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RealityCzech
Entropy enthusiast


Registered: 12/29/16
Posts: 90
Last seen: 6 years, 4 months
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SGFC style box and dust...
#23996654 - 01/09/17 09:17 PM (7 years, 1 month ago) |
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So I've used a shotgun fruiting chamber in a spare room for a long time to fruit my beech mushrooms. I was able to keep that one room quite a bit cooler than the rest of the house just by closing off vents and keeping the solid core door shut up tight. I only needed the chamber because I technically live in a desert and the chamber lets me keep the humidity up (seriously, it's like Arrakis here but colder). A few jars with thin plastic cones to restrict the growth area and force them taller placed in the SGFC and it's been good to go with minimal fanning or fuss. Unfortunately, that spare room is now a guest bedroom and I won't be able to use it anymore.
Now, I do have an alternate location... namely, an unfinished storage/utility area in the basement. It's just about the same temperature and I've got some shelving that is about waist high that I can put my chamber up on. The reason I've not used it before is that it is fairly small and also contains a litter box for two cats. This means, in addition to the loads of dust from the litter box, there is quite a bit of contamination of the sort I don't really feel like feeding to my family.
I know that using fiber fill in all the holes in the SGFC is going to restrict air exchange, so that solution seems to be right out. Any thoughts or suggestions regarding keeping my SGFC clean so near to the litter box? Best I can think of is trying to rig a drape between the two and maybe sacrificing a goat for luck. That, or I'm going to have to completely rethink how I'm fruiting the beech mushrooms.
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Forrester
aspiring sociopath


Registered: 02/05/13
Posts: 9,351
Loc: Northeast USA
Last seen: 1 month, 26 days
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Maybe try a monotub instead?
Honestly I've had VERY limited success in fruiting Beech, so any tips from you I would really appreciate!
The few things I did learn was that they seem to like cold, and much drier that most other edibles. I got the best results when I went on vacation and tossed a bag out in the sunporch (unheated, unhumidified, completely neglected). Came back to the biggest beech I've gotten.
Tried them tons of times in a greenhouse, with humidity that other mushrooms like, with pretty shitty results.
So it would seem to me that a monotub would still allow the cold, keep out the dust (via the polyfill stuffed in the holes), provide little enough moisture, and the lack of airflow seems like it would be fine for beech.
Just an idea though, congratulations on getting beech down, it's a hard one!
-------------------- Repugnant is a creature who would squander the ability to lift an eye to heaven, conscious of his fleeting time here. ------------------- Have some medicinal mushrooms and want to get the most out of them? Try this double extraction method.
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RealityCzech
Entropy enthusiast


Registered: 12/29/16
Posts: 90
Last seen: 6 years, 4 months
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Re: SGFC style box and dust... [Re: Forrester]
#23998311 - 01/10/17 01:52 PM (7 years, 1 month ago) |
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As far as fruiting beech goes, I think I've learned a lot more what not to do than what to do.
Don't grow in trays... they don't seem to come up more than a couple at a time in trays if at all. Jars with a restricted neck (so there is only a small amount of the surface exposed) seem to work best. I put a plastic cone at the top. It's just a piece of acetate that I've cut so it works like the cones they put around a dog's neck after surgery. It isn't necessary, but they seem to grow taller and in a tighter cluster.
Don't mist them a bunch. I don't grow cubensis, but the way people talk about them is like you need to mist them every time you take a piss. I think the beech need some humidity in the air (I can't fruit them outside the SGFC), but not nearly that much. I only use about 3 inches of perlite, and I mist the perlite every 2 or 3 days. If you mist the perlite and water runs out the bottom, you are using more than you need... that being said, I keep a towel underneath because I'm really bad about this. The truth is, the excess runs out if I do get too much.
Don't fan them. The only time they get more fresh air than what the holes allow through is when I mist them (or get antsy and peek). This is just the chamber being opened for a minute or two. I don't actively try to move the air.
Don't fruit in the summer. I know that sounds strange, but I can't get a room in my house cold enough during the summer to get them to fruit. I keep it between about 56 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit where I fruit them. To be honest, I thought this was way too cold when I first tried them so, like an idiot, I ignored the advice of an experienced grower and just put them at room temp. The result? Absolutely nothing. In fact, the mycelium just got denser and denser until the whole top of the jar looked and felt like dense styrofoam and there was no chance of fruiting them after that.
If I think of anything else, I'll put it in here. I hope that helps.
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Forrester
aspiring sociopath


Registered: 02/05/13
Posts: 9,351
Loc: Northeast USA
Last seen: 1 month, 26 days
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Quote:
RealityCzech said: As far as fruiting beech goes, I think I've learned a lot more what not to do than what to do.
Don't grow in trays... they don't seem to come up more than a couple at a time in trays if at all. Jars with a restricted neck (so there is only a small amount of the surface exposed) seem to work best. I put a plastic cone at the top. It's just a piece of acetate that I've cut so it works like the cones they put around a dog's neck after surgery. It isn't necessary, but they seem to grow taller and in a tighter cluster.
Don't mist them a bunch. I don't grow cubensis, but the way people talk about them is like you need to mist them every time you take a piss. I think the beech need some humidity in the air (I can't fruit them outside the SGFC), but not nearly that much. I only use about 3 inches of perlite, and I mist the perlite every 2 or 3 days. If you mist the perlite and water runs out the bottom, you are using more than you need... that being said, I keep a towel underneath because I'm really bad about this. The truth is, the excess runs out if I do get too much.
Don't fan them. The only time they get more fresh air than what the holes allow through is when I mist them (or get antsy and peek). This is just the chamber being opened for a minute or two. I don't actively try to move the air.
Don't fruit in the summer. I know that sounds strange, but I can't get a room in my house cold enough during the summer to get them to fruit. I keep it between about 56 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit where I fruit them. To be honest, I thought this was way too cold when I first tried them so, like an idiot, I ignored the advice of an experienced grower and just put them at room temp. The result? Absolutely nothing. In fact, the mycelium just got denser and denser until the whole top of the jar looked and felt like dense styrofoam and there was no chance of fruiting them after that.
If I think of anything else, I'll put it in here. I hope that helps.
Excellent tips there! For a new member with few posts, you've just posted some really great advice on growing one of the species few in this forum have really gotten down. Deserves a rating for sure, and thanks for the advice! It does add a bit and completely go along with the little I've learned about them...
-------------------- Repugnant is a creature who would squander the ability to lift an eye to heaven, conscious of his fleeting time here. ------------------- Have some medicinal mushrooms and want to get the most out of them? Try this double extraction method.
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RealityCzech
Entropy enthusiast


Registered: 12/29/16
Posts: 90
Last seen: 6 years, 4 months
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Re: SGFC style box and dust... [Re: Forrester]
#24000616 - 01/11/17 09:35 AM (7 years, 1 month ago) |
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I've been growing beech and oysters for years. An old friend taught me quite some time ago. Recently, the same friend was showing me a golden oyster lineage she has that produces some fruits with variation in color, almost like bands of darker and lighter yellows. She was talking about how she had been doing multispore, cloning the most interesting fruits, then (if the phenotype was present in the clones) getting spore prints and repeating the process.
Humans have been selectively breeding for a very, very long time. Mushrooms have a short enough life cycle that we can see results over shorter periods of time than with a lot of the species we've domesticated. When I decided to start to try this myself, I needed more information to start coming up with faster ways to get a new generation (even if I'm getting very small yields), better agar technique, etc. It turns out, although I'm not interested in cubensis, it is the cubensis growers who seem to be doing all the innovating.
I got some info from my friend on how she's been doing her breeding program... suffice to say, she is doing this over long periods of time as a side project and hasn't really tried anything new over the grow techniques we've been using. I'd like to see if there's a better way.
So, I'm here... learning and trying to adapt some of these techniques to the species I'm working with. I'm sure there will be a lot of failures (like my first attempt at using popcorn), some successes (like my current batch of beech PF cakes that are colonizing really fast), but I'm keeping meticulous notes and I'll figure out what works and what doesn't. In the meantime, if some of what I've learned prior to this can help some other people out, I figure sharing that information is a sort of reciprocity since I'm getting tons and tons of free information from everybody else here.
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