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InvisibleRahz
Alive Again
Male

Registered: 11/10/05
Posts: 9,230
Easy Outdoor Cob Tek
    #5615507 - 05/10/06 11:12 PM (17 years, 8 months ago)

Functions:
1- Minimal effort, lots of shrooms
2- A shroom bed that will continue to produce for several seasons or more.

Basically, this is a way to get a large mushroom bed going without putting in a ton of effort. Once it starts to produce, it should continue to produce for several years. Everything in this tek is geared towards minimal effort. This tek is very scalable, a formula is given for a small patch. It's up to you to decide how large you want your mushroom bed to be. As you will see, we can cover a large amount of land without killing ourselves, and unless you have dreams beyond my expectations, the total time for this tek is in the several hours range.

Table Of Contents
------
1- Calculating materials and bed size
2- Bed preparation
3- Spawn preparation
4- Bed inoculation
5- Notes

1- Materials and bed size

Basic formula: (about 2.5 square feet)
1 quart of grain spawn (2/3 full) -OR- 2 PF cakes
2 quarts crushed corn cob
1 bag of store bought compost
1 mycobag -w- filter patch -OR- 1 gallon size zip lock bag

Other materials needed:
2 large tubs (for cob preparation)
1 post hole digger, or substitute with a spade or small shovel.
Various other things you likely have laying around the house.

Determine the size bed you would like. Find the square footage and divide by 2.5. This will give you a formula multiplier and tell you how much of each ingredient you will need. Let's say you wanted a bed 3 feet wide by 10 feet long. 30 square feet divided by 2.5 is 12. So we'll need 12 jars of spawn (or 24 PF cakes), 24 quarts of crushed cob, 12 bags of compost, and 12 mycobags (or 12 gallon zip lock bags).

2- Bed Preparation

Find a location. Any place that is reasonably convenient for you will do. If the sun beats down, the addition of grass seed will provide cover (explained further in section 5:Notes). It is imperative that the bed not be exposed to direct sunlight. Bring your bags of store bought compost to the location and lay them out together in the shape of your bed. Lay the bags tightly together, we're positioning the compost before we open them. Once you're satisfied with the arrangement, use a knife to cut a slit across the entire length of each bag. Cut another slit at the end of each bag. Now, simply grab each bag, one by one, near the uncut end and allow the compost to fall back into place as you remove the plastic. Use a rake to level it all out. We don't want to inoculate the bed just yet. Ideally we want to wait about a month. During this time we'll be producing our spawn.

3- Spawn preparation

If you'll be using PF cakes, you will need to begin your jars right after laying out the bed. Assuming the jars take 1 month to colonize, our spawn will be ready in about 5 weeks total. If you're using grain spawn, it's OK to start them now. Total time from inoculation (giving a generous 2 weeks for jars to colonize) to spawn, is 3 weeks. Letting the final spawn sit for a couple weeks won't hurt anything, however, it wouldn't be a bad idea to wait a week or two before beginning the spawn making process if you're using grain.

Crushed corn cob is found at pet stores. Bags come in various sizes, and the brand I buy is measured in liters. Liters are pretty close to quarts, an 11 liter bag of cob is 11.6 quarts (2 of these would be perfect for a 30 square foot bed). Measure out the amount of cob you need based on the formula and place this in a large tub. Fill the tub with water so the cob is submerged by an inch or so. Let this sit for 24 hours. During this time, you cob water will become frothy. This action is also observed during the boiling process. I believe it's due to gas leaving/passing through the porous cob. Do not worry about the froth.

After 24 hours, we boil the cob. Exactly how you do this is up to you. You will need to have your 2nd large tub and a lid sanitized to receive the boiled and strained cob. Just wash it out and wipe it down with alcohol. Now what I do is to place a few inches of water in a large pot and turn the heat up. I position the soaked cob near the stove and use a picture to scoop up cob (water and all) and transfer it to the pot. Don't get your water level too high, as stated, the cob will get frothy when boiling and you don't want that spilling over. Once you reach a nice boil, keep it going for 30 minutes, only adjusting the heat as needed when the froth threatens to get out of control. Strain each batch for 5-10 minutes and transfer the still steaming hot cob to the second tub. Be careful when straining, don't get yourself burned. An easy way to do this is a sanitized 5 gallon bucket with a few small holes in the bottom. This can be placed outside or in your sink. _Watch out for steam, oven mits are advised._ Secure the lid to the 2nd tub after each transfer. This isn't so much a contam concern, we don't want our cob drying out. One thing I do though, is to spray some hydrogen peroxide over it all before letting it cool down. Use 50/50 water/peroxide solution and give it a good spray before securing the lid for cooldown.

Repeat this procedure until all the cob is boiled and in the second tub. Secure the lid and wait for cool down. This will take 6-8 hours, more or less, depending on how much cob you're dealing with. At this point, the cob may not look too wet... it's plenty wet, don't worry. It's best to spawn to the cob as soon as it's cooled down. Whether you're using mycobags, or zip locks, get your bags ready. The cob will have expanded by 20% or so during the hydration process, so to keep things simple, fill your bags by adding scoops to each of them until the tub is empty and all your bags have equal amounts of cob in them.

Now our bags are ready for the addition of spawn. If you're using quart jars of grain spawn, loosen the seed by shaking, and dump 1 jar into each bag. If you have to spoon the seed out, do it in a bowl and break it up before adding to the bag. If you're using PF cakes, grate 2 cakes into each bag using a cheese grater. This works much better than trying to break it up in a bag.

Seal all the bags. Shake them like crazy, we want the spawn throughly mixed through the cob. If you're using zip locks, you will need to poke a few small holes on the top side of each bag. Place the bags in a dark location. They will incubate fine at 72 degrees, and should be fully colonized in around 7 days.

4- Bed inoculation

There's really nothing left to do except inoculate the shroom bed. Take your spawn and a post hole digger to the bed and prepare holes. Place 1 hole in each square foot. If you're using a post hole digger, make the holes about 4-5 inches deep. Otherwise, dig holes 4 inches in diameter. Using our example, we have 12 bags of spawn and 30 holes to fill, so we'll use 2/5s of a bag per hole, or, 2 bags per 5 holes. Once filled with spawn, cover each hole with 1/2 to 3/4 inches of compost.

Wait for shrooms! Give the mycelium a month or so to get adjusted to the new environment. Check the bed a day or two after it rains, cloudy days are good too. If you water, do it a little at a time, and give the bed breaks of a week or so inbetween, trying to create a natural rain environment. a sprinkler could be useful.

5- Notes

*On water: If you live in an area that gets little rain, you'll need to water the bed occasionally. A good way to determine the beds water needs is to observe it during the months time before inoculation. If the bed stays consistently moist about 1/2 inch down, there's no need to water. If there's drying through a substantial portion of the compost, you'll need to water the bed.

The addition of grass will help the bed hold it's moisture if you're growing in a semi-sunlight area.

*On sunlight: Direct sunlight is bad for cubies, but that doesn't have to stop us from growing where we want to. If you're growing in an area that already has grass growing, here's a good tip. After laying your bed out, take a hoe and dig furrows every foot, so that some of the grass below is poking out. These furrows should be lined North to South. This grass will soon grow with vigor and will provide shade for the mushrooms.

If your location does not have grass growing, buy some seed. After the bed has sat for a week, water it well, dig shallow furrows, every foot, North to South, and sprinkle grass seed in them. If the location is wooded, you may not need grass at all, but the addition of grass could still be useful if there's enough light to support it. Grass from seed will not be ready by the time we inoculate, but since this is a long term bed, it doesn't matter much.

*On Cob: Crushed Cob is a wonderful substance, capable of turning 1 gallon of spawn into 5 gallons of spawn in a non-sterile environment. Contam wise, it's very close to a bulk substrate, and properly boiled cob will stay contam free for several weeks... plenty of time for our mycelium to stake it's claim. There's another tek out there that deals with crushed cob, and several people have had contam issues with that tek. I believe the reason is that there's no presoak in that tek. Crushed cob holds water well, but a simple 30 minute boil will NOT fully hydrate it. Unhydrated portions of crushed cob will not be sterile! It is imperative that the cob be soaked for 24 hours. Some people may feel that boiling for an hour is a better idea. While it certainly wouldn't hurt, I believe it's unnecessary. First, I've done several batches and never had cob contam. Second, unlike PF jars, the cob is submerged in the boiling water. As long as it's properly soaked, the cob will heat up to sterile temperatures quickly, and in fact, properly soaked cob should keep water from boiling until it too is close to boiling temps.

*On straw: I've found that bagged compost aerates nicely outside, and only used straw in a small portion of my grow for comparison. One point of this tek is to minimize work involved. Straw would be a fine addition to this tek in any percentage, so long as you don't mind the extra effort.

*On Compost: This is the bagged stuff you find at garden centers/Home Depot/Lowe's. Some brands will perform better than others. I cannot recommend a brand since a particular brand will vary in composition from region to region. Any brand will do the job, but here's something to try: Buy several brands, and make note of how you lay them out in the bed. If you find one brand out performs another, you'll know for next time.

*On Sterility: No major worries here, but --DO-- take the time to wash your hands, tubs, bowls and utensils before handling the spawn or boiled cob. Wipe all these things down with alcohol as well. It's little effort and expense, and it can make a difference.

*On PF tek: If you use PF cakes, the cheese grater is a must. 2 grated cakes will be plenty... 2 cakes broken up by hand might not get the job done. Don't cut this corner, buy a cheese grater if you don't have one.

Well, that's the tek! Be careful with location, this bed can last a long time. I've currently got 6 bags of compost inoculated with this tek and just started harvesting, I'll post results as they come up. I may go back and modify bits, suggestions and comments are welcome.

The Yield (dry grams)
----------
5  - May 12
7  - May 17
12 - May 22

August 6 - Everytime it rains I get a bunch of shrooms, I'm probably getting 20-30 grams every time. I'm not sure though, because I've taken to mowing them down with the grass :shocked: I do still check on them, and the flushes continue to get bigger. It's really hot right now, I'll post some more results this fall.

October 29 - After the last post, I got a couple more weeks of mushroom growth. After that it stopped. I think the ground was too dry, but didn't try watering it :tongue: We'll see what comes up next spring.

Rahz


--------------------
rahz

comfort pleasure power love truth awareness peace


"You’re not looking close enough if you can only see yourself in people who look like you." —Ayishat Akanbi


Edited by Rahz (10/29/06 09:04 PM)


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