This post from fahster gave me the top watering idea. Its almost 10 years old but it's good stuff.
https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/10882191#10882191
I got the idea from PF himself off his old site. He was the first vendor I ordered from. It's the inner rez tek... I used it because I didn't dunk prior to first flush, I watered slowly over the course of few days... Actually, here is an explanation of what I did with the cakes... It's in my tek index over at 'topia but I should have it here also.
I wrote it a long time ago and I don't have time to reread it, so I'm just going to quote the entire thing so some of it may be a little outdated or some of you may not agree with it, but it worked for me...
Quote:
CAKE WATERING TIPS
The idea is a simple one... if you want more mushrooms, you need more water... if you add more water, you need more FAE . There is a certain point of water retention in a cake that is most beneficial to the cakes production of pins and the maturation of those pins into full fruit-bodies. I call it the "Arc of Excellence", others call it the "Point of Diminishing Returns".
Picture an Arc and at the pinnacle of this arc is a point... this point is where the retention of water is at it's most beneficial to pin formation/development and then the maturation of those pins, hopefully 100% of the pins formed or at least most of them while safely resisting contams or drying out. To the left of that point is less water and to the right is too much water. Going too much to the right can result in contamination due to the water content being too high and the cake cannot cycle all the water has available to it. This over-saturation can also lead to poor pin formation and/or pin abortion. Not enough water can also cause poor pin formation/maturation. adjustments on either side of the point are easy to make... simply add more water if the cake is too dry or allow the cake to dry out a bit if it's too wet.
The inner reservoir is a great way to increase water distribution evenly throughout your cakes. even tho it's a small column (about the diameter of a nickel), it has no nutes and therefore is not completely colonized; only partially which keeps the reservoir intact and allows for absorption all along its length. This also acts as an extension of your top and bottom casing layers providing water to all parts of the fruiting surface. it's true that cakes have more surface area, but without proper water hydration, that extra area is unused. I highly recommend the inner reservoir and that it's made when the cakes are made... this allows the cake to slightly colonize it which, again, keeps it intact and stops water from just draining out the other end and also allows the cake to absorb water from it thru the myc that thinly colonizes it.
It's quite easy to know when to add water to the cake if we follow the processes and environment that the cake is subject to. Adding water to the cake right after birth is the best way to achieve that "point". This is because the cake is sterile right after birth, which helps with the contamination risk. The cake also doesn't have to struggle and reserve water; resulting is a healthy, unstressed cake right from the get-go. This is why dunked cakes or cakes that water has been fractionally added typically do better than undunked cakes on their first flush.
If you Dunk your cakes after birth, I would Dunk for no longer than 12 hours; changing the water every 4 and do it in a fridge if possible. Then apply a moist to wet casing layer and leave be unwatered until about mid pinning.. of course doing your FAE's at least twice a day. I've done both, but lately I've chosen fractionally adding water after Birthing over dunking . This is how I do that:
You can (highly recommended, def. during the summer months) pasteurize your casing material before application and boil the water you plan on using for the soaking of the casing via bottle sprayer
1. I put down a piece of tin foil on the Perlite and put a small pile of verm on the foil and soak with water.
2. open the jars and poor off any uncolonized verm air barrier... I don't scrape off the verm that is attached to the cake... why? this is sterilized casing material.. no reason to remove it if you're just going to put verm on there anyhow (unless of course you are using a verm/coir mixture or something similar). But regular verm by itself works great.
3. then I birth the cake and hold it under water for about a minute with verm barrier and all... this hydrates that verm in the inner reservoir and the air barrier.
4. I then apply a thick casing layer, about that size is good (1.5 inches), to the top of the cake and soak it with water... to the point that there is water draining off the cake when it's tilted a little bit and place it on top of the pile of wet verm on the foil. the cake will suck up this water in the next couple days... basically, this is a slow Dunk but with lots of air available during the absorption.
5. Now you can do what I like to do and stack another cake on top of that one... this is a great space saver and utilizes the space you are already using. To stack the cakes, you need to put another piece of foil between them or water will get pulled down from the top cake via gravity; this will water log the bottom cake and dry out the top cake. You'll probably get a nice flush from the bottom one but that cake will probably contam the next time around due to being water logged... putting a piece of foil between them stops this action of forcing the water down or at least slows it considerably. Now just repeat the steps for the top cake and put a small pile of soaked verm on the foil and so on.
6. Now once you have your single verm soaked cake, you give it a couple days to absorb that soaking... I come back on the third day of birth and soak the top casing layer again to the point of pooling... This gets the cake about to the that "point" on the arc...
**note** -if you are doing the two cake "towers" only soak the top cakes top verm casing layer... the bottom cake just doesn't need a second soaking... it doesn't lose much water due to it being in close proximity of the Perlite and being "capped" off by the top cake which allows for less evaporation. some of the water from the top cakes does find it's way to the bottom cake too, so that second soaking will most likely water log the cake.
7. Now I let the cakes go without another watering until mid fruiting where the cakes need lots of water to extend their fruits. Watering here can replace the need for a Dunk between flushes one and two.
There are is a large amount of factors that also play a role in when you should add water to the cake (which I do so by watering the center of the top casing layer directly over where the inner reservoir is located). The stages in which the growth of the myc. is in is a big one.. which is also entwined with when you birthed the cakes. If you birth the cake before Pinning starts invitro , longer periods of evaporation need to be taken into consideration before the cake starts Pinning , which can be upwards of a week or more. But then entwined with that is the RH of the air that you are exchanging when doing your FAE's. So lets say you are in a climate where in the winter the RH is very low and the air is dry... when you do your FAE's in that climate, more evaporation is going to take place from your cakes and Perlite ; whereas, if you are doing your FAE's in a climate where the RH is high (the summer months anywhere), then less evaporation after exchanging your new air is going to occur and that balance on that "point" will remain steady with little fluctuation so less water will need to be replaced. Even if you are in a low RH environment, a small amount of water will need to be replaced as there is little growth in the way of pins which results in little need for the cake to tap into it's reserve within it's structure. Even during the Pinning stage, small amounts of water are used in pin formation (more than before pin formation but not much). This can be seen in how dense the pins are.
Myc. is going to produce its pins at a point on the cake where four factors come together in the best ratio for optimal fruit development through spore dispersal: nutrients, air, water, and structure. This is why Pinning on the edges are a preferred place for myc. in a overlayed casing or normal casing or on a cake, where the DEC and myc. meet. (thanks Golly ). This is why you want to keep your DEC nice and moist during the pinnig stage... this signals the cake that this is a good spot to grow a whole shit load of mushies.. and if the cake is nice and healthy and not struggling in any way, it'll put out a nice pinset and see all, if not most of those pins to maturation. But in order to see all those pins mature, another step should be taken.
This is where larger amounts of water can be added safely to the cakes' casing.. Right after pin maturity (right before the caps starts breaking away from the stem), the cake is getting ready to use A LOT of it's water reserve. This is because it is using this water to inflate and elongate the cells in it's fruitbodies... not to say that tissue gain in the fruits is completely stopped but certainly slowed as water inflates the mushrooms. This is (ime) why the growth of mushrooms happens so rapidly after pin maturation. So it's during mid fruiting that water should or can be added to the casing layer so that the cake can easily use this new water through absorption by gravity and inner reservoir . This will permit more of those mature pins to go on to mature sporulating fruit-bodies. This watering can also keep the water retained in the cake high in volume if it's replaced as the cake used it during pin maturation. once the cake is fully mature.. the cake will still be heavy and therefore all that is needed is a bleach dip and a new pasteurized casing layer to be added and once again soaked (minus the third day of flush soak, it's unneeded and possibly harmful to your cakes--- but should be taken into consideration by how hydrated your cakes are if it should be done or not) to bring the cake back to that "point". But a Dunk is never a bad idea... just other ways to go at it. And some strains prefer dryer conditions than others so you really should play around with it... find your own way of doing things.. keep track of what you do and your results... And if you do decide to experiment, don't put all your eggs in one basket, so to speak.
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I've stopped asking. I just take this as normal from these cakes now.
WhiteBoy
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