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Caribou_Lou
Stranger


Registered: 10/17/07
Posts: 2,510
Loc: Never Land
Last seen: 12 years, 10 months
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Bed-a-beast?
#7620611 - 11/10/07 11:28 PM (16 years, 2 months ago) |
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I went to petsmart looking for coir and none of the idiots there knew what I was talking about, however when I was in the reptile section I saw this thing called bed-a-beast on it it's like a 6X3 inch brick. It sounded familiar but it didn't really say anything. Is this coco coir? And is this going to be the equivalent of one brick of the kind from mycosupply.com, it's for my monotub will this be enough for it?
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monstermitch
Growing in Bags Doesn't Work



Registered: 02/10/06
Posts: 3,911
Loc: Arizona Bay
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yes, bed-a-beast is coco coir. yes, that is a brick.
you will expand it with one gallon of hot water. it will expand into roughly 32-40 cups of substrate.
is that enough for your monotub? how should I know? you didn't tell us how big it is. like one of those questions in math class where the answer is: "unanswerable, not enough information provided."
if I were to guess though, I would say yes, it's enough for your monotub.
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Caribou_Lou
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Registered: 10/17/07
Posts: 2,510
Loc: Never Land
Last seen: 12 years, 10 months
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Well if I had to guess I'd say it's 15-20 gallons. Do I have to sterilize it, or is the hot water enough? I'm using rye grain.
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monstermitch
Growing in Bags Doesn't Work



Registered: 02/10/06
Posts: 3,911
Loc: Arizona Bay
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grey area...
some say you must pasteurize it some say you don't. I'm not going to say one way or another.
I've done it both ways, and both ways worked for me.
The easiest way to do it is to get a 5 gallon bucket with lid, and boil a little more than a gallon of water (steam loss (2 cups or so)), then dump the boiling water into the bucket, drop the brick in, close the lid to the bucket, and come back in about 90 minutes. mix the coir well to distribute the moisture, then mix it with your spawn and dump it into the monotub. level it out and close 'er up.
or you can pasteurize it after it has expanded and cooled, then mix it with your rye grain spawn. whatever you decide. you can surely search and read up on both sides of the story.
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ozzyozzyozzy
Australian



Registered: 10/23/06
Posts: 545
Last seen: 3 years, 8 months
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Monstermitch, I've never pasteurized before so I'm uncertain, but why are you leaving it for 90 minutes? Is the first boiling water to partly sterilize, then the rest for pure hydration? Because without additional heating, 1 gallon of boiled water won't stay warm for long.
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Caribou_Lou
Stranger


Registered: 10/17/07
Posts: 2,510
Loc: Never Land
Last seen: 12 years, 10 months
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Thanks for clearing that up. But I'm kinda confused, do I put the rye under the coir like two separate layers, or do I just mix the chunks right into the coir?
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monstermitch
Growing in Bags Doesn't Work



Registered: 02/10/06
Posts: 3,911
Loc: Arizona Bay
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exactly.
the point is to not have it stay warm enough for sterilization, but to have be warm enough for pasteurization. or at least partial pasteurization.
the water should fall to around 170 degrees or so within a minute or less from my trials. and within an hour to 90 minutes, it'll drop below 140, when that happens, it's time to open it up, mix it about, cool it a bit, then spawn to it.
it's quite effective in it's success rate. not sure how technically effective it could be considered as far as complete pasteurization, but positive results can rarely be argued with. coir is a great substrate.
Quote:
Caribou_Lou said: Thanks for clearing that up. But I'm kinda confused, do I put the rye under the coir like two separate layers, or do I just mix the chunks right into the coir?
mix the colonized rye and coir all together very well.
it doesn't hurt though to keep out a bit of the rye... after you dump the mix into the monotub and level it out, you can take that bit of leftover rye and spread a super, super thin layer over the top of the mix. it's called spawn frosting. it ensures the top layer colonizes faster to help ward of any contaminates that might land and try to start a war.
so your next question may be: "so if the top colonizes first, how do I know when the rest is colonized and it's time for casing?" answer: two options. first being watch and wait for rhizomorphic growth (stringy fan like looking things) to start to grow up the sides of the monotub looking for more food:
 second being wait until you see hyphal knots begin to form:

once you see either of these, it's time to case. your choice which. the former will most likely lead to your casing layer colonizing to a fair extent. the latter will most likely lead to the casing not colonizing and just acting as a casing.
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RogerRabbit
Bans for Pleasure



Registered: 03/26/03
Posts: 42,214
Loc: Seattle
Last seen: 11 months, 3 days
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I strongly recommend against leaving any grains on top of a substrate, exposed to air. If the grains dry out and the mushroom mycelium weakens, they become the perfect place for molds to start. Many growers get away with it, but the contamination rate will be higher over time. Grains should be covered with at least a very light layer of substrate, imo. RR
-------------------- Download Let's Grow Mushrooms semper in excretia sumus solim profundum variat "I've never had a failed experiment. I've only discovered 10,000 methods which do not work." Thomas Edison
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