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KorinsBeans
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When/how to remove darkening pinheads from BRF cake? 1
#26575026 - 04/03/20 10:51 AM (3 years, 9 months ago) |
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Long-time lurker and new cultivator here. Thank you to everyone on this forum for all of the invaluable resources here. After lots of searching of these forums, I still need some advice.
Background: PF Tek with 1/2 Pint BRF cakes and B+ spore syringes. PC sterilized, left to consolidate for about 4 days after cakes looked fully colonized. Birthed, 24-hour dunk in tepid tap water, rolled in dry verm all over, and placed into 36 QT SGFC built to spec (1/4” holes, 2” apart on all sides including top and bottom, ~4-5” of perlite, elevated to allow air flow through bottom holes). Cakes are sitting on jar lids with damp verm. Fine misting and fanning 4-5 times a day, with hygrometer fluctuating between 80-99% humidity and temperatures fluctuating between 66-72 F (averaging around 68 most of the time). I wrapped a 6500K LED strip around the SGFC to supplement the fairly dim indirect light that enters the room. Pic of setup below.


I live in the midwest, so temps and humidity are lower than ideal, and the forced-air centralized heat in the house dries everything up.
Here’s where the problems began. I birthed prior to seeing any hyphal knots, so I now recognize that the cakes were not 100% FC at the time of birthing. Not knowing this at the time, I was prioritizing the evaporation pinning trigger by misting and fanning fairly vigorously (maybe 1-2 min depending on how misted the cakes looked). Over the next 8 days, I gradually saw knotting appearing in a few spots, but no visible pins. Every time I returned to mist and fan, the verm was dry to the touch, and when I lifted the cakes they felt somewhat light (hard to tell without experience). So I upped the misting starting on day 9, making sure the verm casing was almost soaked. I also put a cool-air humidifier in the room to increase the room’s humidity to ~50% RH. Again, every time I would return to the mist and fan, the cakes were dry or barely moist, so I would mist them far more than is generally advised.
On day 10, I started to see some pins darkening in what faintly looked like pinheads.

It seemed like the extra misting was giving the cakes much needed hydration, after I dried them out by fanning excessively before significant knotting had occurred. I kept at it for 2 more days, but the pinheads showing virtually no growth—only slightly darkening.

So, on day 12, I took RR’s advice on mid-flush rehydration and put the cakes in a shallow saucer of water for about 4 hours. I rehydrated the perlite as well, and replaced the verm-filled jar lids with just the lid part (not the threaded ring) wrapped in foil (so that a small amount of water can pool and sit at the base of the cakes). Not even 12 hours passed, and I had real pins coming out of 3 of my 4 cakes!

Unfortunately, there are maybe 6 or 7 of these in-between knots/pins that appear to be completely stalled. Only one of them appears to be quickly darkening, but the rest are beige with a few expected darker spots (like a mushroom pinhead embryo or something...). I’m 95% sure that the reason for the stalling was a lack of sufficient water in the cake/diminishing humidity in the chamber, but at this point I think a mid-flush dunk might kill the pins that seem to be properly growing.
My question: At what point should I declare the no-stem and stalled pins dead/aborts? Usually, I see aborts that are like miniature mushies that can be picked, but mine are more like pinheads with no stem. So, how would I even go about removing them from the cakes (in a way that minimizes harm to the growth around them)? I’m concerned that these aborted pinheads might lead to contams, so any advice here would be much appreciated.
Lastly: I’m aware of other mid-flush rehydration teks, like the straw method, but I’d like to avoid that except as a last resort (especially now that pins are growing). Again, any advice would be appreciated as to how I can get the most out of this flush and avoid contamination from rotting aborts. Thanks!
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KorinsBeans
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Re: When/how to remove darkening pinheads from BRF cake? [Re: KorinsBeans] 1
#26581735 - 04/06/20 01:23 PM (3 years, 9 months ago) |
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Update: Over the past 2 days, I’ve seen more growth on all of the cakes. It seems like the saucer mini-dunk and perlite rehydration has helped. At 68 F, things are a bit on the cool side, so growth is slow and appears to be steady.

At this point, my only question to the community is this: should I continue to mist heavily and run the humidifier? It is working right now, I think because the cakes are on the dry side. My concern is drowning the cakes after they have been rehydrated. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks!
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rumfor69
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Re: When/how to remove darkening pinheads from BRF cake? [Re: KorinsBeans]
#26581970 - 04/06/20 03:28 PM (3 years, 9 months ago) |
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Hey there! And welcome to the forum. I've read all your information here and it sounds like your doing well. Reading teks and following instructions. Fanning and misting doesn't ever rehydrate the cakes or anything. They just help with surface conditions to create a better microclimate on the cake surface to help with pinning but isn't even actually essential. A proper designed sgfc, like you described yours is, doesn't even need fanned just
the perlite needs to stay wet so spray it a bunch once a day. Mist and fan cakes if you want but only a couple times a day if you must. The humidifier is good I use one in my central air desert too. They don't seem to be
growing all that slow. It's normal to take a couple weeks to see decent pins. After you harvest all those that grow just as their veils are breaking, You can pick off aborts, then you do a redunk for 24 hrs, no roll, and back into the sgfc
Keep hanging in there you're doing good so far.
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KorinsBeans
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Re: When/how to remove darkening pinheads from BRF cake? [Re: rumfor69]
#26582042 - 04/06/20 04:00 PM (3 years, 9 months ago) |
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Thanks for the input! I’ll be patient and stay the course. Will post updates in case anyone finds my process helpful. Most of the advice on here says to reduce misting and fanning when you see pins, but given my drier cakes it seems like misting has been helpful (even though it isn’t rehydrating the cakes themselves).
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LogicaL Chaos
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Re: When/how to remove darkening pinheads from BRF cake? [Re: KorinsBeans]
#26582346 - 04/06/20 06:05 PM (3 years, 9 months ago) |
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Cool set up! Looks nice!
Aborts are typically purple to dark purple. The color you see on the caps is the phenotype genetics aka its a colored cap strain. Not to worry, totally normal and pretty unique 
Keep us updated
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rumfor69
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Re: When/how to remove darkening pinheads from BRF cake? [Re: LogicaL Chaos] 1
#26582449 - 04/06/20 06:49 PM (3 years, 9 months ago) |
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When cakes and mycelium are drying too fast the white mycelium will turn blue or yellowish from bruising and yours isn't. Shrinkage and internal water use is normal and actually helps the pinning process.
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KorinsBeans
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Re: When/how to remove darkening pinheads from BRF cake? [Re: rumfor69] 1
#26583912 - 04/07/20 12:22 PM (3 years, 9 months ago) |
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Thanks again for the advice! It looks like I may be at the harvesting stage earlier than I was hoping. I think a few of the veils broke this morning. Can anyone confirm that I should pick these? Was hoping they would get bigger but I knew the cakes were on the dry side.

My second question: for the next flush, should I scrape off the verm and outer layer of mycelium (PF talks about carefully carving off the outer layer of the cake) before I dunk, or just dunk as is for 24 hours and put it back in the SGFC? Seems like there are a lot of different opinions on how to properly prepare a cake for the next flush.
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rumfor69
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Re: When/how to remove darkening pinheads from BRF cake? [Re: KorinsBeans]
#26583982 - 04/07/20 01:02 PM (3 years, 9 months ago) |
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They don't look ready to harvest just yet let em keep going.
I wouldn't scrape anything off or damage the cake in any way.
Just remove all the fruits when they're ready, dunk as is
for 24hrs, no verm re-roll, then back into the sgfc
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KorinsBeans
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Re: When/how to remove darkening pinheads from BRF cake? [Re: rumfor69]
#26584303 - 04/07/20 03:30 PM (3 years, 9 months ago) |
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Alright, I won’t harvest them yet. What should I be looking for then? I would hate for the spores to drop before I pulled them off the cakes. Everything I’ve read says do it soon after the veils break.
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A.k.a
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Re: When/how to remove darkening pinheads from BRF cake? [Re: KorinsBeans] 1
#26584347 - 04/07/20 03:54 PM (3 years, 9 months ago) |
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You can’t even see the veils yet.

Give em another two to four days
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KorinsBeans
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Re: When/how to remove darkening pinheads from BRF cake? [Re: A.k.a]
#26589217 - 04/09/20 04:30 PM (3 years, 9 months ago) |
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Update here. Growth spurt happened since I last posted about 2 days ago. Veils broke and caps fanned out, so I ended up harvesting on 2 of the 4 cakes. Got about 78g wet, but unfortunately only about 4g after leaving them in the dehydrator overnight.
I think that by compensating for my dried out cakes with increased misting, I increased the water-to-mass percentage from ~90-92% that is usually stated to something closer to 94-95%. If anyone has any experience, maybe they can comment and confirm that substrate wetting leads to more water-logged mushrooms, but that seems to have been the case for me. Overall, it's a mild success for what I considered to be a salvage job. My best guess at the biology is that the mycelium was sucking in water on the vermiculite at or near the base of the stems, which pumped them with water but with less chitin/psychoactive material (which would presumably be transported into the mushrooms via the mycelium network within the cakes). The mushrooms themselves did not look as healthy as I was expecting from lots of the pictures I've seen around here:

One little note is that I had almost no aborts—just stranger looking mushrooms around 1-2 inches long.
In short, I would summarize that you can salvage dried out cakes with mushrooms without dunking by generously misting to dampen the verm casing on a pf cake...but it may not actually increase the resulting dry mass that you get out of the cakes. If I come across an overly dry cake again, I will probably dunk and sacrifice the pins I have to rehydrate, or try the straw tek to feed water into the center of the mycelium network.
I rinsed off some of the verm (lightly...just the excess on the top and bottom), cleaned off any leftover stems with a paring knife, and am dunking them for 24 hours. Will report back on the second flush now that I have the environmental parameters a bit more dialed in.
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KorinsBeans
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Re: When/how to remove darkening pinheads from BRF cake? [Re: KorinsBeans]
#26597994 - 04/13/20 01:02 PM (3 years, 9 months ago) |
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Update here. Got 147g wet from the 4 cakes, which was 7.9g dried. A bit disappointing on the yield, but I’m glad I was able to get something out of these cakes.
In cleaning the cakes and dunking them, I noticed that there is a substantial amount of mushroom flesh growing inside of the cakes near the spots where I had mushrooms growing. I tried cutting into one such section, and there was easily a 1/2” glob of mushroom-like material that had grown kind of like a mushy truffle.
Am I supposed to remove all of that? Seems like the answer is yes because it’ll rot, but removing them would involve some surgery on the cakes. Anyone have any advice here? Wasn’t able to get many pics cause I’m trying to avoid contamination and touching too many things when working with the post-harvested cakes, but I can grab a pic if needed.
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A.k.a
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Re: When/how to remove darkening pinheads from BRF cake? [Re: KorinsBeans]
#26598254 - 04/13/20 02:59 PM (3 years, 9 months ago) |
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147 dried to 8???
That’s insane.
I would probably slice the shroom stumps or whatever off and just try to take as little cake with it as possible.
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LAGM2020     
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