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OfflineNibin
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The Shroomery and mushroom cultivation, a newcomers guide. * 15
    #9285870 - 11/21/08 02:36 PM (15 years, 2 months ago)

Welcome to the Shroomery message board.

First of all I'd like to welcome you to the interesting and rewarding world of mushroom cultivation and I hope that all the other members can help you out in this new experience.

I'd like to give you a few pointers on the main site in case you haven't explored it properly.
From the mushroom cultivation section you can access many written documents explaining all the things you will have to do to grow many kinds of mushrooms, including edibles and Psilocybe Cubensis. Please bear in mind that some of these teks (as we call them) can be outdated, so make sure you read a couple of them explaining the same procedure you want to do and check that there are no inconsistencies. If there are, come strait to the mushroom cultivation forum and ask.

If there are words you don't understand feel free to check out the Shroomery glossary for the definitions of those words.

Now back to the forum. There are few rules in the Mushroom Cultivation forum, but breaking those rules might mean your thread gets locked and we wouldn't want that would we.

The main ones to keep in mind are:

- No asking for spore trades. There is a special forum for this called the Marketplace and if you stick around for 90 days and make at least 50 posts you will have access to it.

- Absolutely no asking for spores if you live in one of the US states where spores are illegal. You might even get banned for doing this.

- No posting of non-sponsor links of mushroom related stuff. You can mention non sponsor products, even ask about them, but no linking. A list of shroomery sponsors can be found here.

The only other thing you need to keep in mind is that you should try and write your questions clearly, and make sure the subject line explains what your post is about or you won't get many answers.

One last, but VERY IMPORTANT item. Every question you may have has probably been asked about 5 times in the last week and 100 times in the last month. There is a very useful search engine which will save you the hassle of having to type up a question yourself and get you an answer much faster.

In the next post I am going to overview the main cultivation procedures and try and help you make up your mind on which way you should go to grow.


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Newcomers guide-----> For all things shroomy


Edited by Nibin (11/22/08 06:29 AM)


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Re: The Shroomery and mushroom cultivation, a newcomers guide. [Re: Nibin] * 2
    #9285872 - 11/21/08 02:36 PM (15 years, 2 months ago)

So, you want to grow mushroom. But where do you start?

There are two ways to go about growing and they depend on one thing only: Do you own a pressure cooker?

Pros and cons of both methods.

Method 1

Pros:
- Very easy to do
- Can be done with or without a pressure cooker
- Produces enough shrooms for you and your friends
- Relatively simple setup and does not require expensive materials

Cons:
- You won't get huge yields
- Requires vermiculite which can be hard to find in some areas

Method 2

Pros:
- Produces higher yields
- Materials to be used are available anywhere

Cons:
- Requires a pressure cooker
- Can be more expensive if you don't already own a pressure cooker but is as cheap as method 1, if not cheaper, if you own one already
- Is a little more complex so there is more things to go wrong if you are not careful

In both cases the most important rule is to FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS EXACTLY. Do not try and make modifications until you have more experience, as that increases the risk of something going wrong dramatically. If you have to make changes because of available material, make sure you ask on the forum before you do so, just to check if it can be done, and how it should be done.


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Newcomers guide-----> For all things shroomy


Edited by Nibin (11/22/08 06:31 AM)


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Re: The Shroomery and mushroom cultivation, a newcomers guide. [Re: Nibin] * 1
    #9285876 - 11/21/08 02:37 PM (15 years, 2 months ago)

METHOD 1 THE PF TEK


The PF tek is a system of growing mushrooms that has been around for a few decades and was developed by Psylocybe Fanaticus, hence the name.

You will prepare jars full of vermiculite and brown rice flour on which the mushroom will grow.

The steps are as follows:

1. Prepare your jars and inoculate(inject spores) them
2. Wait for colonization
3. Place in a fruiting chamber
4: Harvest and enjoy

The procedure is very well explained here and in other articles in the basic cultivation guides section of the site and can also be seen as a video here so I won't explain how it is done, just give you general tips for each step of the procedure.

Just read the above mentioned articles first so you will know what we are talking about.

1 PREPARING JARS


Make sure you don't overdo the amount of water you put in the jars. The proportions are 2 parts of vermiculite 1 part of brown rice flour and 1 part of water, but I recommend you add just a little less water to avoid over wetting your mix, as it will slow everything down considerably and maybe even stop growth.

FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS EXACTLY. Procedure is critical here.

2 COLONIZATION


While you will read about incubators and incubation in many places for your jars, this is not at all necessary if your house is in a normal temperature range (above 65F) Incubators add cost to your setup and can increase the contamination rate, as the higher temperatures also increase the growth of contaminants that might not have grown if you hadn't incubated.

If you really want to incubate do not have temperatures above 80F. The values given in many teks of 86F are outdated and optimum growth is attained at around 80F. This is because the jars produce a little heat which brings the temperature up to the 82-3F optimum.

BE PATIENT. While growth can be seen after a few days sometimes, it can take a week or more to see anything.

3 FRUITING CHAMBER


A new development since the original PF Tek is the Shotgun terrarium. It is called this because it has lots of holes so it looks like someone fired a 12 gauge shotgun at it :evil:

Here are instructions on how to make one.

For good pinning (pins are baby mushrooms) you need the correct pinning triggers that tell your cakes to start producing mushrooms. The most important ones in order of importance are

- Full colonization. Once the mycelium (that is the white stuff that produces the shrooms) has fully colonized the cake it will know it is time to fruit.
- High humidity. It has to be over 95%, ideally 99% for PF cakes
- Fresh Air Exchange A.K.A FAE. Mushrooms need lots of fresh air. You need as much as you can without reducing the air humidity
- Light. Mushrooms grow towards light. A few hours is enough and they need some dark period too. Most people go for a 12h light 12h dark regime. Indirect sunlight is best but close second is a CFL (compact fluorescent light/energy saving bulb) in the daylight(also known as white light or around 6000K) range. Do not use a normal light-bulb as they produce the wrong kind of light and produce way too much heat.

DUNK AND ROLL: This is another addition to the standard PF tek. Basically you dunk your cakes in water for 12 to 24 hours (to replace water lost during colonization) and then roll them in DRY vermiculite, place them in the fruiting chamber and mist them well (the verm acts as a water reservoir). A search will give you more info on this procedure.

One last tip. I recommend you place your cakes close together in the fruiting chamber. That way the humidity coming off them creates an even better micro-climate for fruit growth. Here is what it would look like



This post explains the procedure plus another very interesting one.

4 HARVESTING


Pick fruits just before or just after the cap opens and the veil at the bottom of the cap tears to avoid spores falling everywhere and making a mess of your fruiting chamber

Make sure you learn to make spore prints as you will then become self sufficient and not have to buy spores each time.

Also, if you do decide to make spore prints please consider donating some to the Free Spore Ring as they try and make spore prints available to everyone for free and rely on donations.


--------------------
Newcomers guide-----> For all things shroomy


Edited by Nibin (11/22/08 06:35 AM)


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Re: The Shroomery and mushroom cultivation, a newcomers guide. [Re: Nibin] * 1
    #9285878 - 11/21/08 02:37 PM (15 years, 2 months ago)

Method 2 Grains and Bulk Growing


In this way of growing you first have to prepare grains with a pressure cooker as your growing medium and then decide if you fruit them directly or use them to make a bulk grow

The procedure is as follows

1. Prepare Grain and inoculate
2. Colonize
3. Prepare and spawn to your bulk substrate
4. Colonize
5. Case
6. Fruit

Basically you use your colonized grains as what is called spawn to introduce mushroom mycelium into a substrate that can be prepared easily in big quantities (hence the bulk part) by pasteurization not sterilization. This allows you to grow much larger amounts of mushrooms with not much more extra effort. Examples of bulk substrates are straw, horse manure or coco coir.

While spawn is normally colonized grain, you can actually also use broken up PF tek cakes, and if you have been patient enough to read all of this you have just discovered the way to grow in bulk without using a pressure cooker (as the pressure cooker is required to prepare the grains, not the bulk substrates)

As before, there are many teks written about how to do these procedures and I will just give you a few tips on each step.

1. Prepare grains


You can use different kinds of grain for this, but favourites are Rye, Wild Bird Seed and Corn.

Here you can find instructions on how to prepare the grains.

One of my favourites which isn't in the section above is the way RR prepares his rye

Quote:

My rye tek. I haven't posted this here in awhile.

Measure out your organic rye berries from a health food store, 1 cup for each quart jar you intend to make. Place them in a large pot. Rinse the heck out of them. Fill the pot with hot tap water, shake and swirl it around and pour it out. Do this three or four times until the water you pour out is clear. You'll be able to see when you have nice clean water to pour off instead of water filled with chaff and dirt. You want to now cover the rye berries with three times as much water as you have rye. Use half coffee(or less) and half plain water. In other words, if you have two inches of rye in the bottom of your pan, you should have six inches of water/coffee above that, for a total of 8 inches. Add one tablespoon of gypsum to the water and stir well. Leave this to sit for 12 to 24 hours.

After the soak, add water to nearly fill the kettle up, but leave room at the top for it to boil. Stir well and set the pot on the stove. Bring to a boil. Boil for ten minutes, then, WHILE BOILING, drain the contents through a very large colander. (spaghetti strainer) If you're making a large batch, you may need more than one colander. Tip the colander side to side to get the rye to drain as much of the water as you can. Then, shake the colander in order to 'toss' the grain. This will cause a lot of steam to rise from your rye. Do this a time or two, then let it sit for five minutes, then repeat. When all the moisture that will drip or evaporate from your rye has already done so, load your jars. The rye should look and feel dry to the touch when you load the jars. All the moisture you need is inside the grain. Fill jars no more than 2/3 full if they are to receive grain to grain transfers, or no more than 3/4 full if they are to be inoculated by spore syringe. Use a lid with a synthetic filter disk, polyfill, tyvek or similar. Cover with foil and PC the jars for at least 90 minutes at 15lbs. When the jars are cool, they're ready to inoculate.




2. Colonize the grain



Do not shake your grains just after injecting spores, wait until around 1/3 of the jar is covered in mycelium before shaking it.

Once you have colonized grain you can skip the next step and just case it and fruit it directly if you want to, but by using it as spawn you will increase your amount of substrate dramatically. Using the recommended 1:4 ratio will mean that 1 pint of grain spawn will become 5 pints of colonized bulk substrate (1 pint grain + 4 pints substrate) with just an additional weeks wait.

3. Preparing Bulk Substrate and Spawning


Here is the info on how to prepare different bulk substrates. There is a lot more info doing a quick search using the search engine.

IMPORTANT. Bulk substrates are PASTEURIZED not sterilized, as sterilization increases contamination rate dramatically.

A NOTE ON COIR: Coco Coir is processed coconut husk also used for plants. It was thought until a few years ago that is contained no nutrients and was a good casing (next section) material. Now we know that it actually does contain nutrients and is a good bulk substrate. So if you see any casing instructions using coir, try and avoid them.

I recommend you do not leave a layer of spawn on the top of the bulk substrate once you mix it all as if it dries out it can become a source of contamination.

4. Colonize bulk substrate


Here you will have to choose what setup you decide to go with.

The most common are trays which go into a normal fruiting chamber or into a Martha (plastic greenhouse) or a setup called a monotub. A quick search should give you loads of info on these setups.

Another good tip is to line the bottom of your container with a sheet of black plastic from a cut up rubbish/trash bag. This helps prevent side and bottom pinning as it sticks to the substrate as it shrinks.

5. Casing


To case or not to case, that is the question

Some substrates such as horse manure and coir will fruit well uncased, but all bulk substrates will benefit from a casing layer.

Here is the info on how to prepare a casing layer.

Another fantastic thread on casing is Hyphae's Pinning Strategy

6. Fruiting


Depending on your setup you will have different kinds of fruiting chamber. One important thing to remember is that pinning triggers as mentioned in the previous post that covers the PF tek still apply, but humidity should be around 90%.


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Newcomers guide-----> For all things shroomy


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Re: The Shroomery and mushroom cultivation, a newcomers guide. [Re: Nibin] * 2
    #9285881 - 11/21/08 02:37 PM (15 years, 2 months ago)

All that is left is for me to wish you good luck with your endeavors and once again welcome you to this amazing community.

I hope this has been a help to you.


GOOD GROWING


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Newcomers guide-----> For all things shroomy


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Re: The Shroomery and mushroom cultivation, a newcomers guide. [Re: Nibin] * 2
    #9285894 - 11/21/08 02:40 PM (15 years, 2 months ago)

Well, that took me a couple of hours to type up, but I had wanted to write up something like this for a long time.

All suggestions are more than welcome.


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Re: The Shroomery and mushroom cultivation, a newcomers guide. [Re: IncredibleEdible] * 1
    #9285972 - 11/21/08 02:53 PM (15 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

IncredibleEdible said:
Awesome. This is just what I've been looking for. Thanks!




Glad to help. It is for newcomers like you that this was typed up.


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Re: The Shroomery and mushroom cultivation, a newcomers guide. [Re: RogerRabbit] * 1
    #9286331 - 11/21/08 03:59 PM (15 years, 2 months ago)

Wow, my first sticky  :blush:


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Re: The Shroomery and mushroom cultivation, a newcomers guide. [Re: Joker003] * 1
    #9290414 - 11/22/08 06:25 AM (15 years, 2 months ago)

I must say the hardest of all was avoiding using words and abbreviations that for me are second nature.

I started typing it up using BRF, FAE, mycelium, pins, etc and realized it would be really hard to understand for a complete newcomer, so I had to rewrite it avoiding as many technical terms as I could.


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Re: The Shroomery and mushroom cultivation, a newcomers guide. [Re: JayBrasco] * 1
    #9326708 - 11/28/08 11:13 AM (15 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

JayBrasco said:
is it possible to inoculate the spores directly into the substrate...lets say a mixture of steer manure and straw and letting it colonize and fruit, and skip the cake method?




It will work but success rate is very low unless you use bags and inject with liquid culture.

Here is how you should procede more or less

http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/8073024/an/0/page/0


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Re: The Shroomery and mushroom cultivation, a newcomers guide. [Re: dead] * 1
    #9326755 - 11/28/08 11:20 AM (15 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

dead said:
Yeah but with spores it's not going to work.




It has been known to but the failure rate is extremely high.

There are those manure bags with a grain pocket which work well with spores.


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Re: The Shroomery and mushroom cultivation, a newcomers guide. [Re: shroomwrestler] * 1
    #9391771 - 12/08/08 12:06 PM (15 years, 1 month ago)

Quote:

shroomwrestler said:
Hi im new to the site and wanted to say I appreciate all that you do.

I have recently started with cakes and inoculated them with the Hawaian psilocyben cubensis from Spores101 and it is now day 7 and i have no signs of mycelium. The temp is right and they are getting no light am i doing something wrong?

Any help would greatly be appreciated/




Start a thread explaining what you did exactly and let's see if we can see if it was your fault or the syringes.

Also, sometimes growth appears after a week.


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Re: Sterile procedure [Re: SLiCeR] * 1
    #9536446 - 01/03/09 06:54 AM (15 years, 28 days ago)

Quote:

SLiCeR said:
lol i bought distilled water anyway coz i seen it ha ha should i still boil it though?




How about you open a thread for this convo instead of cluttering up this one?

:crazy2:


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Re: The Shroomery and mushroom cultivation, a newcomers guide. [Re: kingsmountainview]
    #11092281 - 09/19/09 11:03 PM (14 years, 4 months ago)

Quote:

kingsmountainview said:
I've decided to start growing again after a 5yr hiatus; well truth be told Mother Nature spiked my interest agian. See, it's been raining almost everyday for about 3-4 weeks now here is the Southeast (Atlanta is now the new Seattle), and the fields have been absolutely covered. But that's completely off subject.

I've been researching on the net and [finally] become a member on this site. I now think I can make this work, as my first few attempts had less that desirable results. I was putting in so much work trying to keep conditions perfect, and after contams and poor yields only getting about 25% of what I should have gotten. So to the point, invigorating read, but I do have one suggestion. I see almost no mention of sterilization techniques. While you do mention the pressure cooker; you in no way mention how it should be used. If you intend for this to be guide for beginners I feel that such is vital information.




The link on grain preparation methods has instructions on sterilization times, etc. This is not intended as a guide to everything, just a way to get people to understand basic concepts, understand the way things are dona and supply some links to reading material.

There are so many different ways to do the same thing and it is up to the individual grower which to use. This is why I avoided giving specific instructions and just gave links (so a new grower can read and choose which one he likes) and only gave some general tips on each procedure.


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Re: The Shroomery and mushroom cultivation, a newcomers guide. [Re: celicara29]
    #11111310 - 09/23/09 08:07 AM (14 years, 4 months ago)

There is no definitive answer.

It is very much up to the person. Are you prepared to put in the extra effort of researching all the additional techniques? Are you comfortable with and understand fully the procedures required? Do you have the extra money that is needed? Are you a clean, methodic person or at least have the capability to be so when needed?

If you can answer yes to most of these questions you are probably the kind of person that will succeed with bulk first time off.


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