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ceetee
Stranger
Registered: 10/20/18
Posts: 1
Last seen: 5 years, 4 months
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My First Time Growing - Feedback, Judgement, Questions
#25552553 - 10/20/18 12:37 PM (5 years, 4 months ago) |
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Hello everyone
So I've just harvested for my very first time and wanted to share my journey with you in the hopes that you could give me some feedback and tell me all the things I've done wrong so I can improve the next time Maybe it will also give another noobie confidence or help them when they have similar issues.
Let me start with a little disclaimer: This is my first time growing any mushrooms and I am also not an experienced consumer. So any little tip will help me!
After trying magic mushrooms for the first time (in the form of sclerotia) and having an amazing time I decided to try growing some myself. So I got a spore print for "Purple Mystic" as they were available and from a seemingly good source.
I started reading different posts here to figure out how and what to do. There are a lot of amazing tutorials!! Thank you VERY much! I could never have started this experiment without the great posts here! 
Day 0:

Prepared my BRF jars. Made sure to sterilize them for 1h in a pressure cooker. I transferred the spores to sterilized water and into a syringe. Nothing special to report here.
Day 9:

It's starting I had some micropore tape on the holes of the jars but I removed them after reading here that the dry verm barrier would be enough.
Day 21&22:


I took the cakes out of their jars and left them in tap water for 24h. It was a bit of challenge to get them out. The top part got pulled inwards but at the bottom it was still as wide as the jars so I had to help with flat knife. They bruised a bit but as I would shred them anyways I thought it shouldn't do much harm. But they were colonized completely throughout the entire mass. I noticed a very sweet smell, kind of like honey but also very mushroomy at the same time. I looked around and people seem to say that a sweet smell comes from bacteria so I was a bit worried about contamination. All of the jars smelled like this. -> When I look at how it developed I wouldn't say there was any bacterial contamination. What do you think?
The next day I shredded them and mixed them with new vermiculite and coir I thoroughly cooked for a while before.
I but the mix into an IKEA box: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/40102978/ I had lying around with a double trash bag liner at the bottom and the standard lid on it. -> This is probably one of my mistakes. I did not use a high tub as everyone else and had no clue how many holes are necessary and how big they should be... I'd love to get feedback on this. How many holes, how big and where would you position them on such a container? What thread would you recommend for creating the perfect tub/shoebox? What I did: Three ~5mm holes on both long sides, Two ~2cm holes in the lid at opposite ends.
I made sure to have a thin layer of verm/coir mix on top of it. I taped over all the holes I made for the time being.
Day 28-32:


It started to consolidate. Looked good to me from what I saw in other threads. -> I made another similar tub (a bit bigger and deeper) which has been in this stage for nearly a month now. There is some white fuzzyness on top at some spots but not as complete is with the images here. What should I do? Open the holes?
At Day 32 I opened the holes and taped 1 layer of micropore tape over it.
Day 44-46:



YEAH! Something is happening! NICE! I was pretty happy with what looked like dense pinning and some mushrooms already developing. I thought it was a bit strange how fat they were in relation to the cap so I decided to remove the tape over the holes and experimented with slightly opening the lid a couple of times. -> This is probably not the right thing to do. No tape from the beginning? How should I have handled this?
Day 50-51:



Now it seems to really start! But now I was a bit worried. Some of them were still rather fat than long and they had white fuzz at the bottom of the stems. I looked around here and read that the fuzz is mycelium growing on the stems and can be from too much moisture. The fat "asses" could be pretty much anything as I could not find a consensus here. I also noticed that the first couple of mushrooms seemed wrinkly. You can see a mushroom where the entire cap seems to be overgrown by mycelium and another monstrosity began to form... four mushrooms decided to merge into a huge monster. Among the first ones there was also one that did not really develop a cap and only had a brown dot on it.
I decided to add more air exchange by opening the lid even more. Now the walls and lid dried in about a day but the mycelium still had water droplets on it. Until now I had them under a plant lamp and decided to move them to a window which had direct sunlight for most of the day. (I did this maybe 1-2 days before taking these pictures)
-> At this stage I was really helpless, I did/do not understand what exactly was happening, I thought moisture was good, but maybe the holes were too small? Maybe they had not enough light? I could really use your insight into what I should improve and what was happening.
Day 52:



Oh no... what is happening, my changes might not have been the best, the first couple of mushrooms were bruised ans shriveled up,there were strange brown patches and some of the pins seem bruised. Too much light? Not enough moisture? -> Any idea on the bruising and brown patches?
Day 53:


What now? Practically overnight the mycelium decided to shrink enormously (like 2cm on each side) and pump out fruits! I decided to harvest.
Harvest:




A look at some of the mushrooms and the monstrosity. The stems were a but hollow but from what I read this is normal with this species.
I dried them for 24h:

And now I'm left with this:

-> It still seems to have a lot of pins but they don't seem to be moving at all. What should I do now? Dunk in water for 24h hours or wait? I should probably improve my box a bit but I could really use some guidance on how to get a second flush.
This is my journey until now. What do you think? What did I do wrong?
I know this does not fit the "Cultivation" aspect of this board but a couple of sentences about my impression after eating ~1g of them dried: I did eat about 4h hours before I took them so that might not have been very smart. (It was months after I last took mushrooms) Still I tried them. My trips before were very similar, I first really felt myself breathe through my nose and felt my lungs, then my arms became very light at the same time I was very euphoric, content and giggly until finally I got some color visuals and patterns. But this time it was very, very different. At the beginning it felt more like I took sleeping pills, like something heavy was on my body. I never felt the breathing, never was giggly or euphoric and also the visuals if you can call them were not really comparable and minimal. It was very strange, my body felt completely normal just my head kind of dizzy and my perception a bit shifted. It's not like I felt nothing or that it was bad but it was absolutely not what I was expecting. I really don't know what was going on. I'll try again in a week with 2g and a completely empty stomach. I'm a bit confused and maybe a bit disappointed. I never wanted to recreate the last experiences as that is not possible but I hoped for a more positive reaction. Maybe they are just super weak? That would be a shame
Edited by ceetee (10/20/18 12:46 PM)
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Apc123
Mushroom momma



Registered: 04/26/18
Posts: 1,243
Loc: United States
Last seen: 28 days, 2 hours
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Re: My First Time Growing - Feedback, Judgement, Questions [Re: ceetee]
#25552646 - 10/20/18 01:21 PM (5 years, 4 months ago) |
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If I were u I would pick what is big enough to pick then do a dunk 12-24 hrs. I would make more/bigger wholes for sure! I use a 1 and a quarter inch drill but u can buy them for around $10 or $15 it will save u a lot of time in the future on other tubs. If u don't want to buy one just make more smaller holes close together. Look up hole placement if u haven't already. I think the window in the sun is good if ur not using a 6500k cfl light bulb. Natural sun light works great. Congrats on ur first grow btw!
Oh and btw don't over mist! Its a mistake id say most if not all of us have made wait for it to evaporate before u mist again.
-------------------- The thing about deceit is, you don't know your being deceived... The only thing I am sure about is that I know nothing - socrates Believe nothing you hear and half of what u see.
  
Edited by Apc123 (10/20/18 02:27 PM)
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