Just wrapped up my first harvest on two successful tubs (RIP Azzies) and wanted to consolidate my notes from the process so I have something to look back at and iterate on for the future.
Cultivars: Golden Teacher, Orissa India, Psilocybe Azurescens
Day 1 - Inoculation
Purchased three premade grain spawn bags (3lbs, millet) and let them sit for two weeks prior to inoculation to ensure they were clean. Wiped each bag down with 70% Isopropyl and injected an entire 10cc multispore syringe, doing my best to put 2.5cc into the four different quadrants of the bag. Tented the top of the bag so there was an air channel from the filter patch to the spawn and placed them in a closet to colonize.
Notes: I probably didn't need to inject the entire spore syringe. I can probably make my own grain bags now that I know how to sterilize with a pressure cooker. I'd like to try isolating strong cultures on agar next time.
Day 24, 26, 28 - Break and Shake #1
The first grain bag appeared 30% colonized on day 24, the second on the 26th and the third bag on the 29th day of colonization. Broke up the colonized grain as much as possible and shook the bag to distribute it. Tented for gas exchange and placed back in the closet.
Notes: The closet had no climate control, it was likely 68F most of the time, getting colder at night and warmer on hot days (there weren't many). Pretty sure this resulted in slower than normal colonization even for an MSS. Next time I will try keeping the spawn at a higher temperature during colonization.
Day 34 - Break and Shake #2
All three grain bags appeared 80% or more colonized on day 30 so I decided to do one final break and shake before spawn to bulk.
Day 40, 43 - Spawn to bulk
On day 40, two grain bags appeared fully colonized with the final bag trailing behind a few days. Using 28qt shallow tubs I mixed 3lbs colonized millet spawn with ~13lbs of substrate (boomr bags for the first two, masters mix for the last). I levelled the mix and gently tamped it, packed in the edges and levelled it again. Afterwards I placed another ~2lbs of substrate on top of the grain/sub mix, levelled it out and gently packed it down. This resulted in a depth of around 3 inches for the spawn/sub mix with a half inch layer of only substrate. After this I cleaned the sides of the tubs, placed the lids on and put them in garbage bags to colonize.
Unfortunately between day 40 and 43 I got bronchitis and attempted to bulk prep the final bag of spawn. I had started sterilizing the master's mix for the final tub the night before I got extremely sick which wound up with me improperly mixing the sub (dry spots) and leaving it in the pressure cooker for two days. I was out of mix and didn't want to order more so I impatiently chose to try to make the tub with what I had while coughing my lungs out every 30 seconds. Prepared the tub the same way as the other two.
Notes: Should have waited until I was feeling better and re-sterilized the substrate or ordered more, the spawn could have sat a few more days. Apparently the garbage bags are unnecessary so I can ditch those next time. I thought the boomr bags were dry so I asked the vendor and they assured me they weren't. I should have trusted my instincts as I found out later. Apparently the boomr bags are overkill and I can just use a simpler substrate, however I was able to successfully use a 1:5 spawn to sub ratio and I see everyone using coir substrate doing 1:1 or 1:2. Maybe I'll run a test next time.
Day 50, 52 - Fruiting Conditions
On day 50 the first tub was nearly 100% colonized so I removed the lid and placed it in the fruiting tent. On day 52 I did the same for the second tub. The final tub was lagging far behind which was to be expected for the type of mushroom. The fruiting tent climate was initially set to 85RH, 68F, 3500k lights for 12 hours a day and a 195cfu exhaust fan set to run for 15 minutes every hour.
Notes: The second tub was borderline for moving to the tent, there were a few patches where the mycelium had not colonized the surface. This would become a problem later on. Made several mistakes setting up the tent: hygrometer was at the top of the tent, should have been at the bottom, 15minutes with that fan was way too much, and 68F means stuff grows slooooow.
Day 54 - Trich
My daily routine involved checking on the tubs every morning before work. On the morning of day 54 I saw that something had started colonizing some of the bare substrate that didn't look like the rest of the mycelium. I decided to take a picture and post it online asking for advice. I checked on it an hour later and it had started turning ever so slightly green. I laid a paper towel over the patch, soaked it with peroxide and then cut out a 4" radius around the contaminated area and threw that chunk in the woods. I checked on it later that day and it was bright green. I sprayed down the rest of the tub with peroxide just to be safe. I have not had a recurrence of trich in this tub or anything else in the tent for the 20-odd days since it occurred.
Notes: If I ever use a tent again, I will make sure the cake is colonized all the way before putting it in there.
Day 60 - Something is wrong
10 days after initiating fruiting conditions and no signs of pins have appeared. A user suggested that the surface might be too wet so I turned off the humidifier for the tent for a day, allowing the RH to drop down to 60% and some of the water to evaporate. Also raised the temp to 71F
Notes: I have no idea if this advice was correct or not as pins formed the next day. Would they have without changing things? I don't know! Things seem to move much faster with the higher temp.
Day 60 - RIP Azzies
The tub I knew I messed up had been limping along for a while, but I took a peek inside and saw that my impatience had caught up with me and ruined the tub. I'll definitely be trying these again.
Day 61 - Pins!
The first pins began to form in both tubs the day after the change in humidity. Once pins formed I returned the humidity to 85.
Day 64 - Something is wrong, again
Three days after the first pins appeared, they hadn't changed much in size and appeared to have stalled in their growth. Out of confusion and frustration I decided to check the substrate despite all signs indicating it was fine. It was in fact super dry and not fine. Between the hygrometer issues, the large surface area of the tub and the already dry substrate from the start, the tub had almost completely dried up. I poured distilled water along the sides of the tub and waited.
Notes: Need to keep a better eye on this and dial in the right humidity/fae to prevent drying out.
Day 71 - Harvest
The distilled water worked and the mushrooms bounced back in the few days before the veils began breaking and I began harvesting them. All told each tub yielded 120g dry on the first flush which I am more than happy with and have literally no idea what to do with.
Notes: Get curved scissors for harvesting next time. Grow smaller next time. Make sure I have the tools to clone/print next time.
Edited by mkmk (10/26/23 11:06 AM)
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