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Offline3some
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Registered: 04/20/20
Posts: 278
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Newbie experience: monotub field capacity * 1
    #27053533 - 11/23/20 08:03 AM (3 years, 2 months ago)

It has been 7 months since I started trying to grow and I have learnt a few things in the process. Many experts and experienced friends tried giving me advice when I bump into problems and like they said, nothing beats learning from experience. So I thought I should post some of the things I have learnt for my fellow newbies and share my experience here. There are many advice out there but since most are veterans here, there are a lot of in-between stuff that are common knowledge that newbies like me will miss or misunderstand. So I hope a newbie perspective will help.

Many friends have point me in the right directions and all credits belong to them. Top of my head greencavefloat, Solipsis, Adden and legends Doc9151 and Pastywhyte.

First of all, I use coco coir for my monotub (mono). The only thing I added was vermiculite(verm) but I started without them. Now when I do, I soak them separately and mix them into the bucket tek coir together with grain spawn (growing cube). This is because I want the verm to be saturate with water but not the coir. Sometimes I skip verm in the substrate and only add them to the casing layer. Speaking of casing layer, I will normally leave some excess coir and sun dry them, wait till 50%+ colonization on the substrate surface, and rehydrate the dried coir with boiling water, cool it down, squeeze to field capacity, add wet verm and spread evenly on the substrate surface.

Back to field capacity, it took me three failed mono to understand field capacity. I guess different source/brand of coir, species or varieties (of cube) and other environment factors such as temperature and humidity play a role in creating an ideal environment for the spawn to grow. Most thread you read will tell you 100% colonization in 4-7 days. My first few experiences took over a month and not even 100% colonization. Worse, no pinning (and therefore no fruit at all) and always ended up with green mold and toss.

My problem? Too much moisture. For my first tub, I squeezed as hard as I can a fistful of soaked (using bucket tek) coir at a time and that failed. Second tub, I tried the formula of 4 liter hot water per brick of coir and that failed too. Third try, I went back to squeezing with added verm and failed again.

The forth try, I used a cloth bag to squeeze the coir really dry before mixing with spawn and guess what, full colonization on day 5. So I concluded that all my previous attempts are too wet.

It didn't help that I was misting unnecessarily as well. There are many standards out there. Some people say maintain condensation on the tub wall, some swear by glistening substrate surface and others advice not misting at all. What I learnt is don't mist before 100% colonization. And when people say glistening surface, they mean glistening mycelium (myc), not coir. Condensation on wall is a good indicator too but all this is after 100% colonization. Keep your tub closed and leave it to colonized 100% before doing anything.

And dunking, which is unnecessary until the substrate has lost around half its weight (I'm guessing), is fatal if the colonization is not 100%. Don't even think about dunking before 2nd harvest.

Basically, you want to avoid adding water to naked coir. Water logged substrate means your myc can't breath. If you take away one advice here: ERR ON THE DRY SIDE WHEN IT COMES TO FIELD CAPACITY.

I hope this will be useful and save my newbie friends out there a few tubs of effort and disappointments.

Anybody has anything to add?


--------------------
Ask me about growing yeast, mold and bacteria. I'm very experienced. :tongue2:

The first post any newbie should read even before acquiring spores: Pastywhyte's Principles of mushroom growing for beginners


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