redbee’s LAGM 2021 Grow Log
Species: P. Cubensis
Variants: APEU & Rusty Whyte
OBJECTIVE:This is my first time doing a public grow-log. I started cultivating less than a year ago, using a grow-kit and following directions from a Willy Myco video

I quickly changed my ways, and after countless hours on shroomery, and a few months of trial and error, I’ve been successfully running shoeboxes in a regular rotation.
I’ve been wanting to do a public grow-log in the interest of getting feedback for tightening up my techniques and methods. And then… LAGM happened! So, any feedback, advice, guidance, criticism… I’m receptive to all of it.
VARIANTS:APEU: Never grown it before! Looks gorgeous! Many thanks to filthyknees for the swabs.
Rusty Whyte: Starting from a swab I took a few weeks ago, from the first batch of this variety that I ran. The swab was from a fruit that looked sporeless at full maturity.
TEKS:I’m running shoeboxes. I prep oats in pint-sized jars and an Instant Pot. Small living space means small form-factor for everything, so tubs aren’t an option for me. For sterile work, I use a SAB and prep my agar with LME. For substrate, I use CVG at a spawn/sub ratio of 1:2, I pasteurize my sub, and I use a top-layer when spawning. I pre-soak my colonized grains before spawning.
AGAR WORK:JANUARY 03, 2021
Starting with some plates I’d poured and PC'd over the holidays. These are agar : LME at a 10 : 7.5 ratio, or so, and poured as thin as possible. I prepped the agar ages ago—I did a huge batch and stored it in several pyrex bottles kept in the fridge, and I've just been reheating and prepping small batches of no-pours as needed. It's nice to not have to cook up agar every time I need to pour some plates.

I’ve only been doing sterile work since September, and it’s a testament to my growth that it doesn’t feel like nerve-wracking misery anymore. When I first started, I thought I’d never feel comfortable. I definitely still have spaz-moments, but the majority of the time I can slip into a flow-state pretty easily.
Today was full of spaz-moments, though. I was inoculating with swabs, which I’m always kinda ham-fisted with... I just don't trust that they'll transfer spores?! I usually just streak them, but I saw someone else’s LAGM post where they talked about using their exact-o to trim some cotton fuzz and directly drop that on the agar. Well... TIL, easier said than done. I had a nightmare time with it because my blade was dull and rusted from a couple of runs through the PC and innumerable torchings. Hindsight: I should have swapped for a fresh one. I shredded the cotton on the swab tips, and when I finally got some wispy threads onto my blade, I proceeded to shred my agar while trying to remove the cotton from the blade. The fibers just did not want to jump from the jagged-edged blade onto the smooth surface of the agar...weird, huh?

Here’s what I nocc’d up:
APEU:Swab Plate A: streaked with swab
Swab Plate B: streaked with swab
Swab Plate C: shredded cotton strands
Swab Plate D: shredded cotton strands
Rusty Whyte:Swab Plate A: shredded cotton strands
Swab Plate B: streaked with swab
Swab Plate C: cut the swab tip and dropped it onto the plate
We’ll see which ones colonize first. I’d be surprised if the cotton-strand plates don’t show contam, based on how long I had to keep them open in order to dislodge the fibers.
JANUARY 09, 2021Germination = achieved!


tl;dr looks like I'll have some viable transfer options for both the APEU and RW, and the quickest germination was definitely from the plates where I either dropped in the cotton swab tip or successfully scraped cotton strands onto the agar. I'm seeing contams on one plate from each variety, but, y'know, gills are dirty.
Here are the detailed notes... in the photos, it's APEU on the left and RW on the right.
APEU:Swab Plate A: streaked with swab, looks like myc on the right and contam on the left
Swab Plate B: streaked with swab, no visible growth yet
Swab Plate C: shredded cotton strands, myc showed up quickly (lumpy b/c the agar is kinda chopped up)
Swab Plate D: shredded cotton strands, myc also looks good so far
Rusty Whyte:Swab Plate A: shredded cotton strands, holy mother of moldy god this one looks gross IRL. (This was the plate that received the most abuse due to dull blade/stuck-cotton, and I would have been
astounded had it not contaminated)
Swab Plate B: streaked with swab, lookin' like wispy RW myc
Swab Plate C: cut the swab tip and dropped it onto the plate, currently all myc'd up, fuzzy and glorious
JANUARY 13, 2021

Original plates are trucking along, mostly... typically I'd have transferred by now, but I've had to hold off on doing my next batch of agar work until Friday because reasons. I'm thinking I'll take three transfers from each variety, then narrow it down to the two best for T2, and then take those to grains if they're looking good.
Lotsa talk about "how many transfers before grains". I'm solidly in the "as soon as they look good" camp. That typically means T2 or occasionally an impatient/ballsy T1. Since I don't drop entire plates, I don't need a "perfect" plate to go to grains—I can kinda treat my grains as an additional "transfer" by selecting the best looking quadrant to drop in the jar.
JANUARY 20, 2021Took T1's from the spore plates last Friday. All three are looking clean. I'll pick the two best from each set and transfer those again in a couple of days.
APEU:

APEU looking fine. Any thoughts on the one with the double-ringed myc situation? Normal? Looks spooky.
Rusty Whyte:

Close-up on the most rhizo-looking RW plate I've ever seen
Both of the two bottom plates are from the same source plate, and I'll be taking those to T2.
JANUARY 13, 2021

Original plates are trucking along, mostly... typically I'd have transferred by now, but I've had to hold off on doing my next batch of agar work until Friday because reasons. I'm thinking I'll take three transfers from each variety, then narrow it down to the two best for T2, and then take those to grains if they're looking good.
Lotsa talk about "how many transfers before grains". I'm solidly in the "as soon as they look good" camp. That typically means T2 or occasionally an impatient/ballsy T1. Since I don't drop entire plates, I don't need a "perfect" plate to go to grains—I can kinda treat my grains as an additional "transfer" by selecting the best looking quadrant to drop in the jar.
FEBRUARY 7, 2021Ugh, that thing where life takes precedent over mushcult... I'm not a fan.
T2 plates were looking alright, had planned on taking them to grains over a week ago, but had to postpone until Friday. Here's how they looked before slicing 'em up...
APEU:

Two plates (front/back). They look a bit weird on top (and also, shitty photos), but looking at the back-lit versions, I'm feeling a bit better about their viability. Spawned a quart from each plate, we'll see how they look on grains.
Rusty Whyte:I done goofed

I was running two different RW cultures at the same time: one which I started in late December, the other for LAGM. I totally spawned the December culture thinking it was the LAGM plate. Ohhh well. It's from a strain I'd already fruited, and it's a great performer, so I'm not mad to have it running again. I'll just have to wait another two weeks to spawn the actual LAGM RW plate. Maybe I'll document them both?
Anyway, here's the wrong-plate-Rusty, which went into a quart of oats:
Grain Prep Notes:Following my standard procedure: 650 grams of oats, boiled per Bod's tek—half an hour to boil, another 20-30 minutes till there were no white bits left when I split them open. Distributed into 6 widemouth pint jars, closed up with unmodded gray plastic lids, and PC'd (in two batches) in my Instant Pot for 2 hours 40 minutes on "poultry" setting.
MARCH 21, 2021Spawned some jars on March 5th:
They looked like wet swampy shit, but that's how jars seem to look in the winter, for me... even ones that turn out fine. I get pretty wide temp swings in my grow room from morning to night. Also for some reason RW spawn tends to get watery? Weird.
That said, the APEU (c) on the bottom right is pretty fucked. The bottom-rightmost never finished colonizing and met its fate in the trash bin. The second-to-right finished colonizing a week later, got its own tub with half as much coir.
Coir Prep Notes:I pasteurize my sub as per a version of
Frank's tek. I mix up some CVG, scoop it into a gallon-sized plastic bag, and float it a big stock pot. I heat till I get to target temp, and let it sit for an hour.
Since that batch, I've switched over to something that's more like the bucket tek... I make a double-boiler setup with two stock pots (one smaller than the other, obviously), mix up the CVG into the smaller one, and pour in water heated to 180 with a temp-adjustable kettle. I then pour hot water into the outer pot, which keeps the inner insulated, and I'm able to hold ~135F for an hour or so. Why not just bucket-tek? "Small form factor" is my goal, it uses things I already own and use for other purposes, and it's the perfect capacity for prepping 3 boxes worth of substrate at a time.
Shoeboxes:
Right: APEU ("A" from the jars)
Left: RW
Not really behaving like I'd hope, it's looking pretty staggered. RW sometimes goes that way for me, but it usually fill out eventually. We'll see. Feeling a bit better about a couple of those clusters in the APEU box... admittedly I didn't love how any of these looked on agar, so I'm glad that I'm at least seeing pins.