So, as you can tell from the subject, I didn't exactly decide to start with the PF Tek exactly. I had all the stuff lying around to setup a humidity controlled greenhouse, in a small, dedicated, plastic covered and insulated grow/sterile room (closet sized tbh but high ceilings, used to be a storage room, so it's got pleeenty of space for a whole martha style GH and doing other junk in the room), so I went for it.
I also have free access to weeell composted horse manure, and had a few big bags of WBS lying around, so once the two PF Tek jars I knocked up finished colonizing I just decided to crumble 'em up and spawn em to a few trays of manure.
Actually, one of the PF jars took off WAY faster than the other -- I ignored them during the colonizing stage, and when I went to check them, the one jar was just ripe and ready, but the other had grown two whole mushrooms up through the verm layer and against the top of the jar lid.
I don't have any pictures of any of this, though.
Here's where I'm at now. Each PF cake was spawned to a separate bulk tray at the same time and incubated. (Un?)-surprisingly, one of the bulk trays colonized MUCH faster. The other one is struggling along, and looks to have dried and stalled out -- the incubation chamber was unfortunately left to get pretty hot for a while without it being noticed when someone else was supervising it for a few days, though ofc the first tray seems to have survived that "drought" (if I'm correct that that's even at all remotely what happened lol) because it's flourishing atm.
Both trays are in the GHFC, and have been for 4-5 days.
One of the trays is still covered with foil, with a bunch of holes poked, since that's the struggling one and I'm hoping to "rehydrate" it a bit... if possible?
The first tray seems to have decreased in size, like a PF cake in a jar, as it's visibly smaller than the surrounding cake tin tray. (Mind you the trays are aluminum/foil, which I learned after I'd spawned them to those trays that the fungi can and will eat that metal eventually?) There's a great deal of resulting moisture between the cake and the tin, creating an abundant microclimate for side pinning, and there's an abundance of light in the grow room so it seems that the majority of the pinning is concentrated to the sides. Subsequently I've got the "speedy tray" sitting right under the nozzle in the GH where the ultrasonic mist comes in, the other tray with the foil is right beside it towards where the rest of the moisture proliferates.
Both trays are at the top of the GH btw, the mist comes in through a hose shoved through a hole in the side of the top of the GH plastic and sealed in. An ultrasonic mister next to the GH with an aquarium air pump provides constant FAE and RH through that hose -- that's the only input.
Both trays sit on a (relatively shallow, in terms of perlite) tray of perlite on the top shelf of the GH, the tray doesn't nearly cover the whole shelf mind you so there's plenty of space for airflow down. The other shelves are atm all empty, except the floor/bottom shelf, which has two identical perlite trays with a separation in the middle, as a kind of large vent between the perlite trays. The zip door of the GH opens in front of both trays, so both zippers are raised a few inches above the surface of each tray as well.
Heat is provided into the room by furnace ventilation, though I think insects can get in abundantly atm so I'm going to have to do more to patch that up with some filters or something to ensure clean airflow.
Anyway, this has all been very rambly because as you may imagine I just celebrated the first real good pics taken with some bowls.
Keep in mind these trays are both basically just the "sacrificial run" to break in the grow room and FC and get down some basic, practical understanding of the whole process, on my part. So this is where I gladly accept all ridicule for the plentiful mistakes doubtlessly made so far and figure out what steps to go from here.
Btw I'm liking Violet Tek and Violet's culturing teks and would have a much more convenient time with spawn and the actual legwork of everything if using PP5 plastic containers and straight grains instead of mussing around with horse shit and bigger trays. My incubator has a large assortment of jars in there atm that I knocked up a few days ago for just some more random experimentation, so I'm trying to decide what I want to do with most of those too hehe.
Anyway here's the pics, enough noob rambling they're all of the "speedy tray", will have to get em to take pics of other stuff later haha
Err: having issues uploading... so... can only link to an imgur gallery atm. I think that's okay? http://imgur.com/wuZsqLT,pdPzvQX,ocQ07Ly,doQHM2T,Qo3iTlQ,rH7Es99,zI4bUWH,xjRIGjW,V700dAH,mbpGiaZ,B7G8Egj,X5Vdzne,xBx4xf8,s8KGoZz#0 Hope so lol.. Will update as soon as I can upload!
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