good luck,
Link

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In the beginning the Universe was created...
This made a lot of people angry and was widely regarded as a bad move.
-- Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

My second time I tried casing (wizard tek) and lost 2 trays to cobweb mold.

This time, I was more careful and my casings are fruiting alongside a bunch of cakes and, so far, the fruits on the cakes look more healthy than the casing. The ones on the cake (eqs) have nice bright white stems and golden, fat healthy caps, but the ones in the casing (also eqs) have off-color stems and darker, discolored caps. They may yet surprise me, since I know that casing beats the pants off of cakes when done right, but...

for your first time, I'd stick with cakes, especially if you've only got 6 to play with.

And since casing presents more of a danger of contamination, I would be really concerned casing cakes from a batch that has already seen contamination, as you mentioned.

If you're determined to try casing, I'd case 2 cakes SOS and fruit the remaining four cakes, that way you'd be guaranteed a few prints for the future, plus a couple trips.

Good luck!

GT

[This message has been edited by GorgeousTortoise (edited February 05, 2000).]

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-From a registered Mad Scientist

"From a certain point of view"
-Jedi Master Obiwan Kenobi (also a Mad Scientist tm)

[This message has been edited by mycofile (edited February 07, 2000).]

[This message has been edited by Psychonaut (edited January 08, 2001).]

You will also see the big d?fference between casing/no casing...

Since its your first time i would recomend to go with the "vermiculite only" casing since it is very easy and reliable....
Just be sure that you have 100% colonized cakes and a sterile working space...

I myself dont usually sterilize my casing layer..
But if you want to take some extra precausions (sp?) sterilize the verm. first... (recomended)

I say - go for itit baby..!!!!

Casing Rocks!

My friend has casings fruiting for the first time ever, and they look twice as good as the cakes next to them. He usually gets 2 or 3 big shrooms and a bunch of small ones per cake/per flush... right now he has a single cake cased and its first flush gave him 6 big (8" stems, 1.5" caps) shrooms and 6 or 8 small ones (2-3" tall).

I still say case a couple cakes, a fruit the others straight, just to guarantee yourself some amount of success and encouragement for the next go'round.

GT

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If your not living on the edge....Then your taking up to much space.

For newbies... sure, I did and yielded tons of shrooms. Never did a big cake run, just one my fourth time or so, and I wasn't impressed.

ootw.

Even from that, it can be hard to figure it out when you're a newbie (you can tell "how" but you can't tell "why", which a lot of the experienced guys don't understand...)

When you case, you take the colonized cake/substrate, and "sandwich" it between soil/peat/vermiculite/etc...

It basically gives the substrate and shrooms more access to water (and sometimes nutrients) and gives them a bigger "base" from which to grow.

The result, bigger, healthier shrooms and a greater number of flushes (or times to fruit).

GT

ps don't be surprised if you catch shit for asking this question. I'm not calling the people here *anal* but...

That's why I've always been a big fan of tossing the peat out the window. Verm holds a lot more water than peat, so it functions better as a "pure casing". Also verm is non-organic, so there are no nutrients for contams to grab a hold of.

The idea is to make a mushroom cake sandwich. Put some water saturated verm on the bottom (1/2 inch to 1 inch). Then put your cut up cake, or sliced cake. Then put a small layer on top.

No need to bake verm, or anything else. It's non-organic so there is nothing alive in there .

Later,
ootw.