Caps McGee said:

I soak and simmer until the milo  (larger of the 2 smallest grain, red to brown)is al denté, and pat the bottom of the strainer until it stops dripping, pc 2 hrs for quarts, 90 minutes for pints... they'll do fine between 65-75... I'd guess you're too dry incubating is a bad idea, your jars will be a few degrees warmer from metabolic action... I'd shake the hell out of them to distribute the colonized grain throughout as evenly as possible, and shelf it ..  . If in 48 hours it's not done anything,  start over... IMO, any grain is going to have more nutrients than needed, and thus any grain is as good as any other, it's about finding a prep that works for you

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Mycelesoul said:

How big is your GE hole? Maybe things are drying up in the jars?

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Caps McGee said:

Teks generally call for 1/4"... I'd guess the hair dryer the culprit, the grains are still visibly moist when I load my jars... oats are suggested to be dry on the outside, but would still avoid hair dryers 

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Caps McGee said:

How big is your "inoculation hole"?

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Caps McGee said:

How big is your "inoculation hole"?

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JHOVA said:

you got a lot of soggy wet grains in there. what grain prep are you using?



comparison of properly hydrated milo. millet is the smallest grain and has to be hydrated more carefully. fooman hot water bath worked well for me in preventing exploded grains when i used WBS mix.

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SHROOMSISAY01 said:

If I were you I would soak enough bird seed to do one jar for 24 hours drain it for 15 mins.  pressure cook for 90 mins. Then inoculate with your syringe. If you don't have a syringe left to inoculate with I would wrap a fork In aluminum foil and put it in your pc with the jar. Then I would use the fork to do a G2G transfer of just the good mycelium closet to the top of a jar. And if the Jar survives you can expand with a few more G2G transfers. I think what you have is the grain is to wet to be colonized but the mycelium is still good that grew in the jars. You really have nothing to loose trying this.

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Trippies2122 said:

Finally able to get the pictures uploading. I think I got the answers I needed, thank you everyone for the help!!!

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Sivarted said:

If you used multiple syringes on those jars, you used way too much.  You dont need more than a few drops

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SHROOMSISAY01 said:

Sivarted said:

If you used multiple syringes on those jars, you used way too much.  You dont need more than a few drops

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I am assuming he inoculated more than the jars in the pic. In his OP he said "So I have quite a few wbs jars that are coming up on being a month old" If not that is another problem I do 1 to 2 ml per jar when I used a syringe its been a while so you might want to check that. To much spore solution will change the water content of the jar and can make it to wet.

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I assumed the same, but "several syringes" is too much for anything under like 50 or 60 jars (although I did assume he did fewer than that).  And using two spore prints for anything under like a couple hundred jars is massively wasteful.  (One print should make dozens of syringes)  2ml is probably too much, 1ml is unnecessary.  It really only takes a little bit, and anything beyond that is overkill (or, as you mentioned, actually harmful because of extra added water)

Of course, I also think using spores at all other than the very first time is less than ideal, so theres that. 

Trippies2122 said:

I used half of 4 syringes, about 1-2 cc each jar. I said I used multiple syringes because someone suggested a bad syringe, I was just throwing out that I didnt use the same syringe for all the jars

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Sivarted said:

Also, definitely start working with agar, but dont bother trying to isolate.  Clone a mushroom and clean up the culture if necessary.

For 99.99999-ish percent of people in this hobby, isolation is both pointless and potentially harmful.  (What if what you end up isolating is a strain that fruits poorly, or not at all, for example)

Spores are the slowest and least clean way to inoculate jars.

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Trippies2122 said:

Sivarted said:

Also, definitely start working with agar, but dont bother trying to isolate.  Clone a mushroom and clean up the culture if necessary.

For 99.99999-ish percent of people in this hobby, isolation is both pointless and potentially harmful.  (What if what you end up isolating is a strain that fruits poorly, or not at all, for example)

Spores are the slowest and least clean way to inoculate jars.

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Can you explain to me what you mean by clean up the culture? I thought isolating was cleaning it up? And making it into a single "cell" I know that's not right terminology. Isn't working with agar and isolating getting it to one true strain is what makes using agar so much faster and how people get jars colonized in 10 days and have such great canopies??

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