Messages

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

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.

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.

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?

Thanks!  I tried to be delicate when I picked them, but it appears that I don't have much of a gentle touch.

After 24 hours drying on a fan I moved them to a sealed box with some dessicant to further dry them out.  After another 12 hours in there I opened it up to check on them.  They were relatively odorless before, but now they smell like chocolate or cocoa.  What's up with that?

I moved them back to the fan...

Here's a picture of the yield from the first cake to be harvested.  They all looked good when they were picked, but now some of the ones that were running along the substrate have had the lower parts of the stalk turn blue-green.  They still smell like mushrooms should smell, not like they are rotten.  Is this just really bad bruising?

http://www.upload.mn/view/6kt3v0nv6qf8nbmxz96s.jpg

1)  When you have jars that don't fully colonize and stall out, is there anything that can be done to kick start them?  Can they be moved to a fruiting chamber at only 50% colonization and still result in a few mushrooms, or is that a waste of time?


2)  If the fruiting chamber was cleaned pretty well before being put into use, is there any risk in mushrooms that grow out and end up hitting the walls?  Is there a risk of contamination or drowning from the condensation on the wall?


3)  Do all of the mushrooms tend to mature at the exact same rate and open at the same time or are there usually a few "fast growers" that have their caps open earlier?  Do you harvest the early ones individually or just let them sit in the chamber until the other mushrooms are ready?


Thanks to anyone that can help!