First grow PF Tek Shotgun FC B+ (Update 7/14/08- on 4th flush and trip report) - Mushroom Cultivation

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Mad River
Reverend, Churchof Todd

Registered: 04/29/08
Posts: 1,114
Loc: The Great Lakes Region, U...
Last seen: 2 years, 8 months

First grow PF Tek Shotgun FC B+ (Update 7/14/08- on 4th flush and trip report)

#8533504 - 06/17/08 12:27 PM (15 years, 9 months ago)

THE LATEST NEWS 7/7/08 - 3rd FLUSH

A closer look:

What are those white things???

Also, I think this is my first run in with Trich:

17 HOURS LATER:

I pulled this one out to make a print. My biggest shroom yet! Pretty!

7/8/08: Another cake ready for harvest:

Happy Days. Your comments and questions appreciated.

THE SPORES

I ordered 2 syringes, B+ & KSSS, from a non-sponsor. This was an ex-sponsor I didn't realize was an ex until too late. The vendor mislabeled my package and it took nearly a month and some intervention by my local postmaster for me to receive it. The vendor was very unresponsive, though he is apparently now going out of business, so that's a bonus.

In the meantime, I made up 12 PF style jars using semi-coarsely ground (with coffee grinder) homemade brown rice flour, and what I think is course vermiculite. I steamed my jars 90 minutes in a large covered pot, and let cool overnight in the pot. The jars were probably two weeks old already when I received my spores, due to the shipping delays.

Upon receipt of my syringes, I inoculated 5 half pint jars with B+, and 7 with KSSS. The B+ jars were fully colonized in 10 days, which based on a lot of other posts, is phenomenal. Of the 7 KSSS jars, only 2 ever germinated at all, and those two are still only half and one third colonized. I'm guessing this is because they were old stock (they were free with my order). They are still growing at a very, very slow pace, but I doubt I will ever see 100% colonization.

Anyway, I let the 5 B+ jars sit for another week before birthing, then dunked for 24 hours and rolled in vermiculite.

THE FC

I used a small, clear Rubbermaid or Sterilite tote and drilled way too many holes in it. I was trying to do a RR shotgun style FC, but I hadn't watched the video in awhile, and I had read a lot of posts where people drilled too few holes in their FC, so I drilled way too many. I rinsed and drained 5 inches of perlite and added that to the FC. I am using a $5 clearance digital thermometer/hygrometer that I got at a local nursery.

I introduced the cakes to FC last Sunday, and over the past week fanned and misted (actually more like hosed it down-- I mist the hell out of it) 5 or 6 times a day, with 12/12 light from a small fluorescent light bar on a timer. This is actually a lot easier to keep up than I thought. I work full time and still have no problem fanning and misting 5 or 6 or 7 times a day.

I assumed my digital hygrometer was inaccurate, but the highest I could get it was low 90's for short periods. The humidity, according to the hygro, hovered in the 86% range, which drove me nuts. I taped over many if not most of the holes in my FC (don't worry, there're still a lot of holes-- my shotgun FC looks like it was shot with a shotgun)with clear, wide packaging tape. I took my cakes out, poured more water into my perlite until it ran from the bottom, then let it drain. I still only get low 90's, but after seeing my results I have to believe the hygro is just wrong. The best improvement was covering the holes.

Over that week, mostly I saw the growth of perlite-looking balls of mycelium around the verm, which actually looked like perlite. This bugged me because perlite was getting on my foil and it was hard to tell the perlite from the mycelium. I found some little enamel coated mesh bins for $3.00 at a local grocery store (Meijer) and sat my cakes on these to get them away from the perlite, and expose maximum perlite to air.

I fanned the FC by fanning with the lid for maybe 20-30 seconds. It's quite small, and I feel confident that this exchanged the full volume of air in the chamber.

Following that, I misted heavily. When misting, I would spray all the walls down, the lid, gently soak all the vermiculite on the top of the cakes, and spray the sides of the cakes as well. After I got the cakes off the perlite, I would spray the surface of the perlite, too. Before putting the lid on, I would permeate the air in the FC by misting the air above and letting it settle downb into the FC.

So, all week I had minimal results until eight days later. I woke up and found my cakes covered with pins!

I did not see the pins coming at all, and I was watching my cakes like a hawk! It has now been about 32 hours, since I discovered them, and they have grown considerably. I'll get some more pics up soon and keep you updated.

FIRST UPDATE!

A note, there are a number of pins also growing down through the wire mesh. I guess I will deal with this as it develops.

:sad:

?'76 VEILBREAK & ABORTS

Some troubling developments in my grow. I woke up this morning after about seven hours away from my FC. The shrooms had shown significant growth, though it doesn't appear that any of these shrooms are going to be crazy big in size at all. I decided to continue my same method of misting, by spraying the sides and top of the FC, easily sprayable perlite, and misting the hell out of the air above the FC. I went back to bed. Two hours later, I checked my FC again to find this:

Several shrooms have been completely unveiled, and I now have many aborts. :frown:

So, I think I reached the point of diminishing returns on the ubermisting. Do you think this is what happened? Should I harvest the broken veils ASAP or how long can I wait before I get spores everywhere? Any advice, questions, comments? Am I overreacting? Is this totally normal? Thanks.

FIRST FLUSH

So the veils broke on many of the shrooms and I decided to let them get bigger. At some point in the next 4-5 hours several of them dropped spores, so I harvested all those that had opened veils, were in a cluster that had open veils, or were growing from the bottom of the cake into the mesh. I didn't take any pre harvest pics unfortunately, but here's what I harvested:

There were still many, many shrooms on the cakes, and I went to work. Seven hours later, they've grown, opened their veils and dropped spores, so I am probably going to go ahead and harvest them all and then dunk the cakes.

The harvested shrooms have been under a fan for the last eight hours, and my harvest is really starting to look puny. It seems I've figured out how to grow a ton of little shrooms. Anyone got any tips on how to get fatboys out of my cakes?

Anyway, I'm sure I'll get a reasonable amount of shroomage, and I would definitely call this first flush a success, at least from a hobby and lack of failure standpoint. I'm definitely enjoying it.

First flush, remaining fruits harvested and dried.

First flush, second harvest.

First harvest left side 1/5 of tray, mostly dry-->

<--second harvest on right 4/5 of tray, fresh.
Drying method.

Final first flush harvest, .9 oz dry according to my crappy stamps.com scale. [After storing shrooms with homemade desiccant, this weight is revised to .8 oz] How is that for one flush from 5 cakes? I just ordered this scale. Great deal, no shipping! Spaghetti sauce jar.

Second flush, dunked 24 hours and rolled again.

There were a lot of tiny black aborts I couldn't get off the cake that swelled up during the soaking, so we shall see if they cakes contam or not. My cakes got extremely bruised during harvesting, and turned very blue. We'll see how it goes; they are back in the FC.

SECOND FLUSH BEGINS!

Less than 36 hours since putting the cakes back in the FC after dunking and rolling...

...pins are poking their way through the verm.
Most of the blue coloration that is visible through the verm is gone. There seems to be a small amount of mycellium poking through the verm and forming a couple of knots. I had expected to have to wait a week before seeing much activity, but that doesn't seem to be the case. My digital thermo/hygro seems to have died (maybe it just needs a new battery), so I am just relying on my setup and my past experience to feel confident that I am maintaining good conditions in my FC.

I am now realizing that I should have provided dates and maybe even times in my grow log, because if you read through it the timeframes aren't clear. I'll probably do that next time.

Here's how the rest of the second flush went:

6/28 - SECOND FLUSH DRY WEIGHT

I have pics but haven't posted yet. Final dry weight of second fush: .5 oz. Total yield so far is 1.3 oz. from the 5 cakes.

These shrooms were not quite as plentiful, but were beefier. Unfortunately upon drying they had pretty hollow stems. They were still bigger around, but the walls of the stem were very thin. I broke the stems open so the air could get into them and dry faster.

Cakes were dunked for 36-60 hours, and not rolled this time. Introduced to the FC early this morning.

Will update.

Thanks, Shroomery, this community rocks. I love this exciting new hobby!

--------------------
First Growlog First Bulk Grow

large_dose's Coir Pasteurization Tek

Check out the man.--Todd Snider

Edited by Mad River (07/14/08 01:25 PM)

Extras:

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