I'm in the process of my first grow - PF Tek growing GT and B+. All my 1/2 pint jars dried out really bad during colonization and I want to figure out why so that my next grow doesn't end up the same. I spent hours reading Shea25's "PF Tek Done Right" and tons of other threads on here and did my best to follow everything. Sorry for the long post but I wanted to put all the details in so someone can point out what may have gone wrong.
My spores came from Sporeworks so they should be legit. I followed the recipe for BRF subtrate (I used the optional gypsum like Shea25 recommended). I inoculated 15 BRF jars. For the lids I used the RTV silicone method with Tyvek in the middle. Here's a pic of the underside of one of my jars:
My dry verm layer may have been a little too thick - it was a little deeper than just the threads of the lid of the jar. But I just followed the recipe in "PF Tek Done Right", filled up all the jars evenly with what was in my big mixing bowl, then covered up the remaining height with dry verm.
I then filled up a clear tub with 5-6 inches of water and put an aquarium heater in it. I set it to 80 degrees. I placed another clear tub on top of that one with a couple 5lb dumbbells in it to force the water below to come up the sides of the inner tub a few inches. I placed all 15 jars directly onto the plastic inner tub. I had read that this wasn't necessary - that you could just set them on a cupboard, but I was keeping them in the basement and temps would have gotten into the low 60's at night. I purchased a nice wireless temp/hygrometer that pushes data to my phone that records it on an app so I can track it at all times. The sensor was placed on top of one of the jars. Peak lows during the night was 68°, peak high during the day was 79°. Average was right in the middle there - 74° or so.
During the night I placed the clear lid to the tote kiddie-corner over the top of the tote and put a small blanket over just the lid part (so that some fresh air would still get in where the lid was kiddie-corner and not covering the tote). If I didn't do that I wouldn't have kept the peak low at 68°. Every morning I removed that lid. A light was near the tote during the day and turned off at night. It was one of those new bulbs that hardly puts off any heat and it was maybe 6" away from the tub. NOTE: My roommate is now cool with the whole shroom thing so for future grows I will skip the water-incubator and put the jars upstairs where it is warmer.
Jars seemed to be going well. 7 days in there was a good amount of mycelium in all jars. 16 days in I felt like the outside of the jars were pretty well covered, so I considered that the beginning of my "1-week consolidation" point. However, while the mycelium grew well 360° around the jar, it didn't grow all the way to the top of where I thought I had started my dry verm layer. It seemed like it only grew 1/2 to 3/4 the way up the 1/2 pint jar.
1 day into consolidation I see a small blue spot on one jar. 3 days into consolidation 10/15 jars now have blue areas. 6 days into consolidation (22 days now from inoculation) only 2 jars are free of the blue bruising. All other jars have a good deal of bruising all around. I posted here to the forum to ask if it was contam or bruising - people said it was bruising from the jars being way too dry. Here's pics of some of the jars:
You may be able to see in some of the pics that it looked like the BRF mixture "pulled away" from the sides of the jars - like it shrunk as it dried. There was empty airspace between the glass and substrate/mycelium. It also seemed like the dry verm layer had fallen down into that space and took up more space then I originally designated for it. The next day I dunked all the cakes for 24 hours and then placed them in my FC.
Here's what a couple cakes looked like after rinsing them off after their 24-hour dunk (this was one of the good ones - other ones were almost completely blue all the way around):
Also notice how "short" the cakes are. They aren't anywhere near as tall as some of the pics I see on here.
All 15 cakes have been in the FC for 9 days now. They all started growing the white spikey stuff around them, so I thought they were going to rebound. But so far the vast majority of the cakes still look like this:
I have harvested 64 grams wet so far - that all came from just two cakes. There are two other cakes that have some action going. So 11/15 cakes seem to be duds (or are just taking a really, really long time).
Some of my thoughts on where I may have gone wrong:
1) Did my substrate just start out too dry? (I measured and followed the recipe.)
2) Was the middle hole for my Tyvek GE too large, allowing too much air in (and thus drying it out)?
3) Did I screw up by using the water-incubator?
Edited by bakersdozen (09/18/19 08:17 AM)
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