Test Jar Invitro

Introduction
This project is aimed at finding a way to make shrooms grow from 1/2 pint jars with little to no effort, and a very small amount of substrate, only about 1/2 to 1 inch worth. This project started from leftovers, and turned into a minimalist project. The strain of genetics comes from Peru and is supposed to be a natural poop lover.

Objectives
Observe the first round of jars and their reactions to my first methods of environment control. A major hurdle will be maintaining humidity, which is the main variable I seek to observe.

Procedure
1. Prepare substrate
-Pasteurize it with steam
--40% equine manure, 40% coco coir, 20% vermiculite and a handful of coffee grounds, pure garden gypsum, and blood meal.
2. Put substrate into jars
-I did this in a non-sterile environment, simply scooping the sub into the jars and eyeballing the levels.
3. Inoculate the jars
-I used a WBS jar fully colonized to scoop LITERALLY 5-10 seeds into each jar. These were the seeds left in the jars which were not shaken out. Each jar had probably only 5 seeds worth.
4. Incubate the jars
-I added 1-3 CC of pan-distilled-water from boil-cleaned syringes, no contamination resulted from this. This was to add moisture which I felt it lacked through observation. The sub had sat for two weeks since it had been pasteurized and I thought it needed it. I've noticed that the jar with 1cc did poorly and is the 50% colonized jar, 2ccs did well enough to fully colonize yet looks weak, and 3ccs seems like it was enough extra water to really make it thrive.
-I stored the jars near partly over a radiator, in a shoe box, with no light. I hear much of conflict over light during spawn, so I go with what I could guarantee works (not optimized), and left the light variable set to zero.
-I later moved them away from the radiator to a shelf in my room with FULL light. There was no purpose to this, I just had to move things around. The colonization proceeded as planned. Will this have a negative effect on the pinning because I reduced temperature without adding FAE? I don't know. Seems as though the light in incubation made no difference.

Fruit the jars.
*2 jars are 100% and have been for 2 days. 1 other jar is about 60%, inner-colonized well, and I believe lack of moisture is to blame. I'm going to fruit it at the same time for educational purposes.

1. Spritz and fan. I bought a $1.75 travel sprayer for hair spray, cleaned it out well, and use it as my water sprayer. It's a pretty fine mist, but I can't measure it or compare it to an atomizer. I reiterate it's PRETTY damn fine, way more fine than a windex bottle's spray.
-I popped the tops off, and turned the flat lid upside down with rubber facing up. I believe this encourages air flow. My lids only have ONE hole in them, so I believe this is a staple.
-I do NOT tighten the round parts of the lids, I just twist them on and waited till they got tight, and then untightened them a smidgeon so that they are LOOSE.
-I sprayed the mist from about 5 inches away from the tops of the jars.
-I sprayed until I saw very very small beads of water could be seen forming
-I will change this method henceforth to FAN FIRST, followed by spraying AND fanning, followed by yet another spray, followed by me closing the jar.
-After I sprayed I fanned well, for 30 sec to a minute
-After I fanned, I misted again and quickly closed the lids to retain its moisture.

This is a work in progress.

THOUGHTS/CONCERNS

=If this method DOES work, I will try again, spraying less often, if at all.
=If this method does NOT work, I will try again, and probably try to add another hole or two to the tops with a 1/8th inch drill bit and polyfill to add more fresh air exchange while hitting the sweet spot for for humidity.
=CO2 is not a concern right now because of the fanning strategy, and if this works and I go ahead, I will try to solve the CO2 problem without turning the jars upside down.
=Perhaps some kind of straw contraption can be made to force air flow out of the lid from a level very close to the substrate to remove CO2.
=I would fashion an air bladder to the lid to agitate the air in and out. Perhaps it would be attached to the "straw" to somehow allow me to pump surface-level air out, and force fresh air in through a filtered hole. The more I write about this, the more it's growing on me, clearly more thought needs to go into this, although I think it may be my answer (just upon writing this).

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