Everything you need to know about growing monotub mushrooms with excellent quality, innovation happens after mastery of these :] With Grace to Shroomery Terms Here is a small tek for beginners by me.1. Gather your items.
- Wild bird seed (No cracked corn, go to Walmart, buy economy mix or Pennington Classic, or bird seed without cracked corn.
- Isopropyl Alcohol 70% (For cleaning your area, like your about to perform SURGERY)
- Disinfectent Spray Kills 99% of germs.
- Paper Towels
- Butane Torch, Lighter, or Alcohol Lamp for Sterilization of Needle
- Bricks of Coco Coir, One brick for each tub (650 Grams)
- Organic Vermiculite, 2 Quarts for Each Tub
- Strainer
- Pressure Cooker
- Wide Mouth Quart Jars
- Syringes for Inoculation
- Stock Pot
-
Tyvek Coveralls (Suits you buy from Home Depot, they are 12 Bucks yes SUITS.) for covering jars as a filter.
- Tin Foil (for covering to put onto jars for the pressure cooker.
- Dehydrator (for drying mushrooms)
- Hand Sanitizer
- Clear Large Tote (to make into still air box for inoculation.)
- Disposable Latex Gloves or Nitrile Gloves
- Clean Blow Dryer (if needed, if WBS takes too long to dry)
- 66 Gallon Totes (650 Gram Brick of Coco Coir Per Tote)
- Dust Mask
- 5 Gallon Buckets (with lid) for Substrate Preparation. I suggest 1 bucket per Tote.
(Use 66 Gallon Totes, your yield will be exponentially higher and worth your effort)
Step 2.
Prepare WBS.
-Get your WBS and put it into stock pot. Dunk using Quart jar to make sure you have enough for the amount of jars you are filling, plus a few more due to lost floaters you will lose.
-Fill with water, and keep dunking water and floaters out until water is CLEAR. Make sure the water is clear by the last pour, so you can get rid of gunk and dirt that may contaminate or clunk your WBS.
-Let is soak for 12-24 hours.
- Heat the WBS on medium-high heat until it barely simmers, then DUNK the water out.
- Put HOT WBS into strainer, and then rinse with hot water, but not too hot at this point to clean out the rest.
- Allow to dry until it is dry enough on the OUTSIDE to put on a piece of Toilet Paper for 15 seconds with NO water marks on the Toilet Paper.
- Prepare Jars by cutting Tyvek Coveralls, put the main lid UNDER the Tyvek. and punching holes for gas exchange (very important, because it allows certain gases to filter through to increase colonization.
- You can easily make 1/4" holes in your jars using a HOLE PUNCHER. 2 or 3 holes is fine.
- Use Polyfill or red silicone on one of the holes
- Fill Jars with bird seed and put tin foil on top of jar for Pressure Cooker.
- Fill Pressure Cooker and cook for 90 minutes, then turn off oven until cooled down COMPLETELY.
- Move into Still Air Box, be CLEAN in CLEAN clothes, Take shower, Sterilize everything and absolutely everything until very clean.
- Inoculate Jars while putting needle to side of the jar.
- Prepare Substrate.
- When Jars are fully colonized, pour substrate of coco coir and vermiculate into Monotub, 3/4 of it then pour Jars in, and then add a casing layer of pasteurized substrate you prepared on the top.
- Keep in clean environment, have patience, and yield results.
(This is a basic tek that will highly improve with pictures very soon, in the mean time, check out the rest of my Post for high amounts of information.
Here is the TEK's you should follow.1.How Frank Get's Shit Done - Great quality Monotub Tek. Look below for
Ohmatic Monotub, great as well. From user
FrankHorrigan1A.BOD's Unmodified Monotub TEK - AMAZING use this with How Frank Get's Shit Done.
2.Damion5050's Elementary Coir Tek - This is a great tek for simple monotub, not much knowledge to learn from this tek though, but great for experience.
3.Eatyualive's Monotub tek - Great Monotub Tek
4.Fahster's Monotub Tek - Great Monotub Tek
5.Ohms's Monotub Tek - Great Monotub Tek
6.Azurensces Monotub Tek - Great Monotub Tek
7.Ohmatic Monotub Great Great Monotub, Possibly better than Frank Horrigan. This was where Monster Mitch got his monotub from.
Check out all of the above tek's and see which you like. I suggest the How Frank Get's Shit Done from reviews of other growers currently. Information and Learning Curve is greatest here.
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And then here for Monotub design.
7.TL's Monotub Design From TranscendingLife
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Here is a Wild Bird Seed SPAWN Tek. (For Making Spawn for Inoculation)
8.Doc34's Wild Bird Seed (SPAWN) Tek This is great for making your Wild Bird Seed SPAWN. Follow this to make your spawn for Monotub.
2.Foo Man's WBS Method - Good! Use with Doc's WBS Method
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Watch this DVD
9.Roger Rabbit's Let's Grow Mushrooms (Otherwise known as RR, he is a boss)
(Great to imitate their process of doing things, and to get an idea of what it looks like, and learn A LOT and almost everything you need to understand about growing mushrooms in the education stage.)
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Follow These GENERAL Steps
1. Gather Items.
2. Sterilize absolutely everything so you can perform surgery on a human.
3. Prepare Wild Bird Seed for Inoculation
4. Prepare Monotub
5. Prepare Substrate
6. FOLLOW Frank Getting Shit Done
Here is a list of needed items: (This list came from tbagtag)
Pressure cooker with gauge
Wild Bird Seed [Pennington Recommended]
Gypsum
Fine or Medium Grade Vermiculite
Eco Earth Coir Bricks
Stock pot
Wide Mouth Quart Jars (3 Dozen to be Safe)
Red Devil Silicone
Eco Earth Coir
Poly fill
5 Gal Plastic Bucket with Lid [For Mixing]
Tote (Storage Tubs) 18 gallon, 30 gallon, etc. (of choice)
Thick black 30 gallon trash bags
Scotch Tape
Flame Source for Needle Sterilization (also known as Alcohol Lamp)
Spore Syringes with chosen strains
Large Filter Patch Bags (For Substrate PREP)
Clean Water
Hand Sanitizer
ISO 70% Rubbing alcohol for Sterilization (91% is okay as well).
Lysol
Still Air Box
Shop towels (no lint)
Meat thermometer
Rubber Gloves (Powder Free)
Optional Items:
Dehydrator
Coated paper plates
Tin foil (for prints and cloning)
Here are some definitions: (Also Shroomery Glossary)
Spawn Ratio = 'Spawn ratio' is another way of saying 'spawn to substrate ratio'.
So 'high spawn ratio' is a 'high spawn to substrate ratio' which to me is anywhere from 1:1 to 1:4 (spawn to substrate).
1:10 would be a low spawn to sub ratio, where 1:1 would be a high spawn to sub ratio.
FAE = Fresh Air Exchange.
Aborts = A mushroom that for some reason ceases to grow and never reaches maturity.
G2G = Grain to Grain Transfer. The inoculation of grain with already-colonized grain. This procedure involves exposing uncolonized, sterilized grain, and so is prone to contamination. As such it should only be performed with a glove box, laminar flow hood, or similar device.
SAB = Still Air Box
WBS = Wild Bird Seed
Sub = Substrate
BRF = Brown Rice Flour
PC = Pressure Cooker.
Verm = Vermiculite
LC = Liquid Culture
GLC = Grain Liquid Culture
FC = Fruiting Chamber
GE = Gas Exchange
OP = Original Poster
Agar = Agar is a gelling substance that when mixed with a nutrient creates what is called a medium. A medium is used to grow cultures of mycelium, typically in a Petri dish. Agar is a cultivator's most powerful tool. Agar allows us to guarantee clean inoculant that decreases colonization times vs starting from spores. Agar also allows us to isolate and preserve substrains of our favorite species that exhibit qualities that we like. The use of master slants even allows us to preserve our best substrains for years at a time. For the master mycologist, agar can even be used to cross similar varieties (substrains within the same species) of mushrooms to create new mutations. Agar Culturing: A cultivator starts an agar culture by placing spores or a tissue sample from the interior of a mushroom's stipe (cloning) onto the surface of agar. The spores will germinate and colonize the surface of the agar. A tissue sample (clone) will begin colonization of the agar surface within 48 hours. Once the agar surface has been colonized, a wedge of it can be cut away with a sterile blade for use as inoculant. A cultivator can use an agar wedge to inoculate grain jars, liquid culture jars, and start fresh agar cultures.
How many quart jars can a syringe inoculate? A typical 10cc syringe can inoculate up to 10 jars. But you want to use a little over 1cc for each quart jar.
Great websites for spores and syringes:
Sporeworks
The Hawks Eye (Highly Suggested)
The Spore Depot
Check out the Sponsor Websites of Shroomery.
I will keep editing this as I find more information and make it better with the more discoveries to better prepare beginners and give them less work to find what they need to know.