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mind.at.large
Myconerd


Registered: 12/13/16
Posts: 1,218
Loc: Floating in liquid gardens
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Endless sub tek 13
#27768853 - 05/08/22 03:41 PM (1 year, 8 months ago) |
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Hey y'all! So I've been meaning to make a thread about reusing substrate for a while now, and even though I still haven't fully explored this idea, I am very happy with the results so far. This is going to be an ongoing experiment. Anyone who is doing something similar please post about it.
So the idea for reusing substrate is nothing new, nor do I take any credit for figuring this out, as reusing substrate has been used in the gourmet mushroom world for a while now. However, I've seen some pushback on this idea a few times here, so I figured I would help document my successes with reusing substrate. The idea crossed my mind after pasty made the post about using only coir to grow, as a means of testing the nutritive content of coir. Given that the pure coir grow essentially failed to do anything meaningful, its safe to assume coir is mostly used for its water retentive properties. Therefore, if coir is only used for water retention, in theory, it should be reusable indefinitely. (Pasty's experiment used cubensis only, so obviously his results do not apply to other species, but I am making some assumptions for other species)
What I have been doing over the last 4 months or so is attempting to see the extent at which I can reuse substrate. Most of my experiments have grown gourmet mushrooms, lions mane, oysters, chestnuts, king oysters, piopinno, etc. I've done small amounts with cubensis, but have plans to test that out even further in the future. I will do my best to update this thread with what I figure out for cubes.
I'll get into the details of what I do in a little bit, but I do want to recommend anyone to give this a shot. With resources becoming limited due to whatever, it's becoming crucial for everyone to take advantage of what they already have. Imagine being able to grow a large amount of mushroom using the same coco coir brick???
So this my steps:
Step 1. Grow a faaaattt tub of mush!
  or grow a faaaaatt tub of mold!
 side note, I love this method because, even though it really sucks to have your tubs mold out, you can still get some use out of your materials instead of just throwing it all out!
Step 2. Break up your old substrate and rehydrate.

Step 3. Load in bags/jars/etc. and sterilize. Because of the residual grains that will be entwined within the old substrate, sterilization is necessary. I usually do 2 hrs at 20 psi, but that's cause I use bags that are stuffed full.
Step 4. Inoculate how you please. I have used grains, LC, and LI and have not noticed a difference. Due to the residual grains, there will be plenty of nutrition leftover to facilitate healthy fruiting.
Step 5. Wait for full colonization and then fruit as you please. Like I mentioned before, this works with many gourmet cultures, cubes, and I'm sure many other Psilocybe species. Here's some pics of success doing this.
     
So far, I'm very happy with this method and rarely, if ever, do I find myself tossing/composting my leftover sub. Might as well use it grow more mushrooms! I have yet to see too much of a difference in growth between fresh and used coir, but I'm going to try and do a better job at keeping track of yields, but like I said, no noticeable difference yet. I have also grown many gourmets using sawdust, and I've been also finding the yields comparable. I've also reused sawdust plenty of times and it works just as well as fresh.
So stop throwing out your substrate and just reuse it!! Hit me up here for any questions, or if anyone else does anything similar, lets chat about it.
 
-------------------- Mind's Easy Bag 2 Bag Grain Transfers Endless Sub Tek ...the doll's trying to kill me and the toaster's been laughing at me...
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Baba Yaga
♥ coir grower

Registered: 09/13/20
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Seems easy enough to try. I like the idea of reusing old subs but this would only be viable for me if I start using bags (and maybe a high capacity steam sterilizer) cause it would be to labor and energy intensive to fire up a 23 quart presto for 10 jars of what is mostly bulk.
Cool thing though! I will do a test run with a few jars just to see for myself.
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mind.at.large
Myconerd


Registered: 12/13/16
Posts: 1,218
Loc: Floating in liquid gardens
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Yeah I totally agree. This would be more feasible with the right equipment. But I can also see some kick ass bottle grows happening with this. I've never tried it with jars tho, because, like you mentioned, it seems like it would be too labor intensive for only 10 jars of bulk. Bags FTW all day!
Also, I forgot to mention that I usually load up the spent sub in already used myco bags, so theres even more reusing going on! Woot Woot!
-------------------- Mind's Easy Bag 2 Bag Grain Transfers Endless Sub Tek ...the doll's trying to kill me and the toaster's been laughing at me...
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Baba Yaga
♥ coir grower

Registered: 09/13/20
Posts: 3,955
Loc: Hyperspace Chicken Coop
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Nice. Just curious, can you actually tell how often a substrate can be recycled? There must be some degradation going on.
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mind.at.large
Myconerd


Registered: 12/13/16
Posts: 1,218
Loc: Floating in liquid gardens
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So I haven't gone as far into this as I want to yet. I'm also bad at taking notes... but my plan is to see just how far a substrate can be recycled. As in, grow a particular set of genetics on fresh substrate, recycle the same substrate to grow the same set of genetics and track yields, and so on. I'm interested in how many generations of reuse I can get before yields are severely diminished. I'd expect it to be at least a few generations, but I haven't gotten there yet, so that's just speculation.
-------------------- Mind's Easy Bag 2 Bag Grain Transfers Endless Sub Tek ...the doll's trying to kill me and the toaster's been laughing at me...
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Baba Yaga
♥ coir grower

Registered: 09/13/20
Posts: 3,955
Loc: Hyperspace Chicken Coop
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Very interesting, thanks for doing and sharing this.
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PBJ710
Strangler


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Have you considered trying to screen or otherwise sort the grains out of the coco? Seems like the leftover grains would re-contaminate way too fast if there's not healthy mycelium already there to stake it's claim on the nutrition.
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fungusul
Fungus Kingdom


Registered: 07/16/20
Posts: 1,028
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Re: Endless sub tek [Re: PBJ710]
#27769055 - 05/08/22 07:05 PM (1 year, 8 months ago) |
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mind.at.large
Myconerd


Registered: 12/13/16
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Loc: Floating in liquid gardens
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Re: Endless sub tek [Re: PBJ710]
#27769069 - 05/08/22 07:21 PM (1 year, 8 months ago) |
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Quote:
PBJ710 said: Have you considered trying to screen or otherwise sort the grains out of the coco? Seems like the leftover grains would re-contaminate way too fast if there's not healthy mycelium already there to stake it's claim on the nutrition.
There's really no way to remove the grains from the coco cause the sugars have for sure leeched into the substrate by the end of the first run. But you might have missed that I sterilize the substrate and then inoculate under sterile conditions in a closed container (bag or jar). Then break open for fruiting.
The old substrate will definitely be filled with all the stuff competitors would thrive on. I've fucked up plenty of inoculations while doing this and had gross shit growing, but those bags usually just get mixed in with the rest of the used sub and reused again!
-------------------- Mind's Easy Bag 2 Bag Grain Transfers Endless Sub Tek ...the doll's trying to kill me and the toaster's been laughing at me...
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badmojo420
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i dont lke the idea of breaking up moldy substrate and introducing those spores in the air which will inevitably find their way inside my home, but maybe im overthinking and theyre already inside anyways. do i want more inside tho?
i would give this a try on a regular spent tub that isnt infested with mold tho
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Pastywhyte
Say hello to my little friend



Registered: 09/15/12
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I was going to do this myself and document the results. Unfortunately I never got around to it. Looks like it turned out the way I figured it would. Nice work
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mind.at.large
Myconerd


Registered: 12/13/16
Posts: 1,218
Loc: Floating in liquid gardens
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Thanks pasty!
-------------------- Mind's Easy Bag 2 Bag Grain Transfers Endless Sub Tek ...the doll's trying to kill me and the toaster's been laughing at me...
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mind.at.large
Myconerd


Registered: 12/13/16
Posts: 1,218
Loc: Floating in liquid gardens
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Quote:
badmojo420 said: i dont lke the idea of breaking up moldy substrate and introducing those spores in the air which will inevitably find their way inside my home, but maybe im overthinking and theyre already inside anyways. do i want more inside tho?
i would give this a try on a regular spent tub that isnt infested with mold tho
Meh you're overthinking it
-------------------- Mind's Easy Bag 2 Bag Grain Transfers Endless Sub Tek ...the doll's trying to kill me and the toaster's been laughing at me...
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Land Trout
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Cool! Very cool Mind. I’ve been doing this since I heard you bring it up and I’m loving it. I just keep a tote that I dump spent gourmet and cube subs, and wood chips in, I’m even throwing weeds and old potting soil in with some paper scraps and even some food scraps. I’m not trying to streamline anything and work like a farm, mostly just trying to recycle trash, and sterilize weeds so they don’t end up in the garden. So far I’ve only used my recycle for wood loving psilocybes and I think the blocks are superior to the raw sawdust blocks I’ve used. Only downfall is the processing in the pc and having to knock in front of the hood. But so far the effort is well worth it. I really think the blocks benefit from the coir and potting soil.  I’ll be running some gourmets on the recycle soon. Thank you for sharing
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hazyhorse
scoobin



Registered: 03/19/19
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fucking killer man. i don’t use bags but i do have a fuck ton of pint jars lying around, i might have to play around with this & do some bottle teks. been meaning to try out some semi solid LC, this might be a good excuse to do it. it’s awesome to reuse shit like this & your results are awesome. thanks for this write up!!
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Seamonkey84
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Another benefit I can see from this is some added nutrients that wouldn’t be present in a fresh batch of substrate. When you PC the stuff, the old mycelium is killed off and leave behind all the building blocks needed for the next set of mycelium to use, like using nutritional yeast in the sub.
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fahtster
Now With 33%More Faht



Registered: 06/17/06
Posts: 9,266
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This is great
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mind.at.large
Myconerd


Registered: 12/13/16
Posts: 1,218
Loc: Floating in liquid gardens
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Re: Endless sub tek [Re: fahtster]
#27775817 - 05/13/22 04:27 PM (1 year, 8 months ago) |
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Thanks y’all!!
Trout, super stoked to see others doing this! Definitely keep us updated on how your gourmets go
Faht, you’ve had some success resterilizing bacterial grains right? I’m thinking of trying that out this weekend and I’ll report back how it works. I’ve got a little pile of jars that were too fucked to expand so I’ll just throw them back in the pc and see how it goes
-------------------- Mind's Easy Bag 2 Bag Grain Transfers Endless Sub Tek ...the doll's trying to kill me and the toaster's been laughing at me...
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fahtster
Now With 33%More Faht



Registered: 06/17/06
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Yes I have.. it’s always been within a week of the first inoc.. I think I’ve tried partially colonized once.. the smell from that is pretty horrid.. just a heads up there lol
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Wall.E
Bacteria's Bitch



Registered: 06/05/20
Posts: 2,860
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Re: Endless sub tek [Re: fahtster]
#27776002 - 05/13/22 07:00 PM (1 year, 8 months ago) |
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Nice work brothaman
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