coupla ???'s, should I be concerned about the obvious moisture in the star athlete? And, I've been reading up on casing and it looks pretty straightforward. I'd like to try casing for 2 or 3 of my cakes, but this is my first time ya know. Any advice there? Thanks!
>should I be concerned about the obvious moisture in the star athlete?
No, this is completely normal.
> And, I've been reading up on casing and it looks pretty straightforward.
>I'd like to try casing for 2 or 3 of my cakes, but this is my first time ya know.
Try it, casing is not hard, but as you said, it's better to not try it with all the cakes at once.
The casing section of the Shroomery should give you some pretty good advice:
www.shroomery.org/casing (http://www.shroomery.org/casing)
I was gone a bit longer than expected, but it was not a problem. The pictures are of 2 jars out in the light at room temp to pin, 3 jars broken up and ready to be cased, the coco coir and vermiculite casing mixture cooloing from the nuke job, and one of the second set of 5 jars at day 19 which will likely get the same treatment as the first set - 2 as cakes and 3 cased. Thanks again for the tek, and the help along the way. I'll add more progress reports as things develop. Bufale
ready for casing
cooling the coco-verm
1 of 5 more, at day 19 (5 days behind the others, but ready for pinning and casing)
Nice!
Just a word of caution: A translucent casing container will cause the mycelium pining on the sides of the substrate instead on the casing surface.
Thanks, I read that somewhere also so I wrapped the bottoms and sides of the containers with foil to keep the light out. Wish I'd known that when I was shopping for the containers... learn as you go!
The cakes are out in indirect light and a lower temp and are showing some signs of pinning. In the meantime, the casing has gone well and looks ready to go to fruiting, in my case a large plastic bin with a layer of wet perlite and a lid. Here's a pic of one of the cased containers with mycelia showing through in spots. I've read some pros and cons about cold shocking. Anno, do you have any thoughts on that procedure?
IMO cold shocking is useless with P. cubensis.
Finally!... I got some serious pins and about 1/2 inch of growth after over a week. The cakes have very tiny pins - no brown tops yet. I thought I might have done something wrong, but just needed to be patient.
Anno, another vacation question. I'll be leaving again Saturday for about 10 days. I'm planning to harvest whatever I can before I leave Saturday, but then what would you suggest for the remaining immature shrooms and for future flushes? I'm kinda thinking leave 'em in a cool dark place until I return, and then give 'em some light and mid 70's again.
Yes, sounds good.
mmm, lookin good! Say, where would you happen to get coco core?
I got mine here off the internet... http://dansgardenshop.com/coccoirfibor.html (http://dansgardenshop.com/coccoirfibor.html) ; but I also saw it the next day at Lowes (Anchorage, AK)
Thanks, i'm more of a store buyer than an online buyer though!
Well Jopo, perhaps a local nursery in your area will have it.
After returning from vacation and lighting/warming the casings I got green mold contamination in one of the casings - bummer! The cakes got what looked like regular black mildew - another bummer. Some mushrooms grew slowly (to about 2 inches long) in the other casing and then matured quickly after warming - sorry, forgot to get pictures. These were kinda interesting because the stipes grew quite fat near the caps and remained narrow at the base causing them to fall over before fully mature. I inoculated more jars before I left so hopefully I'll get an uninterrupted growth cycle with them - they are just about fully colonized now.
Thats brut, was it just the matter of time you left them for? Your using a grain cultivation tek i assume, how many got the mildew? Well you always have the next procedure coming so hopefully your next vacation won't interupt! Also did the one of your casings appear fine or just a small flush scattered, post some pictures, if you can!
Take it easy.
Jopo
No, this forum's all about the PF-Tek for simple minds - that is what I was using. I altered it a bit with casing as it sounded pretty straightforward.
I don't know if the dormant period while I was gone was the cause of contamination, or if I merely was not careful enough with how I was handling the cakes and casings.
Yes, I'm hoping that an uninterrupted growth cycle, combined with more diligent care in handling and keeping things clean, will provide no contaminations for me.
As the topic suggests, this was my first time so it's difficult for me to speculate on how the contamination happened. Sorry I do not have any pictures... as soon as I identified that things had gone awry I dumped all problems in the trash to avoid further problems.
Pretty much I have decided to start over, saving what I can but also examining closely for more contaminations. In the future, I plan to use casing for all jars in much shallower and non-translucent containers. I've already harvested enough for two doses so my efforts so far have not been totally in vain.
Thanks Anno for the easy to follow tek and for holding my hand through the process. It all makes much more sense once you have seen and can understand the whole process. Good luck to my fellow newbies on your own efforts. I'll post results of the newest jars in another topic.
Bufale
Done
and done!