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This is my second grow. First grow was Golden Teacher. For that grow, I inoculated 18 cakes and only 6 made it to birthing because the others were either contaminated or insufficiently cultivated (likely due to contamination). I got three excellent flushes out of those six cakes, however.
For this second grow — for which I chose Penis Envy — I concentrated on doing the inoculation process perfectly right and sterile. I was rewarded with 24 out of 24 jars cultivating perfectly and completely. Very clean and nice. I also did 8 spawn bags, 2 of which I discarded after the cultivation process because I was not confident they weren’t contaminated (basically, mushy yellow stuff with maybe blue but maybe green spots in places... I figured better safe than sorry).
Cakes and bags cultivated from early November to late December. They were completely done at 4 or 5 weeks but I had to wait an additional 4 weeks because of out of town travel.
On January 1, all 24 cakes were dunked for 18 hours. ~8 dunk and roll, ~8 dunk and roll and double end cased, ~6 double end cased, and ~2 no vermiculite added as a control / experiment.
One by one, I threw out 5 of the bags due to what I thought was contamination. Some had lots of mutant blobs, to the point I was left with 3. 1 wasn’t showing any progress and so I crumbled it up, and placed it on top of and underneath 1” of vermiculite in a plastic container, which is my pathetic inexperienced attempt at a “bulk grow” but which I really regard as sort of an experiment. It is separate from the room with my main fruiting chamber, as I figure it is / will get contaminated, although there weren’t any obvious signs of contamination. Just non-productivity / fruiting.
At 2 weeks after birthing, there were no pins on any of the 24 cakes (so I thought), and so I took the two best / remaining of the spawn bags and took them out of their bags because I thought maybe the lack of air was contributing to the “myc piss” / mutant blobbing in the others and because there were a couple lonely pins and it seemed they had no where to grow since they were on the side up against the bag. I put them in the fruiting chamber because without the bags I knew they wouldn’t have near enough humidity. The risk I was taking was that they were contaminated and would now contaminate my 24 (BRF) cakes. I didn’t think too much because after 2 weeks and no pins and after I read some stuff on here about PE not liking BRF cakes and being hard for newbies to grow, I was kind of giving up much hope anyhow.
Anyway, after I placed the spawn bags into the fruiting chamber, I noticed that in 1 of the 24 cakes, actually I FINALLY have the first pins, which actually look quite healthy.
The purpose of this post is: (1) to get any general help / advice; and (2) to specifically get advice on whether the spawn bag ones (bigger rectangular “cakes” on the right) are infected / contaminated or not and whether I should remove them immediately, lest they ruin the rest of my grow (the BRF cakes, which started off so promising but which have been disappointingly not productive until just recently when I got those first pins).
I’ve learned my lesson not to invest in PE, at least at my stage of experience. I’m confident that if these were Golden Teachers and I’d stick to the cakes only (not bags) that I would have a very successful grow right now.
As for the setup, I know everyone’s a fan of the shotgun tek here. I had successful fruiting the first time around and so didn’t bother with that (I figured to focus my incremental efforts / improvement on the inoculation part, which did pay off). What I’m wondering now is if my fruiting efforts are insufficient or if if’s Just I need to be patient with PE (and whether the spawn bag cakes are contaminated, of course).
Method has been to cultivate at 60-65F (which I think is lower than ideal but which actually worked excellent) and to place on wet perlite in airtight transparent container, the lid of which I leave about 5-10% open on the top, misting above cakes, on sides, and inside of roof 2-3x per day with 2-3 mins of fanning 2-3x per day. 12 hours cool LED & fluorescent light 12 hours on and off. Humidity starts at 99% and works way down to 90% in between mistings. Last two weeks (in fruiting chamber), temperature at first (first few days) was in low to mid 60s and even was high 50s on a couple of occasions, but I’ve since been able to bring the temps up to the high 60s and at times (i.e., especially when the lights are on) into the low to occasionally mid 70s.
Thanks!
PS — looks like I need to research how to post pics. Will have up soon.
PS — sorry, the photos are in my “Gallery”. Can you please view them there? Thanks!!
Edited by mysticalmagic (01/14/18 03:19 PM)
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