Well I was hoping to case today, but only 1 jar is 100%, perhaps next weekend, or maybe I will do a couple jars mid week.

As you can see, all jars finally show signs of growth, although couple took 18-19 days....

Peace
/Gadget

[This message has been edited by Gadget (edited December 24, 1999).]

I hope mine turn out as well as yours did!

later

------------------
"My only weakness is my thirst for knowledge."

Also I never see any growth, until I look and there is like a dime-size patch of mycelium at the inoculation points.

Sporechicks is a reliable vendor, and if you inoculated rigth after you received the spores you should be cool. Just have patience.

Cased mine 4 days ago. My jars were fully colonized after 18 days! I use the short, wide mouth 1/2 pint. I think they are much better than the tall ones. Took 32 days last time I used tall ones.

How many Jars did you case?

Definetly looks like Wide mouths are the best, all my jars are colonized on the sides, but on bottom growth slowed, and THICKENED. Real weird, Oh well, next time I'll do Wide Mouths.

Only thing I can figure that gives Wide mouth jars an advantage wouled be that they are closer to cubical, and regular jars are long and skinny....

Oh well, so I will be casing a week behind you

Peace
/Gadget

Wow, that was kinda fun! I found couple things VERY interesting.

#1 My wife hates the smell of shrooms.. Whoops

#2 When crumbling the cakes, I was surprised at their texture / consistancy. The texture kinda reminded me of a dense sponge, and it seems kinda dry, but it wasn't. I know that doesnt make much sense, but..

#3 I was also surprised that I could "snap" the cake in half cleanly with my hands, I had imagined that it would be more simular to a root structure, but it wasn't

Anyway, I used a plastic 8.5" * 11.5" tray for a case, I am a little concerned about its height, roughly 3" with the lid on. TIme will tell.

I painted the outside of the tray flat black, as MindQuester ran into a problem with pinnings happening underneath the top layer of soil.

I placed a 50/50 mixture of Verm/potting soil on the bottom (Shroom Wizard's tek) and crumbled (well really broke) 3 cakes into marble sized chunks.

Here is an image of the completed crumbled cake layer on top of the 50/50 layer, just before covering with moist potting soil.

Does this look about right?

Oh, another thing, 2 of my 3 cakes did not appear completely colonized before removal. (there was about a dime sized patch of substrate still showing on the bottom)

When I crumbled th cakes, the inside of cake WAS completely colonized! , and the dime sized spot on the bottom (of uncolonized substrate) was maybe .1mm thick. very odd....

Peace,Love, and Mery Christmas!
/Gadget

PS. Innoculation to casing time was 28 days, I still have 3 jars colonizing, 2 of which are only about 60% or so..

PSS. ZERO contamination rate, so far. (knock knock knock on wood)

i followed Prelligot's suggestion and took my casing out of its container and put it into a terrarium; now they can grow out of the side freely...about 15 good pins so far on my b+. My eqs were cased 9 days ago, so shouldn't be too long now.

That was a nice casing picture you posted. i think it will be very successful. let us know how it goes.

Merry Xmas...no better day than to do something you love!

Birthed the last 3 jars today. For comparison sake I decided to fruit the cakes in a terrarium.

Terrarium is styrofoam with ductaped, air tight lid and 1" of perlight on the bottom. Used 1 part 3% H2O2 and 9 parts water.

The case is on recovery day 4, already getting white fluffy spots showing thru top soil layer..

Think thats it for the moment,

Once fruiting starts will keep detailed records on harvesting and report back

Peace and Love
/Gadget

What am I greeted with when I pop the top?

NOOOOOOOOOO Green mold dead center of the case.

So I poured some straight 3% (store type) Hydrogenperoxide on it. Any other Ideas??

Other than the mold, does it look ok?

Please tell me its going to be ok (:

A close up:

Well, that sucks, but hopefully everything will work out.

Time line
Day 35 since innoculation
Case on Day 7 and unsealed today
Terrarium and cakes on day 3

Peace
/Gadget

I dosed it with H2O2 and sprinkled some Baking soda on it (found in other posts) and its not there this AM.......

But I will keel a close Eye on it, if it returns I will chop that section out....

keep us posted on your intervention. Hopefully you can still have a good harvest. I have heard others say they would just throw away the whole casing and start all over. If you are successful and get some good shrooms it would prove otherwise.

Won't be long now. I'm a couple weeks ahead of you and my two cases of eqs have about 40 2-3 inch shrooms. I'm noticing a little bluish green around some of the bottoms of the stems and am a little concerned myself.

Peace
/Gadget

My case on the other hand, which is on day 3 of open air, is quite. The Quarter sized blue/green moldy stuff is not visible, so hopefully the H2O2/baking soda/O2 increase may have killed it or at least suppressed it.

But I'm Stoked, I've got mushies growing "happy dance"

This has really been a great project so far, and should hopefully only get better within the next couple weeks.

Peace
/Gadget

You see, I had noticed that the section where the green mold had been was much darker than the rest of the case. At first I thought it was just from pouring the H2O2 on it, but alas no. So out of curiousity I gently turned a bit of the soil over where the green mold had been, SHIT!. Look at all the green shit, grrrrrrrrr. So I got sterilized a spoon and start digging.

Long story short. there was an area in center of case that was green all the way to the bottom, and about 4" in diameter. All the crumbled cake sections had rotted in that section.

On the plus side it was very easy to tell when I left the area of green mold, as the soil became very FIRM and there was BUNCHES of white mycaleum growth in it. Also the crumbled cake sections in that area were nice and hard like when I put them there

I filled the 4" hole in the middle of the case with moist potting soil.

Personal Note to self: Dig out any Green contams right away!

Peace
/Gadget

Another attempt? Maybe.