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Bob Gratton
Stranger

Registered: 07/25/07
Posts: 31
Last seen: 16 years, 1 month
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1st Grow (B+ and Z-Strain)
#7544890 - 10/21/07 10:09 PM (16 years, 3 months ago) |
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Hi guys,
I started my first grow today as I got my spores earlier than expected, I will try to keep this log up to date and detailed because I think it can be very useful and encouraging for newbies like me to see a first timer trying growing shrooms. Also, you're all invited to leave feedbacks/advice/comments/questions so everyone and specially me can learn a lot more. So let's start :
equipment: [image] two 10cc spore syringe (1 B+ and 1 Zs-train)
5x 500ml wide mouth jars (for Zs-train) 7x 250ml wide mouth jars (for B+) 720ml Organic BRF 720ml of distilled water 1,44l of vermiculite 19l pot other obvious things...
1- making 4 the holes in the lids:
2- mixing all the ingredients:
These amount were obtained by multiplying by 12 the recommended amounts (120ml Verm./ 60ml BRF/ 60ml water) just added a little bit more water to the verm. before adding the BRF:[image] The substrate:
 3- filling the jars : I filled all the jars with the substrate without any pressing, the only thing I did was to shake them in order to break little balls of substrate.
 I wiped the inside and the outside of each jars with a moistened towel and once again but with a dry towel.
Next step in filling the jars was to add the dry vermiculite layer:


4-preparing the sterilization:
Now the lids are on the jars, I screw loosely the rings of the lids and I place a double aluminium foil on each jars:
 Then I place a layer of lids at the bottom of the pot which is covered by a double aluminium foil. I also add a metal plate circled by a rag, you can seed them in the second picture:


5- Sterilization As you can see in the last picture, the jars are now in the pot and I added enough water to reach the bottom of the jars (about 2 liters. I putted the lid on the pot and I softly boiled the water for 100 min. Now the pot has been cooling for almost 6 hours and it's still hot, I'll wait 30 more minutes but I think I'm going to wait until tomorrow for inoculation. Forgot to mention that I covered the pot with a kitchen garbage bag to prevent air contamination during the cooling process.
[/image]
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Pr0_X
CultivationLifer



Registered: 01/18/06
Posts: 617
Loc: Igloo's and polar bears
Last seen: 16 years, 1 day
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Re: 1st Grow (B+ and Z-Strain) [Re: Bob Gratton]
#7544980 - 10/21/07 10:35 PM (16 years, 3 months ago) |
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Your on the right path, looks good.
-------------------- It's okay to hurt my feelings cause you know, they're so numb anyway. but I guess it's what I get for being to fuckin stupid to stay away - Jake - Support the FSR at www.fsrcanada.com and www.fsre.nl
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Bob Gratton
Stranger

Registered: 07/25/07
Posts: 31
Last seen: 16 years, 1 month
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Re: 1st Grow (B+ and Z-Strain) [Re: Bob Gratton]
#7545153 - 10/21/07 11:18 PM (16 years, 3 months ago) |
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The pot is definitively too hot to proceed, so I'll go to bed and let it cool overnight. Don't know if anyone did that before, but I'm planning on doing an incubator by putting a ceramic heater into a 115 L plastic container, there will be also a pot with standing water ( should I put lava rocks too? ) and finally a little plastic container covered with aluminium foil to put the jars in. Do you think the heater will dry the cakes? What could also be done to have more humidity would be to put little plastic container in my 19L pot. I could pour water in the large pot and partially cover it to increase RH. Let me know what do you think of this and I'll read you precious advices tomorrow. The things
 The heater which can be set to maintain a specific temp.
 The 115L rubbermaid
 The little plastic container is the white boiler with a yellow sticker on it. I'm planning on putting the 5 500ml in this one and incubating the 250ml jars into the transparent plastic container which will be placing in the dreamcast box and finally onto my computer tower.
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Pr0_X
CultivationLifer



Registered: 01/18/06
Posts: 617
Loc: Igloo's and polar bears
Last seen: 16 years, 1 day
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Re: 1st Grow (B+ and Z-Strain) [Re: Bob Gratton]
#7545245 - 10/21/07 11:38 PM (16 years, 3 months ago) |
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You need not worry about the RH of the incubator, you need to make sure your heater will keep it at a constant 82f though... and placing that heater directly in the container will heat it up past 82f if you have a setting so i suggest tinkering with it, setting it at lover levels and seeing how hot it gets or else you run the risk of drying out your cakes as well as providing a environment for foreign spores.
-------------------- It's okay to hurt my feelings cause you know, they're so numb anyway. but I guess it's what I get for being to fuckin stupid to stay away - Jake - Support the FSR at www.fsrcanada.com and www.fsre.nl
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veda_sticks
Cultivator




Registered: 07/29/07
Posts: 14,191
Loc: UK
Last seen: 4 years, 25 days
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Re: 1st Grow (B+ and Z-Strain) [Re: Pr0_X]
#7545788 - 10/22/07 05:34 AM (16 years, 3 months ago) |
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Room temperature is just fine, or if you have a cupboard with your a boiler put thermometer in there and see how hot it gets, i use mywater boiler cupboard that keeps the temps between78-81F.
Incubation isnt really necesary unless you have a particularly cold house, even 75 is just fine.
Above 83 starts to favour growth of contams rather than myc.
Other than that, your looking good, good choice on waiting overnight before incoing, ive read on too many people rushing into it, then posting, DID I BURN MY SPORES
-------------------- PF TEK - writeup by EvilMushroom666 Lets Grow Mushrooms - RogerRabbit & RoadKills website with sample videos plus the full PF TEK video series. Alot of great information - BUY THE DVD Cakes can and will pin! - So you think cakes suck for pins. Your wrong Franks Simple Coir/Verm Tek Franks Proper Pasturisation Tek Franks Spawning To Bulk - Monotub Professor Pinheads RTV Injection Port Tek Foo Mans No Soak WBS Prep Tek
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Bob Gratton
Stranger

Registered: 07/25/07
Posts: 31
Last seen: 16 years, 1 month
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Inoculation and incubation [Re: Bob Gratton]
#7552491 - 10/23/07 07:46 PM (16 years, 3 months ago) |
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Hi, I finally did the inoculation yesterday pm. Nothing went wrong except one major thing, the holes in the lids were too small! What I did: took a hammer, a nail, sterilized them with lysol spray and then, introduced them in my glove box. So prior to inoculation I had to enlarge those holes, enlarged only two of them per jars to reduce the chances of contamination. I also sterilized the nail and the needle of the syringe between each jars with alcohol.
The glove box :

I placed 4 500ml jars in my white plastic container covered with aluminium foil which was placed in my big rubber maid with the ceramic heater at 79F to make sure it does not go to hot. The rest of the jars were placed in a box covered with a garbage over my tower. The rubber maid covered
Over the tower :
 SO here it is, I will do an update at the end fo the week but I don't put to much hope in this since I did that big mistake...will see what it's doing.
Edited by Bob Gratton (10/27/07 09:46 PM)
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fluffyshapes
lowly lotus



Registered: 04/02/07
Posts: 257
Loc: Georgia
Last seen: 6 months, 21 days
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Re: Inoculation and incubation [Re: Bob Gratton]
#7554814 - 10/24/07 12:40 PM (16 years, 3 months ago) |
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hmm. you should be alright, esp. with the precautions you took and the dry verm layer as well.
good luck! interested to see how it all goes
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MarlboroMan
Stranger




Registered: 05/01/06
Posts: 184
Loc: Tx
Last seen: 16 years, 8 days
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Re: Inoculation and incubation [Re: fluffyshapes]
#7554823 - 10/24/07 12:41 PM (16 years, 3 months ago) |
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Lookin good bro! Keep up the good work!
-------------------- I'll make it to the moon if I have to crawl..
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Bob Gratton
Stranger

Registered: 07/25/07
Posts: 31
Last seen: 16 years, 1 month
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Re: 1st Grow (B+ and Z-Strain) [Re: Bob Gratton]
#7562024 - 10/26/07 07:35 AM (16 years, 3 months ago) |
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Hi there,
Here are the first picture of my incubated jars, I can see something white growing but I think it's too airy/fluffy to be mycelium, but it's my first grow so plz let me know what do you think.





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yepyepyep
Stranger
Registered: 09/05/07
Posts: 147
Last seen: 26 days, 7 hours
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Re: 1st Grow (B+ and Z-Strain) [Re: Bob Gratton]
#7562156 - 10/26/07 08:32 AM (16 years, 3 months ago) |
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Looks fine to me, it will thicken up and appear much more white later on.
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Bob Gratton
Stranger

Registered: 07/25/07
Posts: 31
Last seen: 16 years, 1 month
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update : 6 days after inoculation [Re: yepyepyep]
#7570882 - 10/28/07 08:25 PM (16 years, 3 months ago) |
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Hi,
Six day after inoculation almost every jars show evident signs of germination, for example:
 One of the most colonized jars (B+ 250ml in the incubator)
The funnier (again b+ 250ml jar):
 strange effet:

Almost every 250ml ( all b+ ) seem to be much more colonized but it may be that I could not reach the side of the 500ml jar with the needle. The next picture is a 500ml jars (all are z-strain) that is colonized just under the dry vermiculite layer, an evidence that the needle was to short. I have a little concern with this one, as you can see on the picture, there are little black/brown points between the mycelium and the glass, could it be a contaminant or it's just the vermiculite?

The only thing that i'm really worried about, this :

At the bottom of this jars the substrate look more like paste, I think it is an accumulation of water, what do you think? Am I right? if so, is this normal or not?
The heater is now set to maintain a 81 F and my cheap hygro/thermo indicates 80 and I'm keeping the RH to a minimum of 50% by placing a thin layer of water in two 2liters plastic ice cream containers.
thx to everyone following this log, yepyepyep, you made with sure that it was mycelium and it helped me to be more patient, thx man.
One other update scheduled for the end of the week.
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verminofmsu
experiencedeater beginnerhorti


Registered: 09/11/07
Posts: 6
Loc: Kentucky
Last seen: 16 years, 3 months
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Re: update : 6 days after inoculation [Re: Bob Gratton]
#7570988 - 10/28/07 08:54 PM (16 years, 3 months ago) |
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if anyone can answer my question of why my mushrooms don't make me trip I'd really appreciate it... they look beautiful, and are in fact "psychedelic" strains, however, eaten dry or freshly picked off the cake... nothing happens... granted I haven't gone all out into eating multiple but this first flush isn't worth a shit... the strain is called Mestizo... it's fruited faster than all my other strains, yet, it's worthless... Any advice from anyone would be greatly appreciated...
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Bob Gratton
Stranger

Registered: 07/25/07
Posts: 31
Last seen: 16 years, 1 month
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Re: update : 14 days after inoculation [Re: verminofmsu]
#7600319 - 11/05/07 09:01 PM (16 years, 2 months ago) |
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Day 14 after inoculation.
Some of the 250ml jars are about 75% colonized, but two of the 500 ml are not even at 40%. All of them were finally placed in my incubator and the aluminium foils were removed to promote air exchange and evaporation of the condensated water on the sides of a few jars, I think my substrate was a bit too wet. I also think that this over watering may have cause the mycelium to grow in the vermiculite layer on this Zs-train jars.
 I only removed the lid, anyone got an advice? Do you think adding a little more verm. would be a good idea? Colonization is way too long, I can't wait to try rye, I think I'll start it this week.

 Rhizomorphic macro
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psycho_bin_farma
Hobbyist




Registered: 04/20/07
Posts: 171
Last seen: 13 years, 2 months
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Re: update : 14 days after inoculation [Re: Bob Gratton]
#7600349 - 11/05/07 09:08 PM (16 years, 2 months ago) |
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You're fine, condensation like that is normal. 500ML jars just take a long time to colonize.
you'll just have to wait.
For PFs tho, stick to half pint jars they colonize much faster.
To cut down colonization times on 500ML jars you can have more inoculation points (5 or 6 in a star pattern and one in the middle)
but keep in mind to remove enough water from the BRF verm mix because you'd be adding alot of water when you inoculate. you dont want to throw off your ratios by adding too much water.
Edited by psycho_bin_farma (11/05/07 09:15 PM)
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rynobot8
robotic messiah


Registered: 09/20/07
Posts: 60
Loc: south florida
Last seen: 15 years, 5 months
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Re: update : 14 days after inoculation [Re: Bob Gratton]
#7600372 - 11/05/07 09:16 PM (16 years, 2 months ago) |
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you're looking good, remember that 500 is 2 times 250, so 40% in a 500ml jar is 80% in a 250.
-------------------- the preceding was a figment of your/my imagination, a community hallucination
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