Hello I just wanted to outline some tips that are effective at cutting occurrences of green mold and other infections down.
WBS tips.
1. Rinse 2 times before a soak and once after.
2. I use WBS and whats important here is a nice long proper soak, I do 24 hours, with at least an inch over the seed.
3. Proper drying is CRUCIAL I mean CRUCIAL to wbs colonization speed, allow seed to try in a colander or on a tray until you can pick up a handful and then turn your hand towards palm down dropping all the seed back into its container, nearly none should stick to your hand when its at perfect dryness.
4. Tyvek is CRUCIAL to jars of WBS, it keeps moisture from escaping the top lid so you don't have a dry uncolonized top.
5. Polyfill is highly reccomended in combination with tyvek, especially if you do not intend to use the spawn jars right away, polyfill keeps many many contams out that tyvek has in my experience let in through the innoc hole.
Spawning
I know coir and nothing else so my experiences with it are as follows.
1. Properly hydrate your coir, nothing sucks worse than overly wet coir, its better to be a bit dry than to wet. Use the squeeze test, and remember the bottom of a bucket left over night or for more than a few hours will be wetter on bottom, so MIX it up!
2. Pasteurize your coir properly, if you get it to hot you sterilze it killing off beneficial bacteria, allowing green mold to over run the substrate easier.
3. Bleach mist the whole work area, with 10:1, close windows and turn off fans for at least 10 minutes.
4. Clean your containers with a quick alcohol wipe, this is not essential but I say why risk jeopardizing your trays especially if you leave them for more then 3 flushes.
5. DO NOT peak into your trays! leave the lids on, I find clear tupperware containers ROCK for viewing the progress, allowing you to see uncolonized areas and no guessing, to keep side pinning down just after casing put the container into another one that has been painted black.
Casing
Casing seems to be one of the easier steps to me, heres some tips for mixing your own.
1. Pick out all sticks you can stand picking out of your peat moss, these can harbor mean things.
2. Add some sort of Ph buffer to the mix, hydrated lime, or gypsum but both would be best.
3. Pasteurize your casing mixture!! I have used two methods both involve the microwave results have been great! (thanks Agar!)
Method 1: Place prehydrated 50/50 casing into a large ziplock type bag, microwave 4-5 times for 4-5 minutes with 3-5 minute breaks in between. Cool over night don't open microwave then use next day!.
Method 2: Same as method 1 only use a sealable tupperware container, cracking one of the corners, this seems to be easiest!
Fruting
1. I have found in fruiting the best way to ward off contams is to buy a green house with a cool mist setup, this has cut my mold infestations wayyyyy down the fresh air exchange is great! I know green houses are larger but if you can make a smaller one, they are all advantage, not to mention a timer manages your fresh air and humidity!
2. If you have a bad outbreak of green mold on one tray get some 10:1 and mist the whole tray down to kill any green mold spores on the tray, then throw it out ASAP, it will ruin your party if you don't get it out, also don't forget to clean your whole greenhouse setup often especially after outbreaks of mold!
Thanks for reading some of my tips just thought I would share my limited knowledge of cultivation so far. Feel free to Pm if you need any further help!
-------------------- "Maybe a cow occasionally ate a shroom, but it certainly wouldn't be such a potent shroom that the cow would be trippin balls. " LOL
Edited by Grogan (10/18/07 10:57 PM)
|
Nice write up but I need to correct you on something that I'm experiencing as we speak, I thought it wise to do a dual filter lid tyvek/polyfill, this is causing me major issues with FAE and is infarct hindering the mycelium growth, the jars moisture content got abit botched but its mainly the restricted gas exchange, I recommend only using one or the other.
Also, from experimentation, if your experiencing bacillus outbreaks in your grain jar its often a result of the incubator being over 86f which is more favorable to support competitor organisms then it is mycelium, I highly recommend leaving it at the 72f range...
Edited by Pr0_X (10/19/07 08:40 AM)
|