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TheBreakfsatBoi
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Registered: 07/07/20
Posts: 4
Last seen: 3 years, 6 months
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Sharing my fist grow experience(s)
#26819173 - 07/12/20 10:56 AM (3 years, 6 months ago) |
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Greetings everyone at the shroomery!
I have been doing research for about the last month or two, and i’m blown away by the amount of information that has been shared around this hobby within these threads. The purpose of this post is to share my current experience, demonstrate I am an active member on this forum, and open up a realm for questions, comments, advice, concerns, and community.
I started my very first PF tek on the solstice (With 10cc “B+” MS), and 3/8 of my initial half-pint wide mouth jars have just been placed in the SGFC (photo included)
UPDATE July 14th: I have birthed/dunked/rolled 4 cakes. I also have one cake that just finished colonizing the outside of the jar (has not consolidated yet). However, there is already a pretty well-developed pinset. Should i go ahead and birth/dunk/roll this cake even with its current progress? See photos below before offering advice.
  As you can see, these pins are way ahead of the jar. Should I still birth/dunk/roll?
At 1am today, I inoculated 5 more PF jars, one 1qt, and four 1pt grain spawn jars (with Bod’s oat tek, Citric’s self-healing lid tek, 8cc from 10cc “Ecuador” MS). Included is a photo of all my remaining colonizing jars.  1. There was no need for me to flip my jars. In fact, I probably increased the risk of contamination from unsettling my dry verm layer. There are some theories in the comments of threads about when/why to flip PF jars, but in my case I should have just been patient with slow growth and refrained from handling colonizing jars. Simply focus on ensuring a healthy environment! (75 degrees and circadian light cycle) 2. I placed synthetic filter discs over my self-healing lids because some condensation from my tinfoil covers dripped on my lid's filters after the PC cycle. I was worried a wet filter would be ineffective at stopping contams so I placed new filters over top until the ones glued to the lid dried.
 Apologies for the ugly RTV job
Regarding the future, I plan on:
1. making 25-50 agar petri dishes (20g/L15g/L golden light dry malt extract, 20g/L agar-agar, 2g/L1g/L yeast, 500ml 10:1 oat spawn water, 500mL1L spring water). I had originally planed on using a more nutritious agar, but have decided to go with something less nutritious. Updated after comments below mentioned that less nutritious agar causes mycelium to 'reach out' for more food. 2. using the last 2cc’s of my “Ecuador” syringe on some, 3. taking clones of the best mushrooms on my PF cakes, 4. making spore prints from large sporulating mushrooms 5. Doing A2A transfers to avoid contams and find quickly-colonizing strains (not looking for isolates), 6. G2G (using a pint across 5 qts of oats for a 10:1 ratio), and 7. A2G (tiger drop tek) from the most-successfully-A2A-transferred clone/spore print/MS petri dishes
Lastly, i will be using unBODified monotubs to attempt spawn to bulk (1x30ish qt tub & 2x54qt sterilite tubs)
My goal in all this is to understand cultivation techniques, develop a feel for creating favorable fruiting conditions, and hopefully end up with more mushrooms than I can shake a stick at. Please feel free to hop on this thread with questions about what you see/read, or comments and advice as I update progress
Peace out! Breakfsatboi
Edited by TheBreakfsatBoi (07/14/20 06:26 AM)
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Roger Clemency
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Registered: 03/23/20
Posts: 2,005
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Welcome to the Shroomery   
Why are the half pints flipped over? Sometimes people so flip them if the bottom has stalled out but once you flip you have disturbed the dry verm barrier (the filter that will have contam spores mixed in) so just make sure not to flip them back over or move them around.
What kind of filters do you have on your qt jars?
Getting your agar game going is def the best step. That recipe is pretty high in nutrients though. I've always used light malt extract and agar, simple and works great. 8g / 8g / 500ml or somewhere around there. I have done grain water agar too and then you can use like 50/50 grain soak to water and however much agar you need to thicken and it's good to go.
-------------------- Sour grapes, sweet revenge Heaven starts right where hell ends
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TheBreakfsatBoi
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Registered: 07/07/20
Posts: 4
Last seen: 3 years, 6 months
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Thank you for the welcoming words, RC!
Quote:
Roger Clemency said:
Why are the half pints flipped over?
As is the case with most noobs, my patience and excitement got the best of me. When 3 or 4 of my PF jars were colonizing rapidly, and others were colonizing sluggishly, I began to think it was something within my control instead of simply genetics. I have read some comments on threads about flipping PF jars after a certain amount of growth to aid in GE, speed colonization times, and/or orient the Mycelium to its birthing/fruiting position. I have since left them untouched as it seems the best thing I ever did for them was leave them alone for a long weekend (their growth without daily handling has been much faster and healthier in appearance). I also now think that mushrooms are simple enough to grow in the right direction without my help, so flipping to teach the myc which way is up probably isn't necessary either
Quote:
Roger Clemency said:
What kind of filters do you have on your qt jars?
The filter on top of my quart jar (and 4 pint jars) is a 90mm-diameter synthetic filter disc. I will be removing the filter discs today, as each lid already has a nickel-sized piece RTV'd over a 1/4-inch hole. Yesterday, as I removed foil from the lids after my PC had cooled, some drops of condensation landed on the glued filters, rendering them temporarily ineffective. Therefore, post-SAB inoculation through the SHIP, I covered the damp filters with dry discs.
Thank you for the questions! It helps to explain my line of reasoning so that I can truly reflect on how much I know (and especially how much I DON'T know). I'll update this post to include some photos of my jar lids and perhaps edit my original post to explain the flipped half-pint jars.
Regarding your comments about Agar, I actually had been wondering if "too nutritious" was a thing to avoid, so thanks for your input. In such a case, I'll probably use a little less than I had initially planned of each ingredient, and/or maybe skip out on using oat water at all, seeing as I already have malt extract and yeast, and grain soak water can be difficult to determine how nutritious each mL really is.
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Roger Clemency
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Registered: 03/23/20
Posts: 2,005
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Ah I see lol. The impatience we all know well. It mostly goes away once you have mushrooms popping up and you have other jars colonizing and plates growing out. It's good to have several things going on.
There are some cellulose filter disks that I think you can't get wet but (synthetic) SFD are supposed to be fine even if wet, not that it's a big deal or anything just fyi.
For agar you want it more on the lower nutrition side so that the myc grows out looking for food.
-------------------- Sour grapes, sweet revenge Heaven starts right where hell ends
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TheBreakfsatBoi
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Registered: 07/07/20
Posts: 4
Last seen: 3 years, 6 months
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I'm finally at a point where I have things to watch and keep track of, things to prepare, things to actively manage, and I'm just excited to harvest my very first homegrown mushroom soon, as well as play around with agar. I'll have to do more research on my filters, here is the description on the side of the package

That's actually a good point regarding agar, that it needs to be light on nutrition. I'm guessing because you'd only want the strongest to survive, and being nutrient rich will allow any and all genetics to be supported (including contams). In the meantime I'll edit my original post to include the developments since.
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TheBreakfsatBoi
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Registered: 07/07/20
Posts: 4
Last seen: 3 years, 6 months
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Bumping this thread for newly updated question. Curious to hear your input on birthing cakes with in vitro pins. To dunk and roll or not to dunk and roll? To consolidate or not to consolidate?
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Roger Clemency
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Registered: 03/23/20
Posts: 2,005
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If they are pinning then they’re ready without the need for consolidation. I would still dunk and roll as well, just be careful of the pins that are already there.
-------------------- Sour grapes, sweet revenge Heaven starts right where hell ends
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