|
gnirut0
Stranger
Registered: 02/18/20
Posts: 14
Last seen: 3 years, 1 month
|
Green mold at fruiting stage in every grow I try
#27075637 - 12/06/20 04:23 PM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
|
|
Dear shroomerites,
I started my growing adventure a while back after my first trip.
I bought spores, grew them on agar, inoculated a grain jar, did a G2G transfer and spawned my grains into a monotub with CVG (except one jar that I kept in the fridge). Everything went fine, except that around the time I expected the monotub to pin (about 10-15 days after spawning), some green mold started to grow in my substrate.
Later, I did an other G2G transfer using the jar I kept in the fridge. All the inoculated jars looked healthy, I spawned them into a monotub with CVG, and got a green mold again when I expected to see some pins (see this thread).
Later, since I was told that the mold has to come from the grain jars, I decided to start from agar again, inoculated a new petri dish from an old petri dish stored in the fridge (that you can see in this post, I still have one of the two dishes in the fridge). Using this new petri dish, I inoculated three grain jars, that looked perfectly healthy, perfectly white. I spawned each grain jar in a separate shoebox (to avoid cross-contamination) with CVG. I put them into fruiting conditions after 7 days.
At 10 days after spawning, they looked like this:

The first one has a green mold starting to grow on the surface (in the red circle), it looks like this zoomed in:

After 15 days, a green mold appeared on the second shoebox. After 20 days, a greed mold appeared on the third shoebox. I still have them but I plan to throw them during the next week, since now they are all covered in green.
Long story short: I tried 5 grows into monotubs / shoeboxes, they all failed when I expected them to fruit.
My hypothesis is that the mold is inside the grain jars but I can't see it, so I thought I could try to leave them alone a few weeks to allow the mold to develop in the grain jars instead of the shoeboxes. If I try to be more paranoid, maybe I could try to do a few agar transfers to ensure I have a very clean inoculent (or maybe I can buy new spores and start again from scratch, I don't know if it would be helpful).
I'm thinking that one error that I made was that I didn't clean my glove much when I mixed the grains and the substrate in the different shoeboxes, it might have happened that one grain sticked to my glove and went to an other shoebox… But still, it means that one of my grain jars was moldy when it looked perfectly fine.
What do you think I should try to do in my next grow to avoid this problem?
Thank you!
|
1kldude
Stuntzii Lover



Registered: 05/15/08
Posts: 501
Loc: Somewhere
Last seen: 2 years, 10 months
|
Re: Green mold at fruiting stage in every grow I try [Re: gnirut0]
#27075666 - 12/06/20 04:43 PM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
|
|
Are you pressure cooking the jars?
--------------------
<<-----|||1kldude|||----->> <<<----------|||1 knowledgeable dude|||---------->>> <<<<----Any post I make is purely fictional and for informational purposes only---->>>>
|
3some
Haagse Harry



Registered: 04/20/20
Posts: 278
Last seen: 2 months, 8 days
|
Re: Green mold at fruiting stage in every grow I try [Re: gnirut0]
#27075671 - 12/06/20 04:46 PM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
|
|
First of all, I'm newer than you. I found myself in your position before and I'm just beginning to see healthy fruiting. Not perfect but getting there.
I'm sharing what I did differently. I put my bucket tek coir in a cloth bag and squeeze the shit out of it as hard as humanly possible with my bare hands. Then I don't mist it until I do at least one flush. Try and see if that'll work for you.
I fucked up so many tubs, jars and dishes its not funny. Just keep tweaking and trying. We'll get there.
-------------------- Ask me about growing yeast, mold and bacteria. I'm very experienced. The first post any newbie should read even before acquiring spores: Pastywhyte's Principles of mushroom growing for beginners
|
BrownBear
Warrior-Traveler



Registered: 06/05/20
Posts: 1,539
Last seen: 8 months, 6 days
|
Re: Green mold at fruiting stage in every grow I try [Re: 1kldude]
#27075680 - 12/06/20 04:48 PM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
|
|
Do you have pics of your grain jars? Mold doesn't neccessarily come from grain jars. However, bacteria can slow mushroom mycelium recovery and growth which can give mold the opportunity to grow in your bulk substrate. How long did your grain jars take to colonize? Did you give them a shake to check recovery and recolonization rate before spawning to bulk?
|
Ballzagna
Carb Daddy



Registered: 10/09/19
Posts: 619
Last seen: 13 days, 14 hours
|
Re: Green mold at fruiting stage in every grow I try [Re: 1kldude]
#27075693 - 12/06/20 04:54 PM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
|
|
Quote:
1kldude said: Are you pressure cooking the jars?
I don't think he'd have spawn that looks even close to decent if he wasn't, but maybe he's not PC'ing long enough and contams deep in the grain are taking a while to come through.
I'd get an air filter for the room you spawn and fruit in to maybe clean up the air a bit. Contams tend to show up in jars way before they finish colonizing in my experience. It kinda looks like trich but trich tends to be white and fluffy before turning green and it'd be a much bigger patch and it's a gnarlier green.
I usually spray down my shoeboxes with a little bleach water while I prep my spawn and work station and then give them a quick wipe before spawning just for a little insurance.
I use just plain coir for substrate so I'm not sure but maybe something in the CVG prep isn't right?
-------------------- No one likes a naysayer It's probably fine. Even if it's not fine, it'll eventually be fine. So it's fine. PE Adventure
Photosynthesis: A Morning Ritual Ballzagna's Tek Compendium and Notes for Noobs 
|
gnirut0
Stranger
Registered: 02/18/20
Posts: 14
Last seen: 3 years, 1 month
|
Re: Green mold at fruiting stage in every grow I try [Re: Ballzagna]
#27075822 - 12/06/20 06:04 PM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
|
|
Quote:
1kldude said: Are you pressure cooking the jars?
Yes of course! I pressure cook them for one hour and a half at full pressure. I have a bunch of sterilized grain jars sitting in my room for a few weeks and they look fine, I'm pretty confident there isn't any mold in there!
Quote:
3some said: I put my bucket tek coir in a cloth bag and squeeze the shit out of it as hard as humanly possible with my bare hands. Then I don't mist it until I do at least one flush. Try and see if that'll work for you.
This time I added verm into the CVG until I could get only a few drops of water when I squeezed as hard as I possibly could the CVG. Maybe I'll have to get my field capacity even down. I might have over-misted at the beginning when I put the shoeboxes into fruiting conditions, but after a few days I realized that there was enough humidity and I stopped.
Quote:
Iambrownbear said: Do you have pics of your grain jars? [...] How long did your grain jars take to colonize? Did you give them a shake to check recovery and recolonization rate before spawning to bulk?
No, unfortunately I don't have any pictures  One thing I'll change for sure in my next grow is that I'll document more thoroughly the various steps of the grow so I can have material when I'll ask for help! After I dropped the agar wedge, I didn't shake for a week. After 7 days, the agar wedge colonized the grains around so I gave them a good shake. A few days later (3 or 4?) the jars were almost fully colonized, so I gave another shake, and two days later the jars looked fully colonized (I read somewhere that the myc takes 48 hours to recover, it was actually faster in my case, maybe because I put my jars in the bathroom which was quite hot (around 27°C or 81°F)). I spawned the grains one or two days after.
Quote:
Ballzagna said: I'd get an air filter for the room you spawn and fruit in to maybe clean up the air a bit. [...] I use just plain coir for substrate so I'm not sure but maybe something in the CVG prep isn't right?
I thought that fully colonized grains were resistant to contaminants in the air? I'll look into it, but it look like something hard to setup in my house.
Just to make sure, I actually kept a bit of the CVG alone next to the shoeboxes, and it's absolutely fine, it looks exactly like the first day. I might try to "inoculate" it with a bit of the trich I have grown just to see if it spreads, but if I have my theory right it shouldn't grow in a low-nutrition substrate like CVG.
|
jomanda1990
Ewewazos



Registered: 05/15/18
Posts: 689
Loc: Argentina
Last seen: 8 days, 14 hours
|
Re: Green mold at fruiting stage in every grow I try [Re: gnirut0]
#27075871 - 12/06/20 06:31 PM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
|
|
random things that come to my mind -Try sterilizing for a bit longer (2 hours is recommended sometimes for especially dirty grains like whole oats) -Is the spraying bottle you are misting with clean? Could the mold actually come from there? -what ratio of spawn to substrate are you using? (spawn to CVG) Perhaps the spawn content is too low and gives time for mold to develop.
--------------------

|
Ballzagna
Carb Daddy



Registered: 10/09/19
Posts: 619
Last seen: 13 days, 14 hours
|
Re: Green mold at fruiting stage in every grow I try [Re: jomanda1990]
#27075904 - 12/06/20 06:49 PM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
|
|
You can get a bedroom air filter for not too much and it just plugs in, not too big. I use it in my bedroom to help with allergies/dust but it's rated for mold and other shit too.
Resistant doesn't mean entirely protected from. They make fire resistant clothing materials but I'm not about to set myself on fire while wearing them. The air filter couldn't hurt.
It's probably not the CVG then, just spitballing to cover all the variables cause I don't have an exact answer and I'm not super familiar with it.
Do you do put a top layer of CVG when you spawn? I dont like leaving exposed grains personally, might be worth a try.
-------------------- No one likes a naysayer It's probably fine. Even if it's not fine, it'll eventually be fine. So it's fine. PE Adventure
Photosynthesis: A Morning Ritual Ballzagna's Tek Compendium and Notes for Noobs 
|
Justweed
Bobby's short shorts



Registered: 04/01/20
Posts: 555
Last seen: 3 months, 17 days
|
Re: Green mold at fruiting stage in every grow I try [Re: Ballzagna]
#27076123 - 12/06/20 08:38 PM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
|
|
So moving onto the next grow, you need a fresh CLEAN start.
Clean the shit out of everything. Get a spray bottle. I use a 1 gallon sprayer that has a hand pump that pressurizes the bottle and lets me just spray around with a wand. Make a 10% bleach solution. Spray EVERYTHING in your grow area. Soak the carpet. Spray the walls. Spray around the air vents. The doors, front and back. Door knobs. Get everything. Then do it again. Bleach it all. If you're not buying new tubs (not necessary) then bleach those too. Soak them, clean them with dish soap and a sponge, then bleach them again, soap and sponge, rinse thoroughly. Clean your jars, make new ones. Post them before you spawn them to make sure they look alright. Examine your spawning method. Shower and change clothes before you spawn. Then use alcohol and a spray bottle and paper towels to wipe out your tubs before spawning. Spawn quickly right after you wash your arms. Be extremely clean. Overly clean. You'll see people posting saying half the stuff I'm saying is unnecessary, and it probably is, but at least if you go way overboard, if something goes wrong you know you covered your bases and you're not left thinking 'damn it, if I had just changed my shirt before I spawned...'
--------------------
  Keep 'em high and tight guys....
|
gnirut0
Stranger
Registered: 02/18/20
Posts: 14
Last seen: 3 years, 1 month
|
Re: Green mold at fruiting stage in every grow I try [Re: Justweed]
#27076524 - 12/07/20 03:15 AM (3 years, 1 month ago) |
|
|
Quote:
jomanda1990 said: -Is the spraying bottle you are misting with clean? Could the mold actually come from there? -what ratio of spawn to substrate are you using? (spawn to CVG) Perhaps the spawn content is too low and gives time for mold to develop.
I don't know if it's actually clean, I mean it's just a plastic thing that only ever had water inside. I use tap water and don't change the water inside often, it might be this. I don't know exactly the ratio I'm using, I'd say about 1/3 or 1/4. I don't think the ratio was too low since the substrate was fully colonized in one week, but I'll try a higher ratio next time, it doesn't hurt!
Quote:
Ballzagna said: You can get a bedroom air filter for not too much and it just plugs in, not too big. [...] Do you do put a top layer of CVG when you spawn? I dont like leaving exposed grains personally, might be worth a try.
Okay, I'll look into the air cleaner. I only put a casing layer in my second monotub, this time I didn't put any. I might try this.
Quote:
Justweed said: So moving onto the next grow, you need a fresh CLEAN start. [...]
Indeed, I didn't take a lot of precautions during spawning since I heard that colonized grains were contam resistant. But indeed, being extremely clean will be good for my mind since I won't have to overthink the tiny thing I might have done wrong during spawning!
|
|