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Stipe-n Cap


Registered: 08/04/12
Posts: 7,623
Loc: Canada
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Uncle Ben's, Broke boi, kits, manure substrates, amendments, and other dumb shit 15
#28106983 - 12/21/22 08:06 AM (1 year, 1 month ago) |
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Inflatable tubs, boxfan flowhoods, pop up tent style still air box', substrates containing loads of ammendments to "boost" growth, multispore solution to Uncle Bens?
These are all inferior products or techniques destined for failure. For more information regarding boxfan hoods, etc, I go into greater detail here:
Box fan flowhoods, Glove boxes, Positive pressure boxes and Automated Mono-Tubs
Spores:
Shooting septic spore solution into rice packs or anything other than agar, with the exception of PF tek (which was specifically designed for spore solution), will produce unwanted/unnecessary failure.

Spores are produced by fruit grown in tubs in the open air. This open air environment is replete with dust, mold spores, skin cells, pollen, bacteria, you name it.
The reality, whether you can see it or not:

Removing caps for printing or swabbing risks further contamination. All vendors/cultivators worth their salt are aware of this reality: Spores are to be considered septic (contaminated) by default.
This risk of contamination can be mitigated to some degree by double printing, or centrifugal separation; this however, will often not be the way your spores have been processed. Even when the print/syringe maker has taken steps to reduce the bioburden of your material, the same risks persist, just at a reduced rate.
For this reason clone tissue is taken from the untouched interior of the fruit, because growing and handling invariably contaminates the exterior. The interior remains sterile so long as you don't contaminate by cutting through the surface into the interior, causingcross contamination.
Fruits grown in vitro on plates, or in sterile jars/bags, will produce sterile fruits and spores until exposed to the environment.
When one approaches: spore prints, swabs, and syringes from this perspective you'll immediately understand why agar is the intermediary step between spores and all other kinds of media; whether it be grains, liquid culture, or any other substrate.
Uncle Ben & Broke boi:
Spores to Uncle Ben's/broke boi translates to: Bacteria/mold inoculated grains; but are these methods cheaper?
For arguments sake, lets say that a 50lb bag of wheat is 50$; that's 1$/ dry pound of grain. Wheat will double in size when hydrated, so now that's 100lbs of prepped wheat @ .50$/lb. Each jar of prepped grain is roughly ~3 cups of hydrated grain which will weigh roughly ~1lb; so, each grain master cost to you is .50 cents.
It's important to point out that we should be harvesting at least 1 dry oz/jar of hydrated spawn as a minimum standard.
(Wheat is not 50$/bag, btw, wheat is more like 12$/50lb bag )
By comparison, what is the retail price for a single 8oz bag of Uncle Ben's rice? like ~4$? Factor in the rice pack, price of spore syringes, multiplied by failure due to contamination + wasted time.
This doesn't sound very cheap to me. Broke boi/Uncle Ben's are not the cheap/thrifty option, they're the I have money and time to piss away options.
Don't use these methods unless you're the Napoleon Dynamite of Mycology.

PF Tek:
PF tek with brown rice flour is the only exception to this rule due to the design features of the tek:
1. The Brown rice flour/vermiculite mix is resistant to bacterial blooms due to the the granular texture which slows bacterial migration;
2. The sub is design to remain intact (no shaking) which further reduces the spread of contamination;
3. The mycelial colony itself remains intact; shaking/breaking up grains allows for bacteria to not only spread throughout the grains but simultaneously weakens the colony which will provide a window of opportunity for bacteria to gain the upper hand during the recovery post shake, not so with pf tek;
4. PF tek was designed for spores in mind and is the only acceptable spore to spawn/sub tek available for the reasons listed above. Molds will still behave as mold, PF is not without it's risks when using spores.
Soil amendments, manure substrates, kits:
First of all, here's the nutrient profile of grain spawn:
Wheat, millet, rye berries, milo:
   
Cereal grains are nutrient dense, plenty of everything the colony needs. We supplement with cereal grains at 4 quarts for a standard mono, so, that's four pounds; the most I've heard is 6 quarts or 6 pounds. Let's use wheat as an example which roughly doubles in size once hydrated. Let's call 4lbs of hydrated wheat, 2 raw pounds; 2lbs is 907.18 grams. Multiply all of those above values for wheat by 9, that's how much nutrition is available to your colony with 4 quarts of hydrated wheat.
You're growing fungi, not Alberta beef.
With respect to cubes, fungal colonies will derive what they need in terms of macro and micro nutrients including calcium, sulfur, and l-Tryptophan from cereal grains. The bulk substrate is simply a water reservoir, period! The addition of amendments to this reservoir is not only unnecessary but further complicates the process by now requiring sterilization of that substrate, with manure substrates you'll require proper pasteurization, or expect mold.
Gourmet farmers primarily add supplements like bran, soy hulls, and gypsum to sawdust blocks because they utilize far less grain spawn than we do, otherwise the addition of supplements would either not be necessary or at least significantly reduced. If you're interested in cultivating choice edibles all that's required for a 5lb hwfp block is 1lb of spawn, or 1 quart jar/1lb of spawn to 5 lbs of hwfp including hydration, which is 20% supplementation by weight. The cereal grains in this scenario is the 1:1 replacement for supplementation, much the same as grain spawn is with cubes.
A standard mono-tub recipe calls for 4lbs of spawn to 650g of coir, 3 quarts of vermiculite, with 4 quarts or roughly 8 lbs of water; that's 4lbs spawned to about 10 lbs of substrate including the water, which is supplementation @ 40%. This far exceeds gourmet standards which generally sits between 15-25% unless running masters mix which is a 50% ratio, not suitable to all species. Some folks are spawning tubs with 5 or 6 quarts of spawn which is 50-60% supplementation. Cubes are not Pleurotus.
To put things in perspective I personally use 900g of coir (~2lbs), 5L h20 (~11lbs), 3 quarts verm (0.8lbs), roughly 14lbs of hydrated substrate spawned with 4lbs of grain which is still a whopping 28.5% @ 1:6 spawn to sub ratio.
Many massive mammals like horse, deer, and cattle live and grow quite comfortably on a diet of cereal grain. Just inspect your spent substrates, have those grains been entirely consumed by the colony? Never.
Adding more in the form of supplementation is like bringing sand to the beach, the colony can only utilize a percentage of what's available.
There won't be data available for Psilocybe species for obvious reasons, but here's some data regarding gourmet supplementation, performance drops off as supplementation increases, The same will be true for actives:
 
Kits/Premade Substrates
When ordering premade substrates/spawn/kits online you're not only trusting that the vendor is capable of sterilizing or pasteurizing these substrates correctly but that they're capable of maintaining that state throughout the handling and shipping process that product must undergo to reach you, this is definitely not going to be possible and they're fully aware of this.
Kits are not designed to produce high rates of return on your investment, they're designed to produce an income stream for the manufacturer. Remember, spores are sold for microscopy purposes only, you can't even complain if those kits, spawn, or substrates combined with their awful instructions produce failure, your success in that regard is not their intention or primary goal, you as the consumer should be aware of what you're purchasing.
Influencers are entrepreneurs looking for a product to sell, which is fine so long as that product has actual value, and hasn't been misrepresented. New cultivators seem to enjoy complicating shit, the more complicated it sounds, the better. More nutrients, more mushrooms?
 Mushroom cultivation is not cannabis cultivation, we are not building live soils in the same manner you would for pot. That's the main issue with influencers is that they're pretty inefficient cultivators to begin with, they're primarily salesmen/women/promoters/ entrepreneurs, not top tier mushroom cultivators. They're often operating with on outdated cultivation advice/info which effects their ability to advise. Shooting septic spore solution into the ecological vacuum of our sterile media vessels provides the perfect environment for the molds, yeasts, and bacteria that are often found mixed into multi-spore solution to get a head start, destroy or at least compromise the health of your spawn; needless to say this will waste time, money, and other resources while you struggle with less than desirable results and/or outright failure. Uncle Bens tek, broke boi, manure based substrates, are a novelty at best. A bunch of noobs selling other noobs low quality products and services while making a killing, they're often the blind leading the blind. Folks are often transitioning from cannabis with their new found interest in mush cult, they have lot's of botanical baggage that comes with that. Plants don't "eat" organic supplements, the supplements are used to build microbial and fungal colonies within the soil which make nutrients available to the plants. This isn't the case with fungi; Adding organic amendments to substrate is just an indication that you lack the requisite knowledge of the organism that you're developing products for. Supplementation does not replace grain spawn, and is not only pointless to use in tandem but will add layers of complexity that will often result in mold for new growers. Experimentation:Mush-cult makes people feel like mad scientists, so the inclination is to allow shower thoughts to run wild with "hypotheses" concerning cult practices, which ultimately leads to "experimentation" "Experiment" often translates to: Ignoring sterile techniques, adopting less than ideal habits/equipment, refusing to learn why and how things work. Learn the why and how before tinkering with the variables, because adopting the "shooting spores into an Uncle Ben's as an experiment" attitude doesn't make you a free thinking trailblazer of scientific discovery, it makes you a noob. Bucket tek your coir and vermiculite, don't buy manure subs, if you require manure for Panaeolus, make it yourself, manure is 100% pointless/unnecessary for Cubensis. Don't buy fancy sounding amendments, don't trust that the grains you ordered will arrive sterile and definitely do not shoot spore solution into any of those products. Mush cult is a DIY activity, unless you love handing out your money which was earned by trading your time, time you'll never get back; just so that you can waste more time farming mold. If you're just starting out this is the gold standard: 1.Spores to agar; 2.Clean up growth on agar by selecting clean mycelium to transfer away from bacteria, molds, yeasts; 3. While clean mycelium grows out, prep some grains for the pressure cooker; a) Use this clean plate as a master plate to make many more clean plates for future grows, keep master plate in the fridge for future use. b) Once you experience more success than failure growing with agar wedges to grains you can level up to grain to grain transfers (g2g). c) Once you get some experience with g2g you can use the same master plates from step 3 to make liquid culture. d) All of these techniques build upon the next, each new skill informs the next, develop your skills in order. 4. Vent PC for 15 mins, Sterilize grains for 2 hours @ 15+psi; 5. Inoculate cooled grains in your still air box or in front of a flowhood using wedges of mycelium from your clean plate. 6. After grains are 100% colonized you can spawn those grains to shoeboxes or full sized tubs. Follow these principles, failures will inevitably take place, learn from those mistakes. This is the way.
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Wintergirl
Student

Registered: 03/19/22
Posts: 104
Loc: Home Planet
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Re: Purchasing kits, manure substrates, amendments, and other dumb shit [Re: Stipe-n Cap] 2
#28107122 - 12/21/22 09:38 AM (1 year, 1 month ago) |
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An important, and fun, read. Thank you.
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Mrmeowgi
Storyteller



Registered: 08/10/21
Posts: 20
Loc: United States
Last seen: 4 days, 23 hours
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Re: Purchasing kits, manure substrates, amendments, and other dumb shit [Re: Stipe-n Cap] 4
#28107140 - 12/21/22 09:46 AM (1 year, 1 month ago) |
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The story of my life while trying to teach my friend how to grow mush over the last few years. He came from cannabis cult and just doesn’t seem to understand that plants and fungi are very different. I’ll tell him exactly what to do only to return a few days later and listen to him excitedly explain that he decided to add some extra nutrients, such as manure water. So frustrating. Although, he has become quite the master of mold production; seas of green.
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Land Trout
Stranger



Registered: 01/08/18
Posts: 3,079
Last seen: 16 minutes, 48 seconds
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Re: Purchasing kits, manure substrates, amendments, and other dumb shit [Re: Stipe-n Cap] 4
#28107142 - 12/21/22 09:48 AM (1 year, 1 month ago) |
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“You're growing fungi, not Alberta beef.“ This I love, this is knowledge and wisdom
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omelet
eggman


Registered: 10/15/22
Posts: 50
Last seen: 7 months, 22 days
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Re: Purchasing kits, manure substrates, amendments, and other dumb shit [Re: Land Trout]
#28107195 - 12/21/22 10:29 AM (1 year, 1 month ago) |
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Edited by omelet (12/21/22 10:29 AM)
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bakedbeings
orbiter of truth


Registered: 09/01/20
Posts: 4,218
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Re: Purchasing kits, manure substrates, amendments, and other dumb shit [Re: omelet]
#28107202 - 12/21/22 10:35 AM (1 year, 1 month ago) |
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-------------------- 🅑🅞🅣🅣🅛🅔 🅖🅐🅝🅖
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Screwup
Googles your dumb questions


Registered: 01/27/22
Posts: 6,296
Last seen: 7 hours, 11 minutes
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Re: Purchasing kits, manure substrates, amendments, and other dumb shit [Re: bakedbeings] 1
#28107204 - 12/21/22 10:38 AM (1 year, 1 month ago) |
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Some new person out there is looking at this right now, glossing over it, and getting ready to post a thread about this exact stuff.
Good post P9
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ruawakeyet


Registered: 05/03/21
Posts: 1,862
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Re: Purchasing kits, manure substrates, amendments, and other dumb shit [Re: Screwup] 1
#28107211 - 12/21/22 10:45 AM (1 year, 1 month ago) |
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4 qts. of water = 1 gallon of water
1 gallon of water = ~ 8 pounds, not 2 pounds
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Stipe-n Cap


Registered: 08/04/12
Posts: 7,623
Loc: Canada
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Re: Uncle Ben's, Broke boi, kits, manure substrates, amendments, and other dumb shit [Re: ruawakeyet] 1
#28107213 - 12/21/22 10:48 AM (1 year, 1 month ago) |
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Ah yes, I posted the weight of a single quart, will make the appropriate edit. Thanks.
Edited by Stipe-n Cap (12/27/22 10:27 AM)
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FlawdaKraka
FNG



Registered: 08/16/22
Posts: 588
Loc: Gulf Coast
Last seen: 9 months, 1 day
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Re: Purchasing kits, manure substrates, amendments, and other dumb shit [Re: Stipe-n Cap]
#28107276 - 12/21/22 11:43 AM (1 year, 1 month ago) |
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Excellent write up P9
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OlSk00lFarmer
Grower



Registered: 08/18/22
Posts: 222
Loc: Canada
Last seen: 10 months, 21 days
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Re: Purchasing kits, manure substrates, amendments, and other dumb shit [Re: FlawdaKraka] 1
#28107287 - 12/21/22 11:52 AM (1 year, 1 month ago) |
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Interesting.
1q of gourmet spawn to a 5lb bag? Really? I typically use 1/4 myco quart(200ml) of spawn per 5lb. Button farmer use a 100:1 ratio.
Awesome write up.
With the legalization/decriminalization of Psilocybe happening all over at this point, what are your thoughts on kits with colonized spawn included in kits?
After being involved in the mushroom community for close to 30 years I've just about seen it all.
-------------------- LAGM 2.023 Man, who gave that Shroomery? Who taught him how that works? Someone tell him when he mentions shit do research first!
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Stipe-n Cap


Registered: 08/04/12
Posts: 7,623
Loc: Canada
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Re: Uncle Ben's, Broke boi, kits, manure substrates, amendments, and other dumb shit [Re: OlSk00lFarmer] 1
#28107301 - 12/21/22 12:06 PM (1 year, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
OlSk00lFarmer said: Interesting.
1q of gourmet spawn to a 5lb bag? Really? I typically use 1/4 myco quart(200ml) of spawn per 5lb. Button farmer use a 100:1 ratio.
That was my point precisely, gourmet farmers use far less spawn due to supplementation. Less spawn greater supplementation.
When running straight hwfp bags (unsupplemented) the grains act as the supplementation, 1 lb of spawn is a direct 1:1 replacement of supplementation at 20%. By doing it this way you won't require sterilization of the hardwood fuel pellets, just add hot water, allow to cool and then spawn.
Quote:
what are your thoughts on kits with colonized spawn included in kits?
I have absolutely zero faith is the spawn produced by vendors, it's just too cheap, easy, effective, and convenient to produce spawn yourself. There are legitimate products worth buying and selling, spawn is definitely not one of them, imo.
Edited by Stipe-n Cap (12/27/22 10:27 AM)
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OlSk00lFarmer
Grower



Registered: 08/18/22
Posts: 222
Loc: Canada
Last seen: 10 months, 21 days
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Re: Purchasing kits, manure substrates, amendments, and other dumb shit [Re: Stipe-n Cap] 2
#28107336 - 12/21/22 12:34 PM (1 year, 1 month ago) |
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Ty.
I've read quite a few of your threads plus the posts I have seen you make are articulate, educated, and overall just interesting to read. Ive actually learned quite a bit from them overall which doesn't happen alot with me in regards to mushrooms.
-------------------- LAGM 2.023 Man, who gave that Shroomery? Who taught him how that works? Someone tell him when he mentions shit do research first!
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Stipe-n Cap


Registered: 08/04/12
Posts: 7,623
Loc: Canada
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Re: Uncle Ben's, Broke boi, kits, manure substrates, amendments, and other dumb shit [Re: OlSk00lFarmer]
#28107340 - 12/21/22 12:38 PM (1 year, 1 month ago) |
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Thanks, much appreciated
Edited by Stipe-n Cap (12/27/22 10:26 AM)
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britneyspores
it’s britney, bitch

Registered: 09/15/21
Posts: 1
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Re: Uncle Ben's, Broke boi, kits, manure substrates, amendments, and other dumb shit [Re: Stipe-n Cap] 2
#28118833 - 12/31/22 01:55 PM (1 year, 28 days ago) |
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Great write up as always. I started with broke boi a year ago but after I got my bearings around here I started following your posts with great success.
Even here on the shroomery a lot of misconceptions run rampant and you always show up with the facts and help turn anecdotal conversations into proper lessons. (My agar situation was a mess when I was transferring “sectors.”)
Thanks for putting so much time and effort into this community
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Stipe-n Cap


Registered: 08/04/12
Posts: 7,623
Loc: Canada
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Re: Uncle Ben's, Broke boi, kits, manure substrates, amendments, and other dumb shit [Re: britneyspores] 1
#28118916 - 12/31/22 02:49 PM (1 year, 28 days ago) |
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Glad you found it helpful.
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SpencerPhillips


Registered: 08/18/12
Posts: 656
Loc: ON, Canada
Last seen: 3 days, 20 hours
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Re: Uncle Ben's, Broke boi, kits, manure substrates, amendments, and other dumb shit [Re: Stipe-n Cap]
#28120689 - 01/02/23 01:52 AM (1 year, 26 days ago) |
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Thanks for directing me to this post!
-------------------- Come on put it up! Woooo!
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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: Uncle Ben's, Broke boi, kits, manure substrates, amendments, and other dumb shit [Re: Stipe-n Cap]
#28121076 - 01/02/23 11:38 AM (1 year, 26 days ago) |
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First off great thread as usual p9. Hopefully this will help lead many new growers away from expensive gimmicks. But I have a response to one thing you’ve said:
Quote:
p9hu7 said:
I have absolutely zero faith is the spawn produced by vendors, it's just too cheap, easy, effective, and convenient to produce spawn yourself. There are legitimate products worth buying and selling, spawn is definitely not one of them, imo.
Given that purchasing spawn from an outside source is a pretty common practice in large scale gourmet mushroom farms, why do you feel this way? I’m assuming that you’re speaking more to cubensis vendors selling spawn, which I understand the hesitation as it seems like many of the cubensis vendors are selling low quality products. However, I like to believe that the vendors who are jumping in to the new mush trend and are selling low quality products will be weeded out in the future. There are many great gourmet spawn vendors, it only makes sense that there should be great cubensis spawn vendors out there (eventually)
I do want to point out that I make almost all my own spawn as yes it’s easy and cheap. However, being able to buy a gourmet bag from a reputable vendor and spread it to 40+ supp sawdust blocks is pretty convenient. In fact this has me thinking if anyone has ever tried growing cubes in bags and supplementing and sterilizing their sub to reduce the amount of spawn needed… Personally I prefer 4lb bags of wheat mixed with coco/verm in a mono but I could see people following the gourmet world and going that way.
-------------------- 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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Stipe-n Cap


Registered: 08/04/12
Posts: 7,623
Loc: Canada
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Re: Uncle Ben's, Broke boi, kits, manure substrates, amendments, and other dumb shit [Re: mind.at.large] 1
#28121140 - 01/02/23 12:29 PM (1 year, 26 days ago) |
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Commercial spawn/supplemented sawdust block production done by dedicated professional labs is completely different than the folks selling low volume spawn to noobs. My opinion can always be swayed by sufficient evidence but the quality I've seen come out of these low/mid level places are below standard.
I'm sure there's some reputable places out there that I'm not aware of but as a rule of thumb it's best to err on the side of caution especially when dealing with folks in gray area markets.
As things progress from a legal standpoint I'm sure there will be vast improvements.
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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: Uncle Ben's, Broke boi, kits, manure substrates, amendments, and other dumb shit [Re: Stipe-n Cap] 2
#28121251 - 01/02/23 02:08 PM (1 year, 26 days ago) |
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Yes 100% agree. The quality from low level production seems to be crap quality, whether for cubes or even some of the random gourmet stuff you see on Etsy or Amazon.
I’ll also say, something important to recognize is that the big farms who are just buying spawn from reputable sources are most likely fully capable of producing their own spawn, it’s just financially it makes sense to buy from someone else. Therefore they would be aware of how quality spawn should grow. Noobs who are too lazy or scared to make their own spawn so therefore buy it randomly from untrusted vendors will inevitably get burned.
-------------------- 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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