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 flyontoast
Farming food; farming time
Registered: 08/20/16
Posts: 258
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 Hulls vs Straw Trial (pics) 
#24511549 - 07/27/17 11:21 AM (6 years, 8 months ago) |
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I am currently in possession of both spelt hulls and barely straw. I have been warned(pages 2-3) that hulls do not hold moisture as well as straw, that they yield less, don't compress as well, and, particularly in the case of rice hulls, don't colonize as fast due to the high silica content. I don't disagree with this, but there are dissenters that have had great success with hulls, plus I am using SPELT hulls, not rice. So I am putting it to the test myself.
Both my hulls and straw are from last year and I have been having major mold issues because of it, which is apparently a common issue.
First round is with Elm oyster labelled EW (pleurotus, not HU), second round is with Pink (djamor) labelled PD.
I hot water pasteurized AND added 4 cups of lime to raise the pH to give the myc just a few days/hours more to beat out the mold (seemed to work on my last batch, much less contam after 10 days). I get about 60lbs of wet hulls and 60lbs of wet straw from a 55 gallon barrel.
I am also inoculating close to 10%, spawn is mix of 70% rye and 30% HWFP hydrated with grain water and gypsum, made with a HEPA. I sprinkled the spawn over the substrate and also did about 4-5 layers of spawn while packing.
I am using 12inch lay flat and aim to get about 8.5lbs of sub in each bag since that size fits on my shelves nicely and I lose less sub when I get contam vs a large log.
Hulls do shed quiet a bit of water, as does straw, so I experimenting with putting dry HWFP at the bottom of each bag with a layer of spawn to absorb the water that pools as it colonizes.
I compressed the sub quiet hard since they are both airy. I found the hulls much easier to compress, as you can see in this pic of roughly the same weight of sub. I suspect this is because the hulls are over-saturated (i.e., they shed less water while cooling) so they appear more dense and their BE% will ultimately be less since there's actually less sub/nutrients to digest.
 
All the straw bags which we roughly 9lbs each were too tall to fit on the shelves and had to go on the top row. That means in the future I might have to reduce them to 8lbs to fit into my current incubation setup.
EW 4 days after inoculation, this is the fastest hull bag vs best straw bag (I marked some straw bags as 07/26 cause I was tired, but they are all done the same day):
These are a few of the other bags of hulls (left) and straw (right)
 
The HWFP at the bottom seems to be working. On the left is from this batch, I actually had a lot less runoff than in previous batches, perhaps because I increased the pasteurization time to about 1:45 and also compressed much harder. On the right is last weeks batch, you can see there is bacteria on the spots that didn't have HWFP and that when the HWFP expanded they split one of the bags (probably because I made a hole/tear already from shaking+pressing the bags)
 
EW 7 days after noc, the difference between the two subs is barely visible. No trich or bac visible yet in any of the other bags either:
This is PD (pink) 3 days after noc. It's my first time growing pink and I over-incubated the spawn by about 48 hours. The myc is a lot less dense than other Pleurotus and colonized the entire jar in like 7 days, but I left it until 9 days just to be sure. Overnight there was a lot of metabolites and it didn't look super healthy after I shook it. A few of the jars were obviously bacterial and I did not include them in this trial (still used them though since I had plenty of sub ready). A few jars that were included in the trial may have also been very slightly bacterial. But the myc has recovered and there is visible colonization:
Also, these bags are both 9lbs, but size:weight ratio the opposite as above: the hulls are a lot less compacted than the straw. Again, this could be that the straw is more water-logged this time around or simply that my arms were getting tired and I was doing poorer job compressing :P There is also a lot more condensation inside the hulls bags this time around.
PD 8 days after noc. The straw seems to be doing slightly better, but this strain had super thin myc on grain, so it might mostly look denser because of the structure of straw.
I moved Elm to fruiting after 12 days. Pics, left to right straw, side-by-side, hulls.
  
The HW Pellets at the bottom seemed to have worked quite well (plus compressing the bags much harder). The myc colonized most of the hydrated sawdust and only this bag had a tiny batch of bacteria (top right of the pic) where there wasn't HWP. Much better than the bags with lots of bacteria that you can see on the bottom shelves that didn't even colonize.
 
Pinks 9 days after inoculation, a few of the bags started to pin around the air holes, for both straw and hulls. P. Djamor pinned simultaneously on spelt hulls and barley straw.
Moved them to fruiting and put them on the now finished top shelf
Did a mix batch of hulls+straw. Did 8 bags of pink and 7 bags of phoenix. It's actually a pretty nice consistency, the hulls fill the air gaps in the straw and the straw provides 'structural' support to the whole, kind of like COB.
 
Results of pinks fruiting, left to right: straw, hulls, sexy-hulls-bag pinning everywhere that I didn't prune, "large" cluster (yes, damn small)
   
I wrote the harvest results from the past 2 days for the pink. First column is wet weight of bag (lbs), second column is wet weight of harvest which has 2 numbers (lbs), and last column is what I'm calling WET biological efficiency (harvest/weight of bag). This not a real biological efficiency calculation, just something to have internal comparisons since each bag varies in weight. Both straw and hulls harvest varied widely, but are all within 2-5% WBE. This P. Djamor was not a good test candidate.
Updates to come every few days.
Edited by flyontoast (08/10/17 12:48 PM)
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 Forrester
aspiring sociopath
Registered: 02/05/13
Posts: 9,352
Loc: Northeast USA 
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 Re: Hulls vs Straw Trial (pics) [Re: flyontoast]
#24512983 - 07/27/17 10:33 PM (6 years, 8 months ago) |
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Nice idea! Looking forward to see what happens 
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Repugnant is a creature who would squander the ability to lift an eye to heaven, conscious of his fleeting time here.
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Have some medicinal mushrooms and want to get the most out of them? Try this double extraction method.
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DailyShroomer
Stranger
Registered: 05/22/17
Posts: 106
Last seen: 10 months, 17 days
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Re: Hulls vs Straw Trial (pics) [Re: flyontoast]
#24515800 - 07/29/17 09:51 AM (6 years, 8 months ago) |
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TravelAgency
The ongoing "wow"
Registered: 12/25/10
Posts: 4,431
Last seen: 1 year, 2 months
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Side by sides!!!! Nom nom nom nom
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flyontoast
Farming food; farming time
Registered: 08/20/16
Posts: 258
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Updated the OP. The Elm is doing killer, 10% spawn rate was certainly too much because the bags look nearly fully colonized with some dense spots after 7 days. This coming week is suppose to be killer hot so I'm going to move them to fruiting sooner rather than later.
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 My trade list
Looking for strong terrestrial fruiters for an outdoor beds experiment:
Agaricus Bitorquis, Agaricus Augustus, Agaricus blazei/subrufescens, Stropharia Rugoso-annulata, Clitocybe Nuda (blewits), and any species or other genus that you think work outdoors.
Also, any commercially viable Pleurotus, cold or hot strains.
Thanks for the Q&A, trades, and all the posters & teachers that have come before us 
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thunderfarm
Registered: 02/19/17
Posts: 397
Loc: Oklahoma, USA
Last seen: 10 months, 26 days
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Re: Hulls vs Straw Trial (pics) [Re: flyontoast]
#24519674 - 07/31/17 04:51 AM (6 years, 8 months ago) |
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FungalDane
Stranger
Registered: 07/16/17
Posts: 149
Last seen: 2 years, 2 months
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Re: Hulls vs Straw Trial (pics) [Re: thunderfarm]
#24520607 - 07/31/17 02:34 PM (6 years, 8 months ago) |
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looking forward to see the fruiting..
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flyontoast
Farming food; farming time
Registered: 08/20/16
Posts: 258
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Re: Hulls vs Straw Trial (pics) [Re: FungalDane]
#24529466 - 08/04/17 09:32 AM (6 years, 8 months ago) |
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Uploaded more pics. Pink is a few days from being moved to fruiting, but moved Elm into FC last night, with my new shelves and LED lighting, YAY!
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My trade list
Looking for strong terrestrial fruiters for an outdoor beds experiment:
Agaricus Bitorquis, Agaricus Augustus, Agaricus blazei/subrufescens, Stropharia Rugoso-annulata, Clitocybe Nuda (blewits), and any species or other genus that you think work outdoors.
Also, any commercially viable Pleurotus, cold or hot strains.
Thanks for the Q&A, trades, and all the posters & teachers that have come before us
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flyontoast
Farming food; farming time
Registered: 08/20/16
Posts: 258
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Re: Hulls vs Straw Trial (pics) [Re: FungalDane]
#24533107 - 08/05/17 05:26 PM (6 years, 8 months ago) |
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Pinks started to pin during incubation both the straw and hulls! Uploaded the last inc pic and now everything is in fruiting conditions.
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My trade list
Looking for strong terrestrial fruiters for an outdoor beds experiment:
Agaricus Bitorquis, Agaricus Augustus, Agaricus blazei/subrufescens, Stropharia Rugoso-annulata, Clitocybe Nuda (blewits), and any species or other genus that you think work outdoors.
Also, any commercially viable Pleurotus, cold or hot strains.
Thanks for the Q&A, trades, and all the posters & teachers that have come before us
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Crispykoot
Jello Wrangler
Registered: 10/16/16
Posts: 5,937
Loc: 
Last seen: 21 hours, 58 minutes
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Re: Hulls vs Straw Trial (pics) [Re: flyontoast]
#24534172 - 08/06/17 06:56 AM (6 years, 8 months ago) |
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Nice fly!
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 Shadowboxing the apocalypse and wandering the land
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flyontoast
Farming food; farming time
Registered: 08/20/16
Posts: 258
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Re: Hulls vs Straw Trial (pics) [Re: Crispykoot]
#24534677 - 08/06/17 12:11 PM (6 years, 8 months ago) |
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Thanks buddy. I uploaded a couple of pics of a mixed batch I did last night. I much prefer the consistency of it compared to straw or hulls alone, plus it means I only have to shred half as much straw per batch 
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My trade list
Looking for strong terrestrial fruiters for an outdoor beds experiment:
Agaricus Bitorquis, Agaricus Augustus, Agaricus blazei/subrufescens, Stropharia Rugoso-annulata, Clitocybe Nuda (blewits), and any species or other genus that you think work outdoors.
Also, any commercially viable Pleurotus, cold or hot strains.
Thanks for the Q&A, trades, and all the posters & teachers that have come before us
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TravelAgency
The ongoing "wow"
Registered: 12/25/10
Posts: 4,431
Last seen: 1 year, 2 months
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Re: Hulls vs Straw Trial (pics) [Re: flyontoast]
#24535493 - 08/06/17 07:44 PM (6 years, 8 months ago) |
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Lookin fly!
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flyontoast
Farming food; farming time
Registered: 08/20/16
Posts: 258
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So already tons of pins on the pink block. The shame is they are popping out of the tiny air holes rather than the nice big slits I made at the front of the bags! Seeing as I don't have the time to be weighing and tracking every single pinset that I harvest at different times of day, we might have to evaluate the pink visually and then I'll get BE% from the Elm bags, assuming they form 1-2 clusters each as intended. But as of now, it looks like the straw and hulls colonize at the same rates and pin at the same time.
Left to right: straw, glamour shot, hulls
  
--------------------
My trade list
Looking for strong terrestrial fruiters for an outdoor beds experiment:
Agaricus Bitorquis, Agaricus Augustus, Agaricus blazei/subrufescens, Stropharia Rugoso-annulata, Clitocybe Nuda (blewits), and any species or other genus that you think work outdoors.
Also, any commercially viable Pleurotus, cold or hot strains.
Thanks for the Q&A, trades, and all the posters & teachers that have come before us
|
Crispykoot
Jello Wrangler
Registered: 10/16/16
Posts: 5,937
Loc:
Last seen: 21 hours, 58 minutes
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Re: Hulls vs Straw Trial (pics) [Re: flyontoast]
#24538518 - 08/08/17 05:56 AM (6 years, 8 months ago) |
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The pinks are crazy... Mist at the points where you want them to grow from...It helps to signal them to pin there...You have to train the wiley ones!
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Shadowboxing the apocalypse and wandering the land
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flyontoast
Farming food; farming time
Registered: 08/20/16
Posts: 258
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Re: Hulls vs Straw Trial (pics) [Re: Crispykoot]
#24543713 - 08/10/17 12:51 PM (6 years, 8 months ago) |
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Thanks Crispy. I've started pruning the little pins and cuts the holes even bigger on the front of the and am now also hard misting.
I updated some pink pics and did a rough harvest log and wet BE%. The Elm look like they are going to start to pin soon out the slits I made, so I expect 1-2 clusters per bag and will make it much easier to log.
--------------------
My trade list
Looking for strong terrestrial fruiters for an outdoor beds experiment:
Agaricus Bitorquis, Agaricus Augustus, Agaricus blazei/subrufescens, Stropharia Rugoso-annulata, Clitocybe Nuda (blewits), and any species or other genus that you think work outdoors.
Also, any commercially viable Pleurotus, cold or hot strains.
Thanks for the Q&A, trades, and all the posters & teachers that have come before us
|
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