Hours of research on dmt-nexus, youtube, shoormery, and google have not produced any satisfying answer to swim's questions so I thought of asking for help.

Swim has got this golden teacher grow kit that just needed soaking and then was ready to go for fruiting. The vendor provided a plastic bag to put the box inside and advises to mist every day spraying against the walls of the bag and not on the cake. Swim did this for two weeks and only yesterday he sprayed accidentally on the cake. By coincidence today the first pins are popping out.... so question 1:
- Was that a coincidence? Is it ok to spray a bit on the cake sometimes?

question 2:
- When the mushrooms are going to be fully grown they are definitely going to touch the wet walls of the plastic bag which seems a bit small and swim remembers that in previous grow kits the parts of the mushrooms in contact with the moist bag were turning black and unfriendly looking, so would it be a good idea to transfer the bulk into a plastic box that is big enough to avoid contact?

question 3:
- from previous grow kits swim also remembers that a few shrooms where growing much faster than others and by the time those big boys were already dropping the spores all the other were just tiny pins. What to do in that situation?

question 4:
- harvesting seems easy from this video but swim's first hand experience has proved the opposite. He has read twist and pull is the best method but it works well only for single mushrooms and unfortunately the majority grows in clusters so that the twist and pull method becomes a bit destructive. swim has read that some people use scissors but he can't get the whole roots out like this. So what happened was that he left bits of mushroom roots in the cake that rottened and compromised following flushes or when twisting and pulling he pulled out a lot of cake and mycelium together with the shrooms that also compromised following flushes. Any advice for harvesting better?

I've been watching videos on this website and it gives a lot of info and swim wants to go more DIY in the future but for now he just wants to take care of the grow kit he has on the go.

thanks!

much love

A1: first of all bags don't grow so why spraying them? you should only mist the cake creating a fine layer of small water beads like dew on the surface, the evaporation of this layer is a major factor to induce pinning.. so it is not a coincidence it's what you should do

A2: if you decide to keep the bag or switch to a plastic box make sure to make holes in it to provide fresh air exchange which is essential for healthy shrooms, my advice is to make a SGFC and place your cake in it

A3: you can't do anything about it, this happens because the cake was prepared with a spore syringe(MultySpore) if it came from a clone then the shrooms(same genetics) will grow and mature at the same time.. so for you just, harvest the ones with open veils and leave the others to mature

A4: use a sharp sterile scalpel/blade to cut them right at the cake surface and if there any remains of the stem remove them...

good luck <3

nice one, thank you so much!

found this guide to the proper shotgun fruiting chamber so I'll post it for others to come:
https://www.shroomery.or.../20195542/fpart/all/vc/1

Couple notes:

The precaution against spraying directly on the cake really just means to avoid letting standing water sit on the cake, this can harbor bacteria that could ruin your grow or make you sick, be sure any standing water evaps off or is physically removed within a day or so.

Note your ambient climate conditions for the shotgun chamber. These chambers are excellent for climates with high relative humidity levels, in such a climate you want to focus more on air exchange than on maintaining extremely high humidity levels so use lots of holes and fan often with the occasional light misting. In very dry/desert climates however, a chamber full of holes will not maintain the necessary level of humidity for fruiting, so in such cases it's better to have fewer air exchange holes and to be sure to mist moar heavily, really saturating the chamber after fanning.

Be sure and rehydrate the cake by dunking or bottom watering between flushes for best results.

Hope that helps

What would be the easiest way to distinguish between cobweb mold and mycelium that is just having a delayed growth from too much moisture/not enough air exchange?

Pull it out of the humidity container and let it dry out?

Edit: my yaksha friend is pretty sure it's the second option as mold is supposed to have an outrageous growth rate and this has been slow and steady and perked up as soon as the air exchange was upped dramatically. Just asking to cover as many bases as possible.

Cobweb mold is greyish, whereas mycelium is very white. Trich mold is very very white, bit will look like it has bubbles inside rather than tendrils reaching across the substrate.

Mushies! Now we're into my realm of life! Gotta chime in on this one.

A1: Spraying your cake is almost a must, on shroomery it is mainly not recommended because new comers have a tendency to want to babysit their grows and over mist. That or you're reading mixed tek's, in my monotubs I never mist I set and forget. What you don't want is any pooling water anywhere, so use an extremely fine mister (invest in a more expensive spray bottle than a dollar store one, mine are intended for garden use and have a much nicer spray). Big droplets, or anywhere that it pools is no good.

A2: If your mushies get soaked they can produce molds, especially if they're wet and held against a wall where the air exchange can't get to them. You can switch to a box, but since I don't know what your grow kit is it's difficult to say how that's going to work at this point especially if you're pinning. You're better off just harvesting the shrooms that are getting over grown in my opinion. Good thing to note about shrooms is the smaller they are the more potent they are, so don't be afraid to harvest them young. Huge mushies tend to be a disappointment when it comes to potency, and once the veil breaks active chemicals tend to drop off in production. I also tend to harvest in waves, if you're place is pretty clean you're already past the point of real contamination worry.

A3: I answered this in A2, but to clarify it sounds like you're harvesting late. Once the veil tears you're good to go. Personally I like to harvest as soon as I see the veil is stretching thin, there's no real reason to let the caps expand into the traditional mushroom shape and most commercial mushrooms are done this way just to maximize the weight. So harvest whatever is ready when it's ready. That being said if you only have one big mushie dropping spores it's gonna make a mess but isn't going to really do anything bad.

A4: I have two items I use for this, the first is an exacto blade from an art store. It has a stainless steal handle, and can be flamed if you're worried about contamns. The second is a custom made blade that is actually bent at around 45 degrees from start to 75 degrees at tip for the last 2.5" of metal. I bought a long steak knife from the second hand store (value village/ salvation army etc) for this purpose. The curvature of the blade allows you to scope in and under the mushroom/cluster without going too deep into your substrate. Twisting is only really good if you're harvesting a ton and lazy, or on your last flush.

Lastly you do not have cobweb mold, you should never worry about cobweb mold. I believe there is even a thread on shroomery called "think you have cobweb mold? think again!". Cobweb mold grows explosively and will cover your entire substrate in 48 hours tops so if you have it, you'll really know it quick. That being said you can kill it off really easily with Hydrogen Peroxide and it rarely will affect your grow so it's not really worth worrying about!

Happy Shrooming !
Nobody

Thanks for the thorough advice!

Someone who isn't me has just made the mistake of letting some big droplets of water falling on the cake while misting a second ago, so to remedy he'll open the bag frequently until tonight to give more fresh air exchange yeah?

here they are:

OOOOOOOoooo so cute! Those little guys are getting ready to grow explosively, be ready she's gonna happen quick.

I mean I don't see any huge problematic amounts of water going on, so I wouldn't open it too much. Remember each time you open it you essentially turn the relative humidity (RH) to that of your home, and then water droplets have to evap in order to return the humidity to proper conditions, so opening it too much will dry it out but it will also reduce your RH for significant amounts of time which can mess with your grow (not super adversely, just not optimal potency etc which given you're using a kit is already a given). I would be a lot more worried about pooled water than some droplets, at most those might cause some aborts.

Either way she looks beautiful! And I bet you'll be harvesting some nice ones by the end of the week! Happy tripping!

Much Love,
Nobody

Nice one NoMeNoYou! swim moved them to a box today since the bag was too small and he wanna avoid all moulds and aborts. He hasn't made holes in it but he keeps the lid slightly off so there is some air exchange.

Very nice indeed! Keep those pics flowing, they're so beautiful.

nMnY.

They seem to be doing alright!

Was wondering what that whiter cap is

beautiful mushrooms you got there
the white one could be a leucistic mushroom due to genetic mutation or it could be due to bacterial infection but that's not a serious problem and there's no signs on other mushrooms..

Nice on Sakk, cheers! It'll be kept under control anyway

Friend of a friend in another dimension happened to purchase a similar grow kit (actually identical down to the paper clips) and ran into similar issues as the grow instructions seem to be incomplete, he found this thread very helpful and inspirational.

haha nice one Nope. Send us some news and pics from this other dimension. I think this topic will be good for the next noobies that want to see all the stages of the process.

Here are swim's babies right now. Veils still intact... but should swim start picking a couple of the big ones?

are you sure the veils didn't break yet? you see that big mushroom on the right(and the others too), the veil should be spread from the line on the stem below the cap to the edges of the cap and it doesn't appear to be like this here..
i'm sure i can see the gills

you're right, and on the back there are other 3 that definitely have the veil broken... so it's picking time!

If you want to make great spore prints, I find that just after the veil breaks when the caps start to flatten out is when they drop the most spores. There wouldn't hardly any loss of potency in waiting 10 hours extra for that.

I dont actually know what spore prints are and how to make them. does it mean collecting the spores to make your next mushrooms? i'd actually like to do that if it's possible!