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Offlinebrandwaffle
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Registered: 01/15/18
Posts: 42
Loc: California
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Tiny black dots near arrow holes on oyster straw bag
    #24916033 - 01/15/18 03:12 PM (7 years, 2 days ago)

I've been growing a variety of oyster mushrooms from purchased grain spawn using straw bags (~3-5 pounds wet). At first I was having regular contamination problems, but after increasing my steam pasteurizer to 160-180 (I use a plastic bin with a thermometer driving a power steamer) I got no contamination in 5 bags of Po.

That said, two later rounds of bulk spawning seem to have small black dots appearing near the holes. One batch is P. cornucopiae and the other is P. pulmonarius. The Pc I first noticed the dots on when I went to harvest some nice flushes. After removing one cluster, I noticed the black dots on the hole itself and also a bit on the cluster stems themselves (of course I threw these out before taking a picture--whoops). For what it's worth, the black dots did _not_ appear to be at the end of any fuzzy white growth. On the Pp bags, I've got full colonization, but some of the holes look like the pictures attached.



In case it's relevant, I switched from practice arrow heads (makes round holes) to the three-bladed broadhead type recommended by Stamets. I'm not sure this is significant, but I've noticed the flaps tend to occasionally stick open based on bag shape and/or where I poke the holes, so I wonder if this is exposing the holes to more contams. I also noticed I poked some holes by the grain spawn (rather than the straw) which you can see in the picture.

I'm sure my incubation room could be improved (it's an unused guest bedroom) and I plan to upgrade my operation to improve environmental conditions over time. That said, I'm really curious if a) I have a contamination problem here and b) if I do, is it likely from incomplete pasteurization or from environmental contamination during incubation? Thanks in advance for any info or help! I'm also happy to provide any additional details or answer questions about the setup if that helps.

Edited by brandwaffle (01/15/18 10:50 PM)

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Offlinebrandwaffle
Country Nerd
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Registered: 01/15/18
Posts: 42
Loc: California
Last seen: 4 years, 3 months
Re: Tiny black dots near arrow holes on oyster straw bag [Re: brandwaffle]
    #24918019 - 01/16/18 11:01 AM (7 years, 1 day ago)

As an update, I took another photo of the same spot on the bag as the 2nd and 3rd images in the original post. This is ~18 hours after the last photo was taken.

It doesn't seem to me that the dots are spreading or increasing in number. For additional info, I moved the two suspect bags into my "quarantine zone" in the garage for further evaluation. The temperature there is right for pinning but the humidity is likely quite low.

I'm afraid to put these bags into the fruiting chamber if they're contaminated, but I'm also starting to wonder if I'm just being paranoid here--they're straw bags, after all. I figure if this isn't a contamination issue, I'm not going to get anywhere until I put the bags in a humid environment.

Should I just give it a shot??? There are about 5 bags in the chamber now, all between first and second flush.


--------------------
Ask not for whom the waffle burns, it burns for thee.

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Offlinebrandwaffle
Country Nerd
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Registered: 01/15/18
Posts: 42
Loc: California
Last seen: 4 years, 3 months
Re: Tiny black dots near arrow holes on oyster straw bag [Re: brandwaffle]
    #24935010 - 01/22/18 09:28 PM (6 years, 11 months ago)

In case anyone has a similar problem in the future, I can report that my "contaminated" spots now look suspiciously like delicious oyster mushrooms. Seems like I was being unnecessarily concerned about my bulk substrate bags. Here are the little fellas now (they went in the fruiting chamber 2 days ago):


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Ask not for whom the waffle burns, it burns for thee.

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