Hi everyone, here will be a record of my first grow. I've been reading for a while now and am really excited to get started. Anyway progress so far.
Day 1: (22/03/05)
- Received spore prints for Golden Teacher from the Free Spore Ring Europe (www.fsre.org) (Sent the order on the 12/03/05 with 5 euro)
- Pressure cooked my syringes (old ink refill syringes) for 15 min at 15 psi, then followed stage 1 of
Psilocyber's Syringe Tek to get syringes filled with sterilized water.
That's all for today while I wait for the water in the syringes to cool.
I also went out and looked for canning jars - but since i live in Australia they are a bit harder to come by. Any ideas??? I might have to reuse some food jars. Tomorrow I'll get my BRF, vermiculite and jars and sterilize them as well as finish my spore syringes.
I'll also be making a PMP so I've ordered a hydrometer and air pump off E-bay which should arrive shortly.
Just a quick question, i've got 3 6cc syringes and 1 12cc syringe will the two prints be enough for all the syringes?? The prints are about an inch across.
Day 2: (23/03/05)- Went and bought my vermiculite and brown rice flour:
- Also spent almost 2 hours trying to find some proper jars, K-Mart was the only place that had anything resembling the Ball half pints but they were out of stock. Instead I gave in and bought a box of 12 drinking glasses with tapered sides:
- With all my essentials i got home and prepared the mix according to the PF-Tek and gently put it into the jars trying to keep it 'airy'. Lastly a thin layer of dry vermiculite was added to help prevent any air born contaminations. These were then given 3 layers of foil which had been folded in half (so six layers of foil all up) and put in the PC for an hour. Only six jars fit at a time so this was done in two batches.
- Also made the spore syringes today - What a disaster.....
First of all I followed the remainder of the Tek mentioned in my first post, BUT the spores on the bits of paper were so ingrained i could barely scrape them off. I ended up using one print for 2 6cc syringes and the other for the 12cc syringe I prepared yesterday. (no pics since everyone knows what they look like!) The syringes look totally clear with maybe a few specs of black - hopefully these are spores and not just crap from the air.
My plan is to inocculate 3 glasses per 6cc syringe and 6 jars with the 12cc syringe - i know this is overkill but if the glasses contaminate i'm pretty sure the syringes are to blame so no point innocculating more. Hopefully at least one jar colonises successfully so i can get my own spores. Fingers crossed!!!
I'll let the glasses and syringes sit overnight and innocculate in the morning. I guess we'll see in about a week how well i've done.
Day3: (24/03/05)Innocculated 4 jars with my 1st GT syringe (6cc), 4 jars with 2nd GT syringe (6cc) and 4 jars with my final GT syringe (12cc - left about half of the syringe unused) Placed them in my cupboard which remains around 25 degrees C (about 77F) so might have to build a TiT for incubation.
Day 6: (27/03/04)Still no visible sign of colonisation - starting to get concerned although from what I've read it could take another few days. I should also point out they havn't been at optimal temps since I havn't been able to keep them in an incubator. I'm going to try and get the stuff together and have one built by Wednesday.
I was planning to case the jars from day 1, It looks no harder then simple cakes so if my jars colonise successfully i'll do that. Most likely using the 50/50 verm/coir tek. If anything i might try one or two cakes just for comparison and a safety if all my casings fail.
Massive Update!!
Day 32: (22/04/05)Ok heaps has happened in the past 2 weeks but my digi has been out of action so no updates
Well here we go:
First the progress of the jars. If you remember i inoculated 12 jars, 4 per syringe. Well from these 1 set did not show any sign of colonisation by week 3 so I decided to throw them. None of them showed any sign of contamination either, so I broke them all open to see if they had colonised inside the cakes - Nothing. Well at least my sterilisation process is reliable
The remainder of the jars seem to be colonising VERY unevenly. Both were inoculated at the same time (within 30min of each other) yet one set is at least 30% ahead of the other.
I gave one fully colonised jar away to a friend (who gave me my first shroom experience) in exchange for some prints, leaving me 7 jars. Two have since been cased, the third (and last of the set) tomorrow.
The remaining four might still have to sit for at least a week before i case them.
(note the 3rd along - seems only 2/4 inoculation sites were successful, the other three seem to only have the bottom to go)
The biggest delay has been the lack of an incubator - pretty slack considering I bought my 100W fish tank heater. I only need the 2 tubs, definitely will do this for my next grow.
Process of making my casings, using the 50/50 Verm/Coir Tek:
My 4" across, 2" deep takeaway food tubs.
Coir/Verm mix in glasses PC for 30min
1/4" moist verm, 1" substrate, 1/4-1/2" casing mix (note: uneven since has been incubating since the 19/4 - i did make it pretty level)
Layer of foil, then second tub to prevent undesirable side pinning
No mycellium poking through just yet
With lid and ready for incubation!!
Built my PMP and concealed it for stealth:
PMP you say???
Ahh, there it is
Powerboard, airpump, electronic timer for light and twin fluorecent bulb mini light.
Inside the 30L tub, with 10L of Hydroton (in Australia geolite is unheard of, asking for expanded clay pellets will get you this stuff)
Also my hydrometer visible showing 99% - hmm may need to reduce this for casings - any ideas??
Next update should be patching (fingers crossed) I'm excited!!!
Day 33: (23/04/05)Made another casing today with the last of the jars from the 1st set. Didn't put the moist verm on the bottom for comparison to the ones with verm.
Checked up on my other two casings:
Question: Does this look right?? I don't have cobweb mold do I??? If not are they ready to be patched?? Then what - incubate some more, straight into the PMP, mist them or not???? HELP!!
Day 34: (24/04/05)Put the first two casings (made on the 19/04/05) into the PMP. Didn't bother to cold shock, but the airpump is now on 24/7 and lighting is set 12/12. Pinning should start within about 12 days right? So I could expect some mushies within around 12-15???
Day 40: (30/04/05)- Still no signs of pinning from the 1st two casings but from the looks of things definitely no overlay. Mycelium has poked through the surface fairly evenly but it is fairly light and very bright white. The one with moist verm seems to have whiter, brighter mycelium so I'll stick with a bottom layer from now on. Hopefully not too much longer now
- Put another 3 casings into the PMP made exactly as the ones above, but with the bottom layer of moist verm.
- Temp is around 70 degrees a little cold but not much I can do, Air pump has been going on intermittently for around 12 hours per day, lighting 12/12 on/off. Also misting the casings once a day when i open the lid to check the progress.
Day 42: (01/04/05)First pins ever!!! I checked up on the casings this morning and one of the first two casings to go in to the PMP has pins!!! I'll post some pics up ASAP.
Day 45: (03/04/05)PINS PINS PINS!!!!!!
The first two casings put into the PMP are pinning - yay!!!
Here are some pics:
The first casing to pin:
And the other one:
- Put the second last casing in - PMP is now pretty much full with 6 casings.
- After giving my 1st colonised jar to a friend a few weeks ago, he successfully did a BRF to WBS tranfer and is currently fruiting his own GT casings. I'll use my last remaining jar to do the same, using some 500ml canning jars.
Thanks for all the help so far......
Day 46: (04/05/05)All casings in - pretty tight in there now!!
The progress of the two casings:
Day 47: (05/05/05)Progress of all casings - is the bottom right casing approaching overlay??? Should I attempt to patch or just let it fruit???
The progress of the two fruiting casings:
Also got my pocket scale from eBay in the mail today:
Day ?!?!
Well its been a while since I've updated, the first two casings fully matured and produced around 70g wet so I was reasonably happy with the results. Here are some pics of the next three casings to pin:
24 Hours Later:
24 Hours Later:
(Middle Casing Harvested)
24 Hours Later:
(Right Casing Harvested)