Well dear Nexians!

Actually I wanted to post this on a forum especially about mushrooms. But I couldn't do this anonymous. As you know what I mean. So I am going to post my growlog on Nexus. Hope this allright. There are probably a lot of you guys who are experienced in this field as well

I post this growlog with the hope people can give me valuable advice on my working method and setup. It is the first time I am growing mushrooms. And I put a lot of time in researching how to do it the right way. But some experience is lacking

I began the story with 6 x 500ml jars sterilized rye. Injected each of the jars with 1 ml of syringe of spores from the Golden Teacher (I bought this on the internet). I put the jars in a fridge on 83F/29C for 30 days. Then I cased them with perlite on the bottom and a mix of “vermiculite/peat moss/ CaCO3” on top. I put it back in the fridge for 10 days covered with aluminium foil. The first days I forgot to spray water on. And the last days I patched a couple of times. Then I introduced them to my growbox.

My Growbox has no holes. Got perlite on the bottom. A jar with an aquarium heater in it. An overall temperature of 70F/21C. In the morning and evening I opened the box changing the air and sprayed the cases with water. The light is coming from the window shining through the box lid 12 hours a day.

My first flush was not really great. In total around 160 gram. I took the fastest and biggest two mushrooms ( 15gram and 10cm each) and cloned them in a petridish.

Then I introduced an aquarium bubbler which is exchanging the air every 2 hours. I made one hole (1,5 cm) just above the perlite. So the CO2 is going out when the air is been pumped in (I hope).

I also noticed that the peat moss was dry. So I filled the case with water. Not on the top but at the sides almost reaching the top. Letting it soak for 4 hours. Then poured of the water. The result was that the mycelium at the base of the small mushrooms are soaked now for two days already.

My questions:
-Will the wet stems (of soaking) cause problems (see pictures under)?
-Are the pins looking healthy?
-On a couple of places the mushrooms weren't picked well (see pics). Should I take care of that?
-I don’t have much holes in the side of the box. Just an airbubbler and one hole in the side. Is this enough?
-Do you know any reasons why I couldn't get more mushrooms in my first flush?

Thanks!!

Those are some good looking cases and fruits, congratulations. I have been growing for a little over a year now, but I am by no means any expert. In my opinion, your technique sounds good to me.

As far as soaking, I soak all my tubs in between every flush, sometimes every other flush, and I have not seen any reason to believe it ever contributed to contamination or anything. After a flush, when I notice my sub getting pretty dry, I just fill the tub and tilt it so as to rinse water all over the substrate, dump out, and then fill again to soak for 18-24 hours. I generally get another flush started within 3 days to a week after rehydrating this way.

Also, I can generally pull out 4-5 flushes (with albeit declining total weights, potency seems pretty level, but I don't know, I eat on average only 5% of what I grow) using this method.

Your air pump and tank heater setup also look good to me. I don't use a heater, it stays pretty warm here, but I have been using a large airstone beneath my perlite with good success.

I have never used rye but I intend to give it a go soon. My usual sub is Pennington's WBS for spawn, which (depending on tub size) I either spawn to just straight verm (I know it's not "recommended" but I have gotten 5 flushes with 40g wet fruits off of just a pint of wbs and equal amounts of verm) or to a mix of coir, verm, and straw. I intend to try adding spent coffee grounds this next batch to increase yield and shield against contams.

Your setup looks pretty solid (a hell of a lot better than my first, that's for sure) and I wish you all the best of luck!

P.S. - For what it's worth, really the only thing I would change is the strain (blah blah blah strain means nothing, all cubes are identical blah blah blah take that to Shroomery, strain counts). In my experience (your experience may differ), I was not all that impressed with Golden Teacher. My favorites by far have been Malabar, Koh Samui, and Gulf Coast.

Oh, also, I meant to say that I often times have larger/prettier second flushes than first, so the peak may still be yet to come, so to speak. Happy growing!

MUSHU.S.

Hi Mushu,

Thanx a lot for responding. It is motivating to hear that I am on the right track.

When you were soaking your cases/cakes were the base of the stems also wet like my mushrooms?

Yeah, after every time I soak, the base of all the leftover aborts turns into a weird clearish almost gelatin-looking consistency. I can't tell you why, but it's never caused me any problems.

I also get good results by making "mini-monotubs" - basically each of your pans of substrate/spawn are instead "potted" in a 1 gallon tub (adjust ratios to your preference) with 1 pint of spawn and a roughly Damion5050-type ratio (see http://www.shroomery.org/10858/How-to-do-Coir), covered with a clear plastic lid. I get at least 1oz (dry) total per pint of spawn using this method.

pic #6 made me say "DAMN!" irl.

looks like a pretty nice yield.

If you learn some pure strain isolation on agar, you can take your kung fu to the next level. It also opens doors for you in terms of other species, which some folks prefer. I always liked Golden Teachers. Some folks say a cube is a cube but I don't agree. John Allens are my favorite. Try Pan cams next. You won't be disappointed. Great job though. Of course now you have to eat a few grams and then blast off from there. Happy travels, shouldn't be too hard with a Golden Teacher at your side.

Nice work!

It's fairly standard to get a better second flush than the first so don't fret you're obviously doing everything very well.

I'd look into agar too, I found a really good shortcut can be to select rhizomorphic mycelium growing on the top of the sub or up the sides of the tub and grow it out on agar to ensure it's clean and then use that culture for future projects. It can cut down on a lot of sectoring work that way.

The rhizomorphic growth that is selected for this this purpose must be observed to ensure the growth selected produces fruit from the vicinity of the area it's taken from. Rhizomorphic growth in no way ensures good fruitbody production it just guarantees aggressive growth.

I've wasted months sectoring mycelium for rhizomorphic growth only to find it didn't produce fruit when grown out on a sub, so selecting it from an actively growing and fruiting substrate can save many months of agar work.

I isolated some very aggressive kick arse strains that way.

After I cased the substrate I took samples from the first mycelium that broke through the toplayer and put it in a petri (with H2O2). But the petri got contaminated by the peat moss. So I had to threw away the petridishes. So I am curious how you took the samples. It also seems that in pic 7 there is growing some bad-ass rhizo on the toplayer.

Because the samples from the cases didn't work. I cloned the first 2 mushrooms that grew out of the cases and used petridishes for that. They also were the biggest till now on. I also combined 3 dishes with both of them. See what happens.

Yeah that section of rhizo in pic 7 was what jogged my memory about this.

I never had much problem with contamination on agar. It's very common but I just isolated clean sectors and grew those clean sectors on another plate. Keeping the agar below about 25 deg celcius helps the mycelium get the upper hand and grow faster than many contaminats though, so that could help.

There's a good thread on using salt in the agar to suppress contamination at Mycotopia, I think it was under the heading of microwave agar.

I haven't been there for a few years though, so I couldn't give you a link without a bit of digging.

I haven't been there since Hippies' mrs got on my case and started hassling me by PM all the time. After everything I did for her after Hippie died it was a bit too much to take.

Isolating strains in agar is something I have never tried. Not to hijack any threads or anything, but, briefly, is it worth it? Does it really speed things up significantly and yield a more desirable product? I am intrigued.

M.S.

If you are inoculating the substrate with multiple spores you will get all different mushrooms. Some are big, some small, some grow slow, some fast. If your mycelium consists out of one strain, the mushrooms got the same dna and the mushrooms will grow similarly. If you got good dna you will get big and fast growing mushrooms.

Now some new mushies are growing. But just like 4 per case. All the pins are staying small?! What is the reason??

I am afraid I have "Dry Bubble". There is a deformed mushroom in the corner. And the pins got a greyish color.
Anyone familiar and can recognise it?