My first grow log, and it's really sloppy and neglect style. Why? Because I haven't gotten all of my supplies yet, but I wanted to try some things out first. I plan on using one single half pint cake, and spawning it in half a gallon of pasteurised horse poo. I have no real hopes, and would be surprised if it wasn't contaminated. 
Oh, and by the way: Yeah, I hate grow logs without pictures, too. I'm really sorry, but there won't be any pictures until I reach spawning stage (if I ever do, which I sort of doubt).
Tuesday 29. October:
I made a really, really dark Equador syringe today, with an excellent print from FungiShop (about 1/6 of it). I only had a 5ml syringe with a 0.5x16mm needle, so that's what I used. I wasn't very sterile at all, I just washed my hands thoroughly with antibacterial soap, used the oven tek, and sterilised the shot glass with some 40% gin. I used an ordinary gin-sterilised kitchen knife to scrape off the spores.
The syringe is now placed in one of my refridgerators to cool off (no, it's not hot, it's just a tad warm) and rehydrate.
Later this evening, I made one BRF cake in an ordinary drinking glass, with plain aluminum foil as a substitute for a real lid. The capacity of the glass is approximately 250ml, I would think (half pint), and I used ca. two parts vermiculite, one part water and one part BRF. Note that I did not use a dry vermiculite barrier, as my syringe needle isn't long enough to penetrate it. I sterilised in a cooking pot, using a vegetable steamer. The whole process was rather sloppy and dirty.
Wednesday 30. October:
I inoculated the drinking glass today, with approximately 1ml of spore solution spread over four inoculation points. I wrapped the glass in aluminum foil, and placed it on top of a lamp in my bathroom, where the temperature is rather fluctuating between 78? and 90? fahrenheit (depending on if I've just had a shower, if the washing machine or dryer is running, if the door is open etc.). The rest of my house is quite stable at 68? to 70? fahrenheit, which I reckon is too cold for proper, fast colonisation.
Saturday 2. November:
Ladies and gentlemen, we have germination! There are signs of weak mycelial growth at all four inoculation points. In fact, the growth could easily be mistaken for cobweb mold, but I somewhat doubt it. It's just too strategically placed at the inoculation points, and looks... like mycelium. It was faster than I thought, too. Perhaps we have some champion mycelium here? I'll keep you updated.
Monday 4. November:
I checked on the jar again today, and it looks healthy. It's about 30% colonised, I guess, and I don't think that's bad at all, considering it's been just five days after inoculation. I'm really impressed! It's definately not cobweb mold, but it's not very rhizomorphic either.
Tuesday 5. November:
I have some spare time today, so I've started to pasteurise some horse poo. I put approximately a gallon of frozen horse poo in a cake container (a red christmas styled one), had some water in it, and put it int the oven at ~70?C for one and a half hour. I realize this might be a bit prematurely, but I doubt it will cause any serious harm. What I'm a bit worried about, is the poo:substrate ratio. One BRF cake might not be enough to spawn a gallon of poo. Oh well, we'll see.
The cake is already at 40% colonisation, and the inoculation points have paired up and formed some nice rhizomorphs. I don't know how well the inside of the cake is colonised, though... The moisture content looks just right, there are no signs of contaminants, and I have no reason to believe this won't reach 100% colonisation. Looking good!
Update a couple of hours later:
How I pasteurised the poo: I put the amount of frozen poo I was going to use in the cake container, poured some hot water over it, put it in the oven at ~70?C (~160?F), and let it thaw for about an hour. I took it out of the oven, and put the poo in another container. Then, I took handfulls of poo, squeezed it to get the moisture just right, and broke it up into the original container. When I was done doing this, I had some excess poo which I threw out with the poo water (muhahaha, I know I'm evil!  ). I put the container back in the oven for another 45 minutes, after which I covered the container with plastic cling wrap and put the lid back on so it could cool down without losing any moisture.
Thanks to Roadkill, Pavlov's Dog and the other poo pioneers for this tek! 
Update a few hours more later:
I just discovered that my beloved red christmas styled cake container wasn't really mine (I've borrowed it from a neighbour), so I had to move the poo elsewhere. It now resides in a octagonal "Mommys Rich Fruity Cake" container. It's a litte less rigid, but it is somewhat larger, with better room for the casing layer. It works its purpose
Thursday 7. November:
The surface colonisation seems to have slowed down a bit at 75%. There seems to be some moisture forming at the sides of the glass, and it's having a hard time colonising the bottom. I won't update this log until it's 100% colonised and about to be spawned.
Meanwhile, I've started another crazy poo experiment of freakish simplicity... I'll report back if it's a success
Sunday 10. November:
Okay, I lied, here's another update.
I have run into problems with my glass: it is too moist. The water content looked perfect a week ago, but now there are notable water droplets on the inside of the glass. The cake has come loose from the glass, and mycelial growth seems to have suffered from the excess water (roughly 80% surface colonisation). This strikes me as odd, as the glass is sealed seemingly air tight... Any suggestions as to what I can do to save my cake? I've considered spawning it in the dung as soon as possible, but I fear that uncolonised BRF will be very inviting for various contams. Should i just let it be and check on it in a few days? Tips are appreciated!
I'm sorry I can't provide any pictures at this time, I hope to get my new digicam this week.
Friday 15. November:
I got impatient and spawned the cake in the dung today, by breaking the cake up in a plastic bag. I'm guessing the cake was about 90% colonised, so I removed the uncolonised parts. The spawn:dung ratio is something like 1:20, so my hopes are even lower than before! One single, compressed half pint cake in what looks like a gallon of dung. Anyway, I've made a summary of my problems so far:
My vermiculite was too fine. When I took the cake out of the drinking glass today, I discovered that the air and looseness the vermiculite was supposed to supply, was virtually non-existent. The cake had shrunk quite a bit, and was rather hard. My guess is, this caused the slow colonisation.
The drinking glass wasn't air tight. The glass cracked during sterilisation, and wasn't even water tight. I didn't notice this until colonisation was well underway. I'm guessing this is what caused the excess humidity problems.
It has been a few days since I pasteurised the dung, and it hasn't been allowed to breath in storage (it was contained in a tightly sealed cake box). It doesn't have that nice, earthy smell anymore, it downright stinks.
Conclusion: this doesn't look too good, does it?
I've sealed the cake box with air tight plastic cling wrap, so I can see if there is any progress whatsoever, without exposing it to contaminated air. If the mycelium starts colonising the poo, I'll replace it with aluminum foil with holes in it. I'll keep you updated
Monday 18. November:
Well, the mycelium has started to recover and colonise the poo. No rhizomorphs, but it is definately fluffier than when I spawned. I removed the lid and the plastic cling wrap, and replaced it with aluminum foil with thirteen holes in it as promised. I can't believe the roughness of this mycelium! It can really take a beating... I've promised myself I won't check on it until friday... We'll see if I can keep it
Friday 22. November:
Of course I couldn't keep it. I've been checking on my babies every day this week! Anyway, the poo is roughly 90% colonised (a bit hard to tell), and the mycelium looks healthy. There is one thing I wonder about, though... There are some formations on the surface which I'm not too sure about. They look to me like either rhizomorphs (weird ones), or hyphal knots (more like pins of mycelium). I'll get you a picture later today so some more experienced growers can tell me what they think. If they are indeed hyphal knots/pins, I'm looking at quite a nice pinset. By the way, there have been some big droplets of water forming on the mycelium, but I just sucked them up with a bit of paper. Seems to have worked fine.
Saturday 23. November:
Sorry, the pics were a bit delayed. The quality as poor at best, but it was the best I could do with this camera (which I didn't have time to get to know properly). These first ones were taken yesterday, roughly 20 hours ago:
A blurry overview shot:
A rather nice picture of the rhizo's:
The box in which the poo resides, with the aluminum foil in place:
While these were taken today, about four hours ago:
Another overview shot:
Partially out of focus close-up:
Is it just me, or is that kind of mycelial growth rather strange? It almost looks like tiny oyster mushrooms I'm planning on casing this (maybe on monday), and I'm afraid of breaking these beautiful little guys. *sigh* Life's hard 
Looking at the images now, they almost look like pins. Hmm. They don't look like that in real life, and they haven't got coloured heads. What do you think? What is this?
Monday 25. November:
I'll tell you what it is, it's healthy, rhizomorphic mycelium! 
It reached 97% colonisation today, I cased the poo with MycoMania's "Best Casing Formula". But alas, I lack a digital camera again. It's not a very deep casing layer, perhaps 2/5 inch (1 cm) on average. I also did a poo to poo transfer to a smaller 1 liter ice cream container. I basically removed the dry, half colonised surface pieces from the larger container, and moved them to the smaller container before I cased the big one. This smaller container was pasteurised a couple of days after the big one, and has just been sitting in the dark doing nothing. Why not use it, eh?
I'll get some more pics for you soon.
Wednesday 27. November:
Some mycelium has started poking through the casing (just a couple of small spots), which is drying out quite rapidly. Yesterday, I took an almost empty "Jif Universal" soap spray bottle, emptied it in the sink, filled it with hot water, emptied it in the sink, filled again etc. until all traces of soap were gone, filled it with boiling water and let it cool. I sprayed my casing with it tody, and noticed a flowery smell. "Oh crap, did I just spray my casing with soap?". Let's just hope it's no worse than a 1% bleach solution...
Saturday 30. November:
The mycelium seems to have a hard time colonising the casing layer, but I'll credit this to the rather low temperature in my "incubation room" (approximately 70?F). Thus far, quite a few spots of rhizomorphic mycelium has popped evenly through the 2/5 inch thick casing layer, and I think I might be able to begin the preparations for fruiting on monday. I'm spraying the casing layer more or less every day, as it seems to be drying out rather quickly. I guess this is because the aluminum foil doesn't fit as snugly os it once did. I'll replace it now.
Friday 6. December:
The mycelium seemed to have a hard time colonising the casing (one and a half week and counting, IIRC), so yesterday I made a desperate attempt at making the casing do something. I cold shocked it for a few hours (six hours at most) in a 4?C refrigerator, with the lid on to prevent evil bacteria from jumping into my casing. Today, when I went to check on my casing, I saw... Pins! Yup, that's right. Half a dozen small, white pins. There's no dark head on them yet, even though they're half an inch or longer, but I blame the lack of light. The pinset doesn't look impressively even, but I won't pass judgement until saturday or sunday. I'll replace the aluminum foil with plastic cling wrap now, and make a light cycle scheme. I'll fan it when I feel like it. Pics tomorrow!
Sing hallelujah!
Thursday 12. December:
Just a minor update to let you know how it's going. Well, they're growing!  It looks like I'm going to get a mere seven mature fruits from the first flush, but at least two of them are going to get really big. They're closing in on five inches as we speak, and the hat isn't much fatter than the stem yet. All of them look really healthy, IMHO. I know I promised pictures, and I'll get some for you as fast as I can.
Saturday 14. December:
Oh yeah. I finally got my hands on that digicam again, so I took some pics of my now almost 8 inch long shrooms. Enjoy!
Again, sorry about the lousy quality of these pictures. Crappy camera + crappy photographer = very crappy pictures.
First, a picture of my Super High Tech Terrarium?:
Second, here's a blurry overview shot:
Did you notice the tissue damage on the biggest boy in there? That's a bit sad. It was about to grow together with his little brother, but got torn apart when I took the lid off the Super High Tech Terrarium?. Here's a closeup:
Here's a picture taken at a different angle:
Yeah, I know, the pinset is not very impressive, but the two largest shrooms in there are about eight inches long now. That's not bad for a sloppy first time grower, is it? I reckon I'll be harvesting them either tomorrow or monday. Can't wait!
Sunday 15. December:
My babies have exploded! Two of them have grown two or three inches over night, for God' sake. Looks like I'm going to harvest either tonight or tomorrow. Here are some updated pictures.
Another overview shot:
A little closer:
A closeup of the cap of the biggest boy:
And another one:
As you can see, the cap has cracked, and there is some damage to some of the mushrooms. I guess I can't expect picture perfect shrooms when I grow bulk&neglect
Monday 23. December:
I threw out the container the other day, after one flush. No particular reason, I just felt uncomfortable having mushrooms growing in the house with lots of relatives coming over for Christmas. I reckon I got about an ounce of dried mushrooms on the first flush, and that will be enough for me the following year. I'm putting away my spores & supplies now, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was for good. I had a nice time, and I've met a lot of interesting people. I'd like to thank everybody in this great community, and wish all of you a merry Christmas and a happy new year.
Thank you and Goodbye.
Edited by concretefeet (02/07/05 06:54 AM)
|
Threaded
Previous
Index
Next
All-In-One Bags That Don't Suck 
Bulk Cannabis Seeds 
Spores for European Microscopy 
Boomr Bag 
Liquid Cultures 
Isolated Cubensis Liquid Culture For Sale
Some of these posts are very old and might contain outdated information. You may wish to search for newer posts instead.
fungor 
z@z.com 
Edit 
Reply 
1 2 3 all )
NixxoN
Roadkill
houshroom
DreaMaTrix
mushroomaniac
Olgualion