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Reaper Registered: 04/26/12 Posts: 2,636 Loc: Hell Last seen: 10 years, 10 months |
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Ctrl+F can be used at any time to jump between sections of this article, simply bring up your browser’s “Find” Menu, and type in the corresponding section code that is found in the table of contents below.
This post is targeted towards cubensis cultivation. For a guide on edibles and medicinals, please see my blog http://thedeathryder.blogspot.co Cf1.Introduction Cf2.The Search Function, Trusted Cultivators, and AMU Cf3.Resource Forums: The Top 3 The Shroomery Myco-Tek Mycotopia Cf4.Suggested Reading: Paul Stamets Cf5.The Lifecycle of a Mushroom: Spore to Spore Cf6.So You’ve Decided to Grow Magic Mushrooms Cf61.A Matter of Stealth: Sclerotia Answers the Call to Arms Cf62.Environmental Requirements For Psilocybe cubensis Comments on Psilocybe cubensis varieties Lighting Mushroom Snakes Humidity Temperature Fresh Air Exchange Fuzzy Feet Cf63.The PF Tek: A Beginner’s Best Friend BRF Jars: Recipe and Sterilization Methods Storing Inoculated Jars Cold Climates: The Incubator Solution Cf64.Building and Operating a SGFC Construction Misting & Fanning Cf65.Inoculation Teks for Jars and Bags The Vermiculite Barrier and Self Healing Injection Ports Cf66.Spore Prints and Syringes Sterilizing Syringes Making Your Own Prints Cf67.Liquid Culture and Grain to Grain Agar/Pin Inoculation to Liquid Culture Cf7.Bulk Teks Spawn Teks Jar Lid Teks SHIPs SFDs Tyvek Polyfil Cf71.Spawn Bags Rye WBS Cf72.Bulk Substrate Teks Coir Manure Cf73.Bulk Growing Chambers Monotubs, the Set and Forget Bulk Chamber Mono-Shotgun Hybrid Martha Greenhouse, Your Personal Garden of Eden Cf8.Harvesting, Drying & Storing Cutting vs Twist & Pull Commercial & Homebrew Dehydrators Long Term Storage Teks Cf9.Agar: The Cultivator’s Most Powerful Tool Equipment Used Agar Plates and Jars The Glovebox/Still Air Box The Flowhood Guaranteeing Clean Cultures Cf91.Cloning and Isolating Sectoring and Why it Matters Rhizomorphic Mycelium Transfers Cf92.Master Slants: The Cultivator’s Insurance Policy Crossing Varieties Limitations & Difficulty Monocaryotic Mycelium Transfers Cf10.Contamination: When (not if) It Happens Common Contaminates Vectors of Contamination Cf11.Closing Cf1.INTRODUCTION This guide is written with the new cultivator in mind, but will also provide the experienced cultivator with a solid reference material to check back against in the course of their activities. The information here is a collection of posts and information that have been found on the Shroomery and other, similar forums, and I take no credit for the creation of the information, I have merely posted it in a way so that it is easy to find and use. Cf2.THE SEARCH FUNCTION, TRUSTED CULTIVATORS, AND AMU The search function can be located here: http://www.shroomery.org/forums/ By using the main search page linked above, you can filter the results to show only 1 post per thread, as well has filter the results by whether or not the poster is a trusted cultivator, or search for posts by specific trusted cultivators, such as RogerRabbit. You can also locate Trusted Cultivators and Trusted Identifiers at this link: http://www.shroomery.org/forums/ Amateur Mycologists United is a group that helps to spread knowledge regarding mushrooms. You can find a list of their teks sorted by member, and a link to their Q&A thread here: http://www.shroomery.org/forums/ Cf3.RESOURCE FORUMS: THE TOP 3 www.Shroomery.org ; Site thesis statement to be added once feedback is received from site administation. www.Myco-Tek.org - Home Mushroom cultivation at it's finest www.Mycotopia.org ; Formated excerpt by Hippie3 taken from https://mycotopia.net/forums/boa Explanation.. Why I Made This reprinted from HippieHaven, my first web site from '97 slightly edited to update it. Welcome to my website. I think that a site should be informative,useful, attractive, educational and entertaining. I hope I can make this one all of those things. In addition, I want to help spread my worldview and create a dialog with like-minded individuals. I consider myself to be a revolutionary, an outlaw, by my own choice. I feel that our society is repressive and corrupt, morally bankrupt. Our government is a police-state that has no legitimacy anymore ( if it ever did ) because it has trampled upon the constitution and upon the people. We are created to be free-willed, self-sufficient individuals, but society and the governments conspire with religious and commercial interests to enslave us all. Laws made decades ago by long-dead men are forced upon us from birth on, regardless of their relevance in today's world. All that is worth owning has already been divided up and nothing is left for those born today. We treat our brothers & sisters on mother earth worse than animals...if you are poor, you may freeze or starve but you may not steal food nor fight back. But I do not accept this. I have fought my entire life to be free... slave not to the government, the corporations, the churches, society, nor other people who seek to limit my knowledge, my choices, my power over my own life and property. I hope that the information within these pages can assist people who want to break free.. regardless of what others think. To such individuals, I welcome you and hope you enjoy your visit here. Cf4.SUGGESTED READING Paul Stamets has written a few books that are considered highly valuable resources. “The Mushroom Cultivator” and “Growing Gourmet & Medicinal Mushrooms” are pioneer texts in the field of mycology. As with all sources of information, some of the knowledge in these books is outdated, but they still remain relevant as a whole. Cf5.THE LIFECYCLE OF A MUSHROOM: SPORE TO SPORE A good description of the lifecycle of a mushroom can be found here: http://pradhuman.com.np/lifecycl Cf6.SO YOU’VE DECIDED TO GROW MAGIC MUSHROOMS Before we start, I would like to emphasize the importance of following the tek, and not experimenting on your first grow. Very often on the boards, new cultivators ask us to help troubleshoot where they went wrong when they deviated very far from the tek. Experimentation is wonderful, and highly encouraged in this hobby, but only after you've gotten your feet under you. If you follow the guides as a new cultivator, you WILL succeed. Doc_T has documented the results of following the tek quite well here: http://www.shroomery.org/forums/ Cf61.A Matter of Stealth: Sclerotia Answers the Call to Arms I’ve lost count how many times now I’ve seen new cultivators pop into the forums asking how to conceal a bulky fruiting chamber. Many high tek setups have been made to try and answer this question, but in all reality, or favorite fungi answered the question for us long ago! When growing ATL#7 or Jalisco, no fruiting chamber is needed because they produce sclerotia, aka stones, in the jar. These stones contain the same active chemicals as the fruit bodies of other psychoactive fungi, such as Psilocybe cubensis. You can learn everything you could ever need to know about sclerotia through the following link: Stonesun’s “A Comprehensive Sclerotia Cultivation Guide – From Spore Print To Spore Prints (VER1.0)” http://www.shroomery.org/forums/ Cf62.Environmental Requirements for Psilocybe cubensis Psilocybe cubenses, aka cubes, are the most common starting point for new cultivators because they are more tolerant of mistakes and abuse by the learning novice. All cubes, regardless of variety (many people more familiar with pot use the word strain, which is not fully accurate for the description of mushroom varieties), have the same growth parameters, and similar potency. The only widely accepted exception to the rule at this time is Penis Envy, as it is a mutant cube that has been genetically isolated and stabilized for mass distribution. For more information on genetic isolation, see the section on agar later on in this guide. Contrary to popular belief, mushrooms enjoy a 12 hour on/ 12 hour off light cycle. While mushrooms can be grown in total darkness, the specimens grown in the dark tend to be skinny, and snake across the floor of the fruiting chamber. When grown in the dark, most cultivators also complain about not getting many pins (immature mushrooms), if any at all. Light encourages the mushroom to develop a meaty stipe, grow in an upward direction (towards the light), and helps establish a circadian rhythm. Any light bulbs you use in your cultivation efforts should be in the 6500k color spectrum, and be placed as close to the fruiting chamber as possible without raising the temperature significantly above your grow room’s ambient temperature. Humidity is another crucial factor to your mushroom’s health. Cubes will grow in environments in the upper 80% RH (Relative Humidity) range, but they love it when you can get 99%RH+. Mushrooms are 93% water by weight, and by keeping the humidity high; less moisture evaporates from the substrate that they feed on. A properly designed fruiting chamber is able to supply this level of humidity, while maintaining adequate fresh airflow. Put a pin in that, and we’ll be back to it soon! Temperature is a critical factor that often makes or breaks a grow. Outdated sources of information will tell you that 85F is ideal for colonizing substrates, and fruiting mushrooms, THIS IS FALSE!! While mycelium does tend to colonize a little faster at this temperature, bacteria that may be present colonizes even faster, and will throw a monkey wrench in your efforts. The temperature in the grow room and colonization area should be kept between 68F and 80F. The mycelium will colonize slower at lower temperatures, like the low 70’s, but it tends to have a much higher success rate than at higher temperatures. Substrates fruited in low 70’s also tend to have meatier stipes. If you ever get a harvest of shrooms with hollow stipes, turn the temperature down a few degrees for the next go around since you probably fruited the substrate in the upper 70’s or higher! Now back to what I was saying about fresh airflow, aka FAE (Fresh Air Exchange). Mushrooms love a constant supply of fresh oxygen, mold loves a constant supply of stagnant, CO2 filled air. By supplying our mushrooms with constant fresh air, we encourage the production of big, healthy fruit bodies, and ward of the Mean Green (trichoderma), the bane of all cultivator’s existence. Mushrooms also use FAE as a pinning trigger! When moisture evaporates from the surface of a substrate, it encourages the mycelium to create hyphal knots that grow into pins. The trick is to provide enough FAE to prevent CO2 build up (if your mushrooms appear to have “fuzzy” bases, that is a sign of too much CO2 buildup, and that you need to provide more FAE), without dropping the humidity too low for too long and drying out our substrate. I say for too long because an occasional drop in the RH of the fruiting chamber encourages pinning and rapid growth. Remember what I said about moisture evaporating from the surface of the substrate? When the RH is 99%+, that moisture has nowhere to evaporate too! You’ll know you are providing too much FAE when the caps of mushrooms begin drying out and cracking, the substrate will also bruise blue as well. An excellent guide to providing moisture and FAE in a balanced manner is linked in the Building and Operating a SGFC section later on in this guide. Cf63.The PF Tek: A Beginner’s Best Friend RogerRabbit markets an amazing set of videos that can be downloaded from his website for $8.99. These videos are a wonderful way to learn the PF Tek quickly and easily, and you’ll also get a solid introduction to agar as well. Not all of us have the money to spend though, so we’ll just have to read the guides! If you’re willing to spend the money, please support RogerRabbit and his wonderful family by purchasing his “Let’s Grow Mushrooms!” videos here: http://www.mushroomvideos.com/Do You can also watch my free PF Tek video here: EvilMushroom666 has posted a wonderful guide for making PF Tek jars using brown rice flower, as well as an excellent introduction to sterile procedure that can be viewed here: http://www.shroomery.org/forums/ If you like to make fancy equipment, there’s a pretty cool tek for PF Tek style lids that can be used for many purposes here: http://www.shroomery.org/forums/ Once inoculated, jars and substrate bags should be stored in a location that stays between 70F to 80F, gets ambient light, and allows space for gas exchange. As the mycelium colonizes the substrate, it will need to push out CO2. If you store your substrate jars in a box, they will have difficulties with this, which will result in a longer colonization time. The same principle applies if you roll up your substrate bags and block off the filter. Once 100% of the visible substrate has been colonized, let your PF Tek jars sit for a week to consolidate before opening them for the dunk’n’roll and placement in a fruiting chamber. Spawn bags and jars that will be crumbled into a bulk substrate only need 2-3 days of consolidation before use, but can be successful with less. If you live in an area where keeping your jars warm is going to be a problem, you can build an incubator for them. Incubators are considered outdated technology for anyone who does not live in a climate where maintaining a constant temperature of 68f+ is a problem. When I was a total noob and thought an incubator would be necessary during the summer time in Texas (yea, you read that right, we all make mistakes at some point!), I made an effective one by filling a plastic bin about 1/3 of the way with water, putting an aquarium heater inside, then putting another bin with a lid in to float on the water. This method kept a constant 85F (yep, you read that right too.), and I cooked the bottoms of my tall jars (not the short ones you see in EvilMushroom’s post). Luckily for me I realized my mistake before any permanent damage was done, and my grow still succeeded, though it took longer to get there. Another nice pictorial guide for building an incubator was recently posted by a new member, Jacknife, at the Shroomery, and can be viewed here: http://www.shroomery.org/forums/ Just be sure you set it for 75F and not 85F! Cf64.Building and Operating a SGFC (Shotgun Fruiting Chamber) The SGFC is the fruiting chamber recommended by the Shroomery community to new growers. It is a simple design, which is what accounts for it’s high success rate. The SGFC is designed to be able to go without attention for 14 hours in a room with no fans blowing. You build one by getting a clear plastic bin that is at least 12 inches deep and is wide and long enough to hold all your PF cakes with a few inches in between them (you want to keep your cakes a few inches away from the wall of the fruiting chamber as well). Next, get a power drill with a quarter inch drill bit and drill holes in a grid pattern, 2 inches apart, on all 6 sides (yes that includes the top and the bottom). You should use a drip tray as the next part can be a little bit messy. Fill the bottom 4-6 inches of the SGFC with wet perlite, yes a little will fall through the holes, but not much. You should also have the SGFC elevated over the drip tray so that air can pass underneath it. Always keep your fruiting chamber at least 2 feet above the floor as most contaminate spores settle in that bottom 2 feet (green mold anyone?). Once set up, place your light so that the inside gets plenty of light. Pretty simple eh? Operating the SGFC is simple; you just leave it alone for the most part. You’ll need to mist and fan it a few times per day, and you can find all the information you need on that in the link I promised you here: http://www.shroomery.org/forums/ Use that post as a guideline, and remember what I told you about environmental conditions earlier, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised with loads of mushrooms soon! After placing the cakes into the SGFC, pins usually form within 14 days. If after 14 days goes by and you have no pins, then something has gone wrong and you should make a post on the forum of your choice asking for assistance. Be sure to include pictures and a detailed account of everything you’ve done so that your tek can be reviewed for any spots where you might have made a mistake. Cf65.Inoculation Teks for Jars and Bags So I guess your wondering how you get those spores into the jar if you can’t take the lid off after you carefully sterilized their contents? Inoculations are done in a few ways including syringes, agar, and glove boxes. This is where most problems with sterile procedure occur and cause contaminations. You must be very careful not to introduce contaminates since they will usually beat out your mycelium for the substrate and ruin the jar. I must also stress something very important here: NEVER OPEN A CONTAMINATED JAR OR BAG INDOORS!!! If you get a jar with contamination, green mold for example, you will spread mold spores all over yourself and your grow area. Some contaminates, like black mold, are toxic to humans and should be handled very carefully. We have a saying in this hobby that will save you many headaches, “When in doubt, throw it out!” For more information on contamination and what to do when it appears, skim on down to the contaminate section of this guide. In the PF Tek, we just poke a few holes in the lid of the jar because we have a sterile layer of vermiculite to prevent contaminates from reaching the nutritious brown rice flower substrate. Most other methods for more advanced jar creation (don’t worry, they’re still easy!) will have you using self healing injection ports aka SHIPs that can be bought from medical supply warehouses, or made with high temp RTV silicone (the kind you get from the auto parts store for making gaskets for your hotrod’s intake manifold). While these are 2 very different barriers against contaminates, they both work in the same way, you stick a needle through them! Cf66.I’m going to take a short moment here to talk about spore prints (that’s right, those spores didn’t start out in the syringe! Someone had to put them there!). Cultivators take spore prints from the mushrooms that they’ve allowed to fully mature for many reasons. Spore prints are a great way of preserving a vast amount of genetics in a small space, and they are easily traded among cultivators for other varieties of spores. The Free Spore Ring Earth, based in The Netherlands, sends spore prints anywhere in the world for the mere cost of $2 USD and a self addressed envelope. Google them and take a look at their list of available varieties, they’ll be your new favorite site in no time flat. For making spore prints, you can view the following guides that will help ensure you make clean prints. Spore Printing Tek: http://www.shroomery.org/8404/Sp A more recent spore printing tek has been posted by Wildernessjunkie and can be found here: http://www.shroomery.org/forums/ Another great printing tek is located here: http://www.shroomery.org/11317/M Now that you have a clean print, you still need that sterile syringe. If you going to reuse an old syringe, you can sterilize it by wrapping it in tin foil and putting it in with your next batch of jars in the pressure cooker, or you can use the boiling water method (boil water, suck water in, eject repeat 5 or so times, let the water stay in the syringe body for a minute before ejecting). Just get a sterile shot glass or jar (boil or pc it), fill it with some sterile water from the syringe, squirt a few drop of sterile water on the print, drain the spore laden water into the shot glass, then suck back up with the syringe. Pretty easy eh? Here’s the bad news though, since we don’t fruit mushrooms in a sterile environment, it’s inevitable that at least a few mold spores will make it into your syringe at some point. This is why you will occasionally have contaminations even when your tek is right. Be clean about things though, and you’ll probably only see 1 contaminated jar a year, if that. A great syringe tek is hosted on Myco-Tek: http://myco-tek.org/showthread.p Cf67.Liquid culture is very special. Instead of filling a syringe with spores, liquid culture allows you to fill your syringe with living mycelium. This gives you a great advantage because your mycelium with have a jump-start against any contaminates that might be present in the jar/bag. It also helps the nerves since it colonizes in roughly 2 weeks since you don’t have to wait for spores to germinate. This same effect is achieved when you inoculate a jar from agar, or grain-to-grain transfers, but more on that later. A great recipe for liquid culture jars was posted by Damion5050, and can be found here: http://www.shroomery.org/forums/ More liquid culture teks can be found here: http://www.shroomery.org/11341/L While liquid culture can be inoculated with spores, it tends to have a high rate of failure. Your best bet with inoculating liquid culture jars is to set up a glovebox or flowhood and use the clean environment as a safe spot to open the lid of the liquid culture jar and drop in a freshly harvested pin, or an agar wedge. Grain to grain is done in a similar fashion, but instead of dropping in a pin or agar wedge, you drop in colonized grains from a fully colonized master jar. The master jar is usually created by inoculating a jar of grains with a liquid culture or an agar wedge. Cf7.BULK TEKS So you’ve mastered the concepts behind the PF Tek and want to go big? This is the section for you! Bulk teks use some different methods and equipment than the PF Tek does, so we’ll start back at the colonized jars and work our way back to fruits! Bulk fruiting chambers will be discussed towards the end of this section. Spawn Teks The first thing we need to look at with spawn teks are the containers. Some people like to use bags, others like to use jars that have special lids. Lets look at the jars first. Bulk substrate jars generally share 2 characteristics; they have a SHIP and a filter. A SHIP can be made by drilling a small hole in the jar’s lid, and then covering it with RTV silicone. There are several filters available, and everyone has their preference. Synthetic Filter Disks (SFDs) are the most contamination resistant filter, and can be used over and over again. Tyvek is a 1 time use filter that’s cheap and easy to come by, but you usually have to use 2 layers since the fibers loosen up during the sterilization process. Polyfil can be reused, is cheap, and effective, but is easy to put in too tight, restricting gas exchange. Polyfil can also easily become a wick for contamination if you get it overly wet, especially with grain juices while shaking the jars. Here a few teks for lids using various filters: TranscendingLife’s SFD lids & no tilt LC lids: http://www.shroomery.org/forums/ Telekid’s Tyvek lids: http://www.shroomery.org/forums/ Estario’s Polyfil filtered lids: http://www.shroomery.org/forums/ Cf71.Spawn bags are often bought pre sterilized from an online vendor, but can be made at home as well. Monstermitch posted a nice spawn bag pictorial along with a few other nice teks in this post: http://www.shroomery.org/forums/ You can also view my WBS prep video here: EvilMushroom666 posted another guide detailing how he prepares jars and bags alike using rye here: http://www.shroomery.org/forums/ Doc34 details his Wild Bird Seed Tek here: http://www.shroomery.org/9030/Do A more recent WBS tek by Transcendinglife: http://www.shroomery.org/forums/ Cf72.Bulk Substrate Teks Now that you’ve got a bunch of quart jars of spawn colonizing, it’s time to figure out which bulk substrate you want to use. The main 2 you’ll see people using are coir and horse poo. Coir seems to be the more popular bulk substrate because it has the advantage of not having to work with feces, poo however is more nutritious, and tends to yield nicer harvests, and can be found for free! Whichever substrate you choose, these teks will help you along the way: Damion5050’s Elementary Coir Tek: http://www.shroomery.org/forums/ Roadkill posted this poo tek about 10 years ago. For the purposes of this guide, the pasteurization process is the focus, the rest is to be considered an exercise in sorting out outdated and relevant information: http://www.shroomery.org/forums/ Many people choose to add gypsum or spent coffee grounds to their bulk substrates before pasteurizing. Gypsum is starting to become somewhat of a staple in many cultivator’s recipes at a ratio of about 10% (now we’ll have an exercise in using the search engine to find a recipe including gypsum for your substrate of choice ). Mycelium loves spent coffee grounds, unfortunately so does everything else. For some people spent coffee grounds work great, others hate them. I’ve noticed that a lot of people that hate them used the spent grounds from Starbucks that sit around for only God knows how long. If I were to try using coffee grounds, I would use fresh ones, so have a pot of coffee while your substrate pasteurizes!Cf73.Bulk Growing Chambers So now you have a bunch of colonized jars and bags of spawn, and a fresh load of pasteurized bulk substrate, now you need something to mix it together in! When you mix your spawn and substrate together, remember to hold a little substrate back so you can cover up any exposed grains after mixing. The Ohmatic Monotub is a very popular “set it and forget it” type fruiting chamber that’s made from a simple storage bin. You’ll see casings referenced in the tek, which are a layer on top of the substrate designed to help keep humidity high at the substrate level to help induce pining and maintain proper moisture content. This is not required for cubes, but they’ll be good for you to research for when you move on to other species like Pan cyans: http://www.shroomery.org/forums/ Doc_T created the MSG (Mono-Shotgun Hybrid), which is, as the name says, a hybrid between the SGFC and a monotub. If you like to tend to your mushrooms daily, you’ll enjoy this highly effective fruiting chamber. While Doc_T is no longer active at Myco-Tek, if you post a question in the Mushroom Cultivation section of the Shroomery, he will probably see it and give you an answer: http://myco-tek.org/showthread.p Now for my personal favorite, greenhouses! Greenhouses can be a dream or a nightmare depending on how you set up your equipment. Do it right and you have a fully automated system that requires no activity on your part other than refilling water reservoirs, changing old light bulbs and harvesting shrooms. Greenhouses have become a lot more popular lately, and I have several links for you in their regards (I did mention that they’re my favorite didn’t I?). Some people prefer to buy the kit greenhouses like you see in garden stores, it’s how the name MARTHA greenhouses came about since the earlier fans of greenhouses used premade kits marketed by Martha Stewart before she went to prison. You can also build custom greenhouses using a PVC pipe frame and sheet plastic from the local hardware store. Goose2r’s Easy hi-tec Automated Greenhouse: http://www.shroomery.org/forums/ Violet’s Super Simple, Inexpensive, Full-Auto Greenhouse: http://www.shroomery.org/forums/ TheDeathryder’s Breaking in the Greenhouse grow log featuring the rise, evolution, and fall of a fully automated greenhouse: http://www.shroomery.org/forums/ Larynx’s 55 Gallon Bulk Humidifier Tek: http://myco-tek.org/content.php? You’ll notice several posts by HippieChick in my greenhouse thread. Any post you see by her regarding the construction and operation of greenhouses is worth reading! Cf8.HARVESTING, DRYING, & STORING Now that you’ve got your grow well under way, you’ve probably realized that your going to end up with more shrooms than you can use in 1 go! This section will tell you how to go about collecting your crop, and how to store it for the long term. You have a few options when it comes to harvesting. You can grab a mushroom, or cluster of mushrooms, at the base of the stipe, twist, and pull them away from the substrate, or you can use a knife or pair of scissors to cut the shrooms away. I prefer to cut at the base of the stipe since the twist and pull method often results in a torn up substrate that leaves openings for contaminates to jump on. If you chose the cut method, cut as close to the substrate as you can as some people have reported stumps going rotten when cut high. In my experience the stump just reverts back to mycelium. If you don’t plan to eat the mushrooms fresh, you need to dehydrate them. I like to use a nesco food dehydrator to get my mushrooms to a nice cracker dry, but not everyone can afford to get one when they realize that they need one. If this is your case, you can set the harvested shrooms in front of a fan blowing air directly on them for 24 hours, then finish them off in a tub with some damp-rid. Damp-rid is a desiccant most hardware stores stock in the paint department. Make sure you have a rack or something to keep the shrooms from touching the desiccant, and that you have an air tight chamber for it (tupper ware works great). Once the mushrooms are cracker dry, many people like to put them into paper bags in the fridge for short term storage (a few weeks). For long term storage, it’s a good idea to put them into a plastic bag (impulse sealers are popular) with a desiccant packet (damp-rid wrapped in a coffee filter works) and an oxygen absorbing packet, then put them in the freezer. No maximum shelf life has been found for frozen shrooms. Cf9.AGAR: THE CULTIVATOR’S MOST POWERFUL TOOL Get into agar work as early as you can. It’s easy, it’s cheap, and it gives you total control of your mushroom’s genetic destiny. It also shortens the amount of time needed to colonize spawn jars, and gives you a jump-start against contaminates. No matter how you slice it, agar is all benefits! Equipment Used Agar can be used in petri dishes, or in jars. Many cultivators like to use jars because they’re convenient (most cultivators have an abundance of jars laying around). Petris can also get expensive if you get the nice borosilicate glass ones, and they can be very messy if they boil over. The wide mouth 125ml jars work best for agar work. How Doc_T Makes No-Pour Agar Jars: http://www.shroomery.org/forums/ Professor PinHead’s No-Pour Agar Agar Tek: http://myco-tek.org/showthread.p If your going to be working with agar though, you’ll need a Still Air box, Glove Box, or a Flowhood. If you try creating culture in open air, you’ll have a lot of amazing jars of green mold, black mold, bacteria….Yea, I tried that one too. If you choose the Flowhood, be sure to wear a surgical mask to prevent bacteria from your breath landing on your cultures. Note surgical mask and not dust mask. Or you could always stop breathing while you work. I’ll cover the Still Air Box and Glove Box together since a Glove Box is just a Still Air Box with, well, gloves. This is the poor man’s alternative to a flowhood. The idea is that if you create a small, sterile environment, and keep your movements slow but fluid, you shouldn’t have any problems with contaminate spores landing on your agar. When using a glove box or still air box, you want to spray the inside with Lysol or a similar disinfectant, place your materials inside, then put the lid on. Wait a while before using a lighter to flame sterilize a needle in the box as most disinfectant products are flammable, and some of our members have burnt their eyebrows off. Not me this time! TanscendingLife has a nice box build here: http://www.shroomery.org/forums/ I also have made a video on making a still air box here: The flowhood is more expensive, but allows you to work in open air, which makes it easier to do what you need to do. You always want to make sure that you don’t allow any part of your body to come between an open jar and the flowhood as this will cause contaminates that may be on you to be blown into your sterile jar or agar culture. NEVER OPEN A CONTAMINATED JAR OR CULTURE IN FRONT OF A FLOW HOOD!!! If you do you will blow contaminate spores all over yourself and your work space! RogerRabbit shows how to follow proper sterile procedure when using a flowhood in his “Let’s Grow Mushrooms” videos. You can view EvilMushroom666’s Laminar Flowhood Build here: http://myco-tek.org/showthread.p Guaranteeing clean cultures is the primary reason many people get into agar work. Nothing sucks more than when you lose a batch of jars to a dirty syringe or contaminated liquid culture. By inoculating with an agar wedge, and using grain to grain transfers, you can effectively reduce the risk of contamination below 1%. But this is only part of what makes agar so wonderful. Cf91.Agar Can also be used for cloning and isolating. What this means is that if you get a particularly impressive fruit body, you can take a small piece of flesh from the interior of the stipe and grow it out on agar. Sometimes you’ll get an isolate right off the bat, but other times you will see sectoring. An isolate is when you have a culture that is made entirely of mycelium cells with the same DNA. Sectoring occurs when there is more than 1 selection of genetics (DNA) available. You create an isolate by taking samples from sectors until sectoring is no longer present. When taking a sample from a sector, cut a piece from the leading edge of growth, where the cells are youngest. Thick, ropey strands of mycelium (rhizomorphic mycelium) are ideal for isolating and growing out to study for desired traits. Cf92.Master Slants: The Cultivator’s Insurance Policy Master slants are used to store living mycelium for extended periods of time (years). A master slant is essentially an agar culture in a test tube. Master slants are also used to preserve a particularly nice set of genetics away from senescence cause by generational growth (after a given set of genetics has performed so many cell divisions, it begins to loose potency, strength, and reduces in yield). Mephistophelian has a nice Master Slant Tek posted here: http://myco-tek.org/showthread.p Crossing Varieties Every cultivator has dreamed about crossing 2 varieties of mushrooms to create a super mushroom. This is a very difficult endeavor, which has limitations. First off, you cannot cross species. No matter how hard you try, you will never cross a cube with an azure or a pan cyan without high tech equipment that is currently cost prohibitive to the home cultivator. Cubes can be crossed with cubes, but it is a very difficult endeavor as it requires a lot of patience, spores, agar cultures, and on the rare times a cross does occur, it may not exhibit any desired traits. Because this is really a vast topic, I will leave you with a few threads regarding the subject of genetics for you to begin your own research with. Thread: How to create a strain?: http://myco-tek.org/showthread.p Thread: Spores and Strains: Fundamentals of Genetics as applied to Mycology: http://myco-tek.org/showthread.p Thread: Whats a good microscope to buy to watch a culture grow in the petri dish? (this thread also gets into methods of crossing strains): http://myco-tek.org/showthread.p Cf10.CONTAMINATION: WHEN (NOT IF) IT HAPPENS Every cultivator deals with contamination at some point. Whether it’s the Mean Green (trichoderma), black mold, cobweb mold, orange ooze, pink slime, or even insects, you will see it, given enough time in the field. When a jar or substrate becomes contaminated, it’s always best to play it safe and throw it out. If you allow a contaminated substrate to continue growing in your grow room, contaminate spores will be released all over the place, and make contaminations far more common in the future. When in doubt, throw it out. All is not lost though, a contaminated substrate can still fruit outdoors, depending on the contaminate. Always use the following guide and run searches and ask questions to determine if it is safe to eat mushrooms harvested from a contaminated substrate. Some contaminates are hazardous to human health, so you want to avoid them at all costs. Common Contaminates of the Mushroom Culture: http://www.shroomery.org/5276/Wh When a contamination is encountered, it is imperative to the success of your future grows to discover the vector of contamination. By discovering how the contaminate got in, we can alter our methods accordingly to prevent it from happening again. The following are the 5 primary sources of contamination. Source 1: The Immediate External Environment: How sanitary was the area sterile work was being performed in? Source 2: The Culture Medium: Was the substrate/agar prepared properly? Source 3: The Culturing Equipment: Was the syringe/scalpel sterilized properly? Source 4: The Cultivator and His or Her Clothes: Were you recently bathed and wearing clean clothes? Source 5: The Mushroom Spores or the Mycelium (inoculants): Was the syringe or liquid culture contaminated? By answering these questions, the source of the contamination can almost always be found, provided attention to detail is maintained. Cf11.CLOSING If you are reading this, then you have made it to the end! By learning all the material contained in this guide, you have done yourself and your mushrooms a great service, and ensured yourself many bountiful harvests. You are also now in a position to be able to help other new cultivators, and because of this I ask you to spread the knowledge contained in this guide to all people you believe will benefit from it. Thank you for reading! I wish you good luck, bountiful harvests, and good vibes! TheDeathryder. -------------------- My Trade List Everything A New Cultivator Needs To Know! Now featuring My FREE Cultivation Video Guides My Full-Auto Greenhouse Build My General Cultivation Guide & Blog My Edible & Medicinal Grow Logs My Cactus & Plant Grow Logs Ryath's Cubensis Pinning Strategy & Troubleshooting Guide Useful Cultivation Links Got a noob question? Feel free to pm me to avoid the harsher members! Mindset, Setting, Dose: When It All Goes Wrong Edited by TheDeathryder (10/11/12 07:46 PM)
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Retired Cultivation Extrodinaire Registered: 04/08/12 Posts: 22,502 Loc: Orbiting Earth Last seen: 16 days, 12 hours |
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Wow, I admire your dedication to this hobby bro.
Quote: Thats not Doc_T's tek, btw, its Doc34's...says it in the link lol. -------------------- THIS HOBBY IS NOT FOR THE IMPATIENT! PLEASE BE PATIENT, DON'T BE A PATIENT! A Tale of 10 Isolates, GT Cluster Clone Monotubs, RR's Let's Grow Mushrooms DVD, SGFC(Shotgun Fruiting Chamber), Monotub Tek, Damion5050's Coir Tek, TL's Tek List, Frank's Tek List, EvilMushroom666's Pasteurization Tek, How It Should & Shouldn't Look - NEW CULTIVATORS GUIDE
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Stranger Registered: 10/15/11 Posts: 554 Last seen: 7 years, 9 months |
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WOW!
![]() 5 star rating left for you my friend! If there were an option for a 10 star, I would have given you that. That's a monster of a thread that I'm sure many people will find extremely helpful. Thanks! -------------------- ================================ Mushroom / Bulk Substrate Calculator <- Tells you exactly how much of what ingredients you need for any substrate for any container! Here is the corresponding shroomery thread: http://www.shroomery.org/forums/ Easy Bulk Substrate Pasteurizer - Hands Free Operation ================================ Edited by sgfcchamber (09/03/12 12:24 AM)
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Reaper Registered: 04/26/12 Posts: 2,636 Loc: Hell Last seen: 10 years, 10 months |
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Quote: Thanks for catching that! Fixed
-------------------- My Trade List Everything A New Cultivator Needs To Know! Now featuring My FREE Cultivation Video Guides My Full-Auto Greenhouse Build My General Cultivation Guide & Blog My Edible & Medicinal Grow Logs My Cactus & Plant Grow Logs Ryath's Cubensis Pinning Strategy & Troubleshooting Guide Useful Cultivation Links Got a noob question? Feel free to pm me to avoid the harsher members! Mindset, Setting, Dose: When It All Goes Wrong
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CHUT UP!!! Registered: 01/16/12 Posts: 1,680 Loc: |
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NICE write up!!! I will be referring to this in the future definitely.
-------------------- PC Repair and Troubleshooting Forum If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so. - Thomas Jefferson Si peccasse negamus fallimur et nulla est in nobis veritas.
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Reaper Registered: 04/26/12 Posts: 2,636 Loc: Hell Last seen: 10 years, 10 months |
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If any of you guys have some links to kick ass teks or especially informative posts, let me know so I can add them to the guide
-------------------- My Trade List Everything A New Cultivator Needs To Know! Now featuring My FREE Cultivation Video Guides My Full-Auto Greenhouse Build My General Cultivation Guide & Blog My Edible & Medicinal Grow Logs My Cactus & Plant Grow Logs Ryath's Cubensis Pinning Strategy & Troubleshooting Guide Useful Cultivation Links Got a noob question? Feel free to pm me to avoid the harsher members! Mindset, Setting, Dose: When It All Goes Wrong
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Onion Registered: 05/30/12 Posts: 435 Loc: Chapel Perilous Last seen: 10 years, 5 months |
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Very nice write up. Your dedication is commendable!
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Don't be scared, homie! Registered: 07/15/12 Posts: 1,178 Loc: Holland |
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nice work deathryder!! looks like that took some time!
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Reaper Registered: 04/26/12 Posts: 2,636 Loc: Hell Last seen: 10 years, 10 months |
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It took me about 3 hours to get the table of contents set up including brainstorm time. After that it took about 6 hours to do all the typing, finding the teks, linking etc. I really just built it off of resources that I've already found over the months of watching the forums and researching my own cultivation needs.
The inspiration for the guide came from my own difficulties as a new cultivator. I lost count how many times I had wished that all of the information I needed was in one place. Now it is Maybe we'll get lucky and this post will get pinned so that noobs will have an easy time finding it
-------------------- My Trade List Everything A New Cultivator Needs To Know! Now featuring My FREE Cultivation Video Guides My Full-Auto Greenhouse Build My General Cultivation Guide & Blog My Edible & Medicinal Grow Logs My Cactus & Plant Grow Logs Ryath's Cubensis Pinning Strategy & Troubleshooting Guide Useful Cultivation Links Got a noob question? Feel free to pm me to avoid the harsher members! Mindset, Setting, Dose: When It All Goes Wrong
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Don't be scared, homie! Registered: 07/15/12 Posts: 1,178 Loc: Holland |
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definitely deserves it! +5 for your dedication to this hobby!!
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low life with no life Registered: 02/02/09 Posts: 7,071 Loc: illinois Last seen: 45 minutes, 8 seconds |
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-------------------- HUSTLER How U Survive This Life Everyday Resourcefully epic GT mono tub http://www.shroomery.org/forums/ wbs tek http://www.shroomery.org/forums/ coir tek http://www.shroomery.org/forums/ results
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liquid blue Registered: 03/15/03 Posts: 400 Loc: show me Last seen: 10 years, 5 months |
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Deathryder, you are a mushroom god, thankyou for putting the time in to post this write up. I appreceate it and im sure it will be very helpful to our new and expereanced cultivators alike.
-------------------- Shit house mouse
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Heretic Registered: 11/18/09 Posts: 10,289 Loc: Canada |
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-------------------- ![]()
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Reaper Registered: 04/26/12 Posts: 2,636 Loc: Hell Last seen: 10 years, 10 months |
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Quote: I think that is the highest complement I've ever received Thank you!
-------------------- My Trade List Everything A New Cultivator Needs To Know! Now featuring My FREE Cultivation Video Guides My Full-Auto Greenhouse Build My General Cultivation Guide & Blog My Edible & Medicinal Grow Logs My Cactus & Plant Grow Logs Ryath's Cubensis Pinning Strategy & Troubleshooting Guide Useful Cultivation Links Got a noob question? Feel free to pm me to avoid the harsher members! Mindset, Setting, Dose: When It All Goes Wrong
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Registered: 08/16/11 Posts: 1,087 Loc: Canada Last seen: 5 years, 4 months |
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Nice write up, I would sugest putting on the bottom of your list doc-t's post on "look whaat happened" because it clearly states how if you follow a tek, you will sucseed, if you experiment before you know what's going on, you'll fail. I see a lot of grows experimenting on their first grow, and most times ends in failure. If they followed the simple tek to a T they would have sucseeded. I myself addmit to experimenting to early into the hobby, and I wasted a lot of time, but learned a lot at the same time. I just know you can learn off others mistakes, and if you pay attention, and follow things correctly, prescicely, and do not skip any steps, you'll sucseed.
http://www.shroomery.org/forums/ -------------------- TRADE LIST Pure's Cook Book<-- Under Construction Laboratory Organization Charts "Debating with a select few here is like playing chess with the pigeon, No matter how good you are the pigeon will knock over all the pieces, shit on the board and claim victory."
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Reaper Registered: 04/26/12 Posts: 2,636 Loc: Hell Last seen: 10 years, 10 months |
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Added with an introductory paragraph to section Cf6
-------------------- My Trade List Everything A New Cultivator Needs To Know! Now featuring My FREE Cultivation Video Guides My Full-Auto Greenhouse Build My General Cultivation Guide & Blog My Edible & Medicinal Grow Logs My Cactus & Plant Grow Logs Ryath's Cubensis Pinning Strategy & Troubleshooting Guide Useful Cultivation Links Got a noob question? Feel free to pm me to avoid the harsher members! Mindset, Setting, Dose: When It All Goes Wrong
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noooob Registered: 02/11/12 Posts: 1,792 Loc: good old va Last seen: 9 years, 9 months |
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Fuck yea bro nice job
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Psychonaut Registered: 08/29/12 Posts: 197 |
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Fuck Yeah man!! There's a monster of information here! Nice work duder!!
![]() ![]()
-------------------- TheDeathryder's video's, awesome shit here: http://www.shroomery.org/forums/ Liquid Cultures http://www.shroomery.org/forums/
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Reaper Registered: 04/26/12 Posts: 2,636 Loc: Hell Last seen: 10 years, 10 months |
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I'm looking into adding an outdoor grow section, and a troubleshooting section to the guide. If any of yall have any preferred teks or posts that you think would be helpful, let me know
-------------------- My Trade List Everything A New Cultivator Needs To Know! Now featuring My FREE Cultivation Video Guides My Full-Auto Greenhouse Build My General Cultivation Guide & Blog My Edible & Medicinal Grow Logs My Cactus & Plant Grow Logs Ryath's Cubensis Pinning Strategy & Troubleshooting Guide Useful Cultivation Links Got a noob question? Feel free to pm me to avoid the harsher members! Mindset, Setting, Dose: When It All Goes Wrong
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spawniac Registered: 11/28/10 Posts: 863 Loc: holding the axis |
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awesome
-------------------- :: http://myco-tek.org/forum.php] http://www.shroomery.org/forums/ https://myco-tek.org/showthread. https://myco-tek.org/showthread. http://www.shroomery.org/forums/
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). Mycelium loves spent coffee grounds, unfortunately so does everything else. For some people spent coffee grounds work great, others hate them. I’ve noticed that a lot of people that hate them used the spent grounds from Starbucks that sit around for only God knows how long. If I were to try using coffee grounds, I would use fresh ones, so have a pot of coffee while your substrate pasteurizes!
Now featuring 
Got a noob question? Feel free to pm me to avoid the harsher members! 


