catnip40 said:

Liners prevent newcomers from seeing contamination take hold within the innards and the edges of their substrate

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Agar Wedge said:

I tried liners once and the side pins grew anyways I'm with you B, side pins are rad, and if the sub isn't super thick, they grow up mostly normal anyways. Like yeah it's pretty if they make an even canopy, but if the yields the same, and it's a healthy shoebox, there's no issue.

Guys I'm having a hard time accepting side pins aren't partially genetic. Somebody please talk some sense into me I've had many a shoebox treated the same way, some side pin like crazy, others not at all. Not that it really bothers me, but I like to know why things do what they do. Anybody else find themselves in this boat?

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catnip40 said:

Liners prevent newcomers from seeing contamination take hold within the innards and the edges of their substrate

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Agar Wedge said:

I tried liners once and the side pins grew anyways I'm with you B, side pins are rad, and if the sub isn't super thick, they grow up mostly normal anyways. Like yeah it's pretty if they make an even canopy, but if the yields the same, and it's a healthy shoebox, there's no issue.

Guys I'm having a hard time accepting side pins aren't partially genetic. Somebody please talk some sense into me I've had many a shoebox treated the same way, some side pin like crazy, others not at all. Not that it really bothers me, but I like to know why things do what they do. Anybody else find themselves in this boat?

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B Traven said:

I'm on shoeboxes, AKA 6 quart Sterilite tubs. If I didn't already pop my substrate out and put it in a larger tub to free up the shoebox and make room for the "nontraditional" pins that have come in, then it's still usually not a big deal to dump it into a 5 gallon bucket and clean the shoebox. I don't really feel that liners made my cleanup any easier, to be honest. Just different. I'm composting everything anyhow, so adding a dirty piece of plastic to the mix did nothing for me, and if a substrate disintegrated or triched out, then the mess would inevitably somehow get past the liner anyway.

My tubs have a line on them already, a little offset a couple inches down from the top. If they didn't, I'd probably just draw one with a permanent marker (something I did on some larger tubs back in the day). Anyway I mix spawn and substrate in a large metal bowl with a tight-fitting lid, dump it into the tub, and then compress it. And then add a casing (are we still calling it a pseudo-casing? Can't remember), then level and compress that. Took me way too long to figure out the shake-it-all-up-in-a-mixing-bowl hack, but once I did, getting everything right in my tubs got a lot easier. I honestly found it liberating once liners were removed from the equation, much easier to just bang stuff around and get it right without an extra thing to try to keep in-place.

Vermiculite is an all-around pain in the ass to work with in my experience, I don't want to eat it or breathe it in, and it's yet another thing that's both mined and incredibly energy-intensive to produce. Dialing in my moisture content works just fine, and I have one less thing to buy/mix in/think about.

I understand the rationale behind both vermiculite and liners, and I used both for years. But having abandoned them, and given the matter a good hard think-over, I personally just can't endorse them.

But the main topic is still whether liners help reduce side-pinning, and on that I have to concede that I simply don't give a shit because I think side and bottom pins are rad. What people are really talking about, in my opinion, is shitty surface conditions and bacterial spawn that leads to a crappy top-pinset with lots of pins on the side. In my experience, healthy subs with good surface conditions will typically be harvested a couple times before you even have to think about the other 5 surfaces. Also, a lack of liner actually makes it easier for me to pop the sub out and scrape off those barnacles- again, assuming I'm not jusr popping the whole thing out and putting it in a larger vessel so those puppies have some growing room.

Now, one obvious slam-dunk, assuming it hasn't already become ancient history, is the idea that you need an opaque liner in order to discourage pinning. But maybe that one already died once we got away from the whole "colonize in the dark" thing.

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B Traven said:

much easier to just bang stuff around and get it right without an extra thing to try to keep in-place.

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BeefSupremeJr said:

bod.  i fondly remember him.  he was like the doctor house of mycology.  Fucking brilliant but didn't play well with others.

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tripdawg420 said:

side pins are from air getting in between the sub and tub wall evaporation is a pinning trigger why some tubs have side pins and some dont is because the side of the tub hasnt seporated from the sub to let air down there and the add light ya i feel having a liner out weights not i fruited tubs w and w out in  clear tubs i would use a liner in non clear tubs u dont have to but i like them for a few reasons

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