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BrokenHeart
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Registered: 02/27/23
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My first pf jars were too wet, I added too much water, I put them aside for a few weeks then top fruited them like this. They looked alot like your last pics.
 I just de lidded, placed over feild capacity coir on top, and put them in a tub with an inch of water. Got fruits from failure.
Edited by BrokenHeart (01/23/24 05:35 PM)
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SonomaFungi_707
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Re: SonomaFungi’s first stab (Grow Log) [Re: BrokenHeart]
#28632380 - 01/23/24 05:46 PM (4 days, 14 hours ago) |
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Nice! Making the most of what you’ve got - I like it.
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AlexandrDughin
Explorer

Registered: 10/30/23
Posts: 35
Loc: Europe
Last seen: 3 hours, 9 minutes
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I am on my first grow, and for me it was much much easyer to use popcorn instead of other grains/ brf. - i used clean mycellium grown on agar and not went the brf method.
For me, the grain jars failed 2 times - too dry and compact / too wet - molds - bacteria - same goes for agar : too wet and mycellium fails to grow on it and bacteria flourishes.
Switching to popcorn seems to have solved all the moisture problems easly, as getting the corect moisture level is very important, and i find it is much more easy to get that level on popcorn at least for me.
I wish you all the best and a successfull harvest
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SonomaFungi_707
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Registered: 12/24/23
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I might give popcorn a try at some point, but I haven’t gotten to the point of clean mycelium on agar yet. That pretty much leaves me with PF Tek and practicing with agar, for now.
I’ve got some agar in the works right now, and I’ve still got two untouched syringes (plus some dregs from my first round). My goal is to have some clean mycelium growing on agar but the time I run out of spore solution. That way I never have to F with buying syringes again.
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AlexandrDughin
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Registered: 10/30/23
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Loc: Europe
Last seen: 3 hours, 9 minutes
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With agar, starting from nature harvested semilanceata i managed to get some clean cultures(5) growing after 2 months +- and maybe up to 40 petri dishes and 2 transfers..
with cleaner, imported cubensis took 1 transfer and again up to 40 dishes to get maybe 10 clean ones.
Using a stil air box.
I think, with agar, making lots of them will help, like: start with 20. 18 will fail expand the 2 good ones back to 20 about half will fail again etc... and spawn the spore solution on just water agar, so that bacterias have a harder time growing.
In the space of 2 months of experimenting i had : black mold, cobweb, at least 4 different bacteria types, yeasts, thricoderma etc
It's an uphill,constant fight against contaminants 
But once you manage to isolate a clean culture on agar, the rest is much easyer !
I wish you the best of luck
Ps: I put my current experiment in my signature, you will find there some photos of agar under microscope ( spores, initial phase of grow , contaminants etc ), i hope it can help you a bit.
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SonomaFungi_707
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Registered: 12/24/23
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Thanks for sharing!
Yeah, it does seem like it’s a numbers game - start WAY more than you hope will succeed, at least until you have your methods dialed in.
I plan to use an inoculation loop to apply much less spore solution per plate for my next round, and I think that will up my chances of success.
I’m anxiously waiting to see some growth on the agar to agar transfers I just did yesterday morning. I grabbed the very outside leading edge of the mycelium (furthest from the bacterial contamination) - hoping I got enough mycelium there to keep growing, but we’ll see!
Hey, at least is a lot cheaper than all my other hobbies! The inevitable failures along the way shouldn’t sting toooo much. 🤪
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SonomaFungi_707
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😁I woke up this morning to find some nice white fuzz starting to show on the little chips of agar I transferred over to no-pour plates. And still zero contamination visible. Woohoo!
The bad news is I lost another PF jar to trichoderma. I’m down to four B+ jars (one lost to trich and one waterlogged) and five GT jars (one lost to trich).
So now I’m in a bit of a predicament… I’ve got my jars colonizing in Sterilite shoeboxes with the lids cracked, mostly just to minimize the amount of ambient dust that might settle on them (one shoebox for B+, one for GT).
Do I check my jars 1-2 times a day to try to catch any other trich contaminated jars before they explode with spores inside the shoebox? Or do I leave them be to minimize any disturbances that could cause more of my dry verm filter layer to spill down the gaps that are forming between the “cake” and the side of the jar?
I’m leaning toward slowly/gently checking each jar once a day, but open to suggestions. I’m also considering wiping down the lid of each remaining jar with ISO, just to knock down any trich spores that might have escaped from the contaminated jars.
I’ll definitely be adding micropore tape to my next round of PF jars for an added layer of protection. Switching to fine vermiculite should give me a more effective filter layer, but also the smaller bits will have an easier time sneaking down the sides of the jar once the cake starts pulling away from the edges of the jar.
Edited by SonomaFungi_707 (01/24/24 09:43 AM)
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SonomaFungi_707
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I went ahead and checked the jars again this morning. No more trich that I could see, but lost two more GT jars to golden yellow bacterial goo at the bottom of the jars right below inoculation holes - looks like the same stuff that showed up in the agar plates I first inoculated with GT syringe. I suspect the remaining GT jars will have similar bacteria issues, since it seems like that syringe was contaminated right from the start.
It’s all good. I’m in no hurry and I’m learning from my mistakes. I’m optimistic about cleaning up these cultures on agar so I can move on to quart jars of grain. 
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AlexandrDughin
Explorer

Registered: 10/30/23
Posts: 35
Loc: Europe
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You have sealed jars ( with lid on ) inside a shoebox ?
From my limited experience : Once you get contamination inside the jars it's *almost game over for those jars. For a contaminated jar : - take some parts of the good colonized bits transfer those bits to agar so you can clean them and get a new culture. ( if access to new spores is an issue ) - if the contamination is kinda isolated on one side, you could try and cut the contaminated part and put the rest in fruiting. ( if the rest is fully colonized )
Keep in mind that this is what i am currently doing with parts of my lost grain jars. (currently i have some pinnings on a petri dish where i salvaged some micellium from a contaminated jar, 2 more small boxes that are about to pin, also salvaged, and a bigger tray that has black mold all over the bottom and it seems that might be pinning shortly...)
I jave no experience with brf cakes, but they might push trough and give some fruits anyway.
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SonomaFungi_707
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Thanks for the tips!
I am going to let the bacterial jars do their thing for a while and see what happens. I already dumped the ones with trich outside and washed the jars - I don’t want those spore bombs anywhere near my work space.
I’ve got both strains working on agar already, so probably won’t bother with dissecting the PF jars and trying to pull some clean mycelium. Then again, maybe I will just for the heck of it. 🙄
Edited by SonomaFungi_707 (01/24/24 10:34 AM)
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AlexandrDughin
Explorer

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Here is my attempts at recovering contaminated jars. ( i am doing this while my clean jars get to colonize, as an experiment, because, as you said : why not ? )
Recovered mycellium on petri dishes

Trying to spawn a highly black mold contaminated grain jar
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SonomaFungi_707
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Yikes. I hope I never have to deal with black mold. I wish you luck!
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SonomaFungi_707
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Ok…. Trying to plan ahead here in terms of agar work and (hopefully soon) moving on to grain. In particular, I’m trying to decipher how many agar transfers might be needed. For simplicity, let’s just consider the B+ for now (I’m at the same place with the GT).
So I started with an ugly bacterial plate inoculated with a spore syringe. Some spores germinated, and mycelium “escaped” from the bacterial goo to a clean part of the plate. I then grabbed two bits of clean mycelium and transferred to clean plates. I labeled the new plates as “B+: T1A” (B+, transfer 1, plate A) and “B+: T1B” (B+, transfer 1, plate B).
Now it appears I’ve got mycelium growing on plates T1A and T1B - so far no visible contamination.
Here’s what I’m thinking…
Once T1A and T1B have grown to roughly quarter sized, I will transfer bits of mycelium from each T1 plate into three new plates. The labeling gets confusing to me at this point, but in essence I will have six T2 plates (three from one T1 and three from the other).
Assuming these six T2 plates all grow out OK, I will pick the four that look best and send them to grain. The remaining two will be stored in the fridge for use later.
This is, of course, the best case scenario. Quantities will be adjusted based on reality. 🤪
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SonomaFungi_707
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Registered: 12/24/23
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Last seen: 12 hours, 55 minutes
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Came up with a labeling convention. (To be fair I partially stole it from some other random thread…)
I’m thinking (or at least hoping) that I’ll be able to send B+:AA, B+:BB, etc (or others of the same generation) to grain.
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SonomaFungi_707
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Registered: 12/24/23
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Oooo…. I think my first round of agar to agar transfers was a success! So far I see nice fuzzy growth and zero contamination. 😁
Assuming these “T1” plates continue to grow w/o contamination, would it make sense to let them grow a little more, transfer a little to new plates, then put the rest of this “T1” agar straight to grain?

Edited by SonomaFungi_707 (01/25/24 12:55 PM)
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mycoloking
Mycologist Newbie


Registered: 01/01/24
Posts: 46
Last seen: 2 days, 13 hours
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I really like your work here! I am kinda trying the same thing with my B+ spore syring...
Good luck
-------------------- Hoping to grow some great mushies with some TLC, Tender Loving Care!
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OctopusDisco
Quabity Assuance


Registered: 12/10/23
Posts: 51
Loc: In a bear hole
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Hell yeah, Sonoma! Those look great!!
Quote:
SonomaFungi_707 said: ... Assuming these “T1” plates continue to grow w/o contamination, would it make sense to let them grow a little more, transfer a little to new plates, then put the rest of this “T1” agar straight to grain?
I'm curious to hear what people say on this. Assuming the culture is clean, I'd say send it to grain whenever you want. Additional transfers of a clean culture will have the effect of "isolating" genetic strains, but I'm not really convinced that we can pick fruiting winners based on plates alone. I'd love to test the hypothesis someday.
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SonomaFungi_707
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Re: SonomaFungi’s first stab (Grow Log) [Re: OctopusDisco]
#28634999 - 01/25/24 08:52 PM (2 days, 10 hours ago) |
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Yeah, I have no delusions of picking “winning” genetics just by looking at the mycelium on a plate. 🤣 I just want to confirm it’s clean and see what its got!
I just bought a 25 lb sack of white proso millet today. $12.99 at the local feed store. Not bad!
A large part of why I’m doing this is just that I’m a scientist at heart and I love experimenting. So I’ll probably try some of this T1 mycelium in some grain and see what happens. This is fun. 😁
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