10-18-01 05:59
No 226063
Well after three failed tries I finally got pins forming on my cakes and I'm certain that I'll get a nice crop of mushies. It's been a long three months. I thought I'd share what I learned from my screwups.
The single greatest tip I have to offer is mix your vermiculite with water and then evenly coat the wet vermiculite with the BRF.
Get course vermiculite. Grind it, up as fine as you can in a coffee grinder, put in a baking dish. Put your BRF in a second baking dish and place in the oven at 300F for 30 mins. This presterilization has really helped me cut down on contams.
Use B+ spores until you get your first crop. They're much more hardy than any other strain I've tried. They colonize at a decent rate of speed, too.
Innoculate then cover the jars back up with aluminum but don't put tape over the holes. After ~50% colonization loosen the lids and tip the jars upside-down.
Wait an extra week before birthing your cakes. The mycelium network must be strong in order to provide good pinning. My most whitest cakes are pinning like champs. Some of the other barely fully-colonized cakes are not showing too much in the way of pinning thusfar.
Don't put too much water in your terrarium if you're using the perlite tek. Your mushies will sink. That happened to me once when I was high and added water.
Play lovely music to your mushrooms. Bach Cantatas are perfect. I often put BWV 147 mov 5 on repeat and play it quietly on a CD player next to the terrarium.
Go bulk with the PF tek. Get a good 400 jars going!
Better loving through chemistry.
(Hive Bee)
10-18-01 22:05
No 226359
trenchcoat, did you say grind down your vermiculite? thats really not a good idea. the object of using verm is to create a porous environment with air inside so that the mycelium has a chance to grow.
i have extensive knowledge on this subject, if you have any questions feel free to ask, although swif hasnt grown for some time, he might be a little rusty.
good move with the presterilization, a pressure cooker is very useful also(although i have gotten it to work using pasturization in a pot).
b+ ay? i like the faster ones like thai and cambodians to some extent. b+ is good though, just a little slow. it makes up for it in hardyness though.
one trick to add to this is to get brown rice and grind it down into chunks and powder, this makes for very healthy fungus.
(Stranger)
10-18-01 22:14
No 226368
I disagree, Peurto Riccans and Equadorians are reaaly easy and forgiving to grow, and are much more potent than B+ (esp Peurto Riccans). SWIM has grown both.
(Hive Bee)
10-18-01 22:31
No 226377
well they are all cubes, so theres variation, but discussion of strains is pretty pointless.
oh and trenchcoat, use very little water on your perlite...if they are sinkin, youve got major problems.
(Stranger)
10-19-01 17:24
No 226777
Some added suggestions:
1.) Try an autoclave, it will improve yeilds dramatically, medical supply and laboratory suppply stores often have used ones for reasonable prices.
2.) Try using rye grain (whole kernel) for the growth media it provides alot of air space, and works well.
3.) Try liquid innoculation rather then using a syringe or spores, you'll get a better result, faster grow times, and as an added advantage you will have a bunch or mush rooms that all look exactly the same.
4.) If you are going bulk then i have swim has found that liquid innoculation of more media is better then trying to bulk propigate.
5.)A company that sells poisinous non-consumables just happens to sell preautoclaved growth media already in jars. . . ever wonder what no contamination would be like. . . it's a good way to get started at least.
Cyril
Now for the azures. . .
So you need a precursor, to a precursor, just to make a precursor?
(Hive Bee)
10-20-01 01:00
No 226932
azures cyril? a daunting task indeed... seems like you really know what youre talking about though.
for azures youd need temperature control, like an old fridge..its probably the toughest shroom to grow.
(Hive Bee)
10-21-01 11:00
No 227438
Trenchcoat,
Considering that you failed at the PF TEK 3 times, and now only have pins, I hardly think that you are in a position to be offering advice.
(Hive Bee)
10-21-01 18:24
No 227497
lol
SWIM has had good results using microwave sterilisation - high power for 8mins.
(Hive Bee)
10-21-01 22:12
No 227539
haha, trenchcoat, that is pretty pathetic. what happened? conatminants?
i luckily live in a dry climate..seems to help cut down on the bacteria levels.
(Hive Bee)
10-21-01 23:59
No 227568
Try this: powderize 30g of dried PCs, wash with ether and acetone (you can use ether out of engine starter if you wash with acetone afterwards because the crap from the can will dissolve in acetone). Now extract the powder with methanol, evaporate, dissolve the extract in water and drink it. That should be interesting!
(Newbee)
10-23-01 06:30
No 227940
What would the final yield of psychoactive alkaloids be if one did this, Ghost?
(Stranger)
10-23-01 20:29
No 228083
there is info on the 'net about these extractions, try the shroomery, their forums...even if they aren't professional there still is alot of worthy information...what have I learned from growing 'shrooms?
, sterilize, sterilize sterilize, wish we could all have autoclaves but some aren't as fortunate...and always case the cakes, if done right, you have much higher yields during fruiting and much quicker. Has anyone actually extracted psilocybin, psilocin from shrooms? I have lab access now, maybe its time to try an extraction...[green]GROW OVER THE GOV'T
(Hive Bee)
10-23-01 21:37
No 228098
the shroomery used to be my old stomping grounds.
the general concensus there seems to be that its not worth extracting...mostly a bunch of hippies there.
youd have much better luck lurking around here for psi. extraction information.
try these
Post 227955 (not existing)
(Stranger)
10-24-01 03:26
No 228172
Yep, I agree on the shroomery...anybody here tried azures? what about mexicana...I would rather have some mexicana then azure, just because of Wasson, and to pay homage to the Aztecs...
"The highest happiness of man is to have probed what is knowable, and to quietly revere what is unknowable."
- Goethe
The Pirate Myco-Chemist
(Hive Bee)
10-24-01 05:45
No 228210
Perhaps you're right. I have shrooms now, though. I think one or two of those tips could be useful. They got my cakes fruiting after several failures. Next time I'm going to grow on cow shit, though.
Better loving through chemistry.
(Hive Bee)
10-24-01 23:11
No 228442
hey trench, theres some foolproof techniqes...ryche hawk and company have all but perfected shroom cultivation: outdoor and indoor.
you should see this guys grow room...it makes my eyes tear up everytime i see it.
(Stranger)
10-25-01 00:13
No 228461
yep, hawk is where I have been getting my spores for awhile now. Once I got a single non-active syringe, but every other one has always been superb. I wish we all had a grow room like theirs...
(Hive Bee)
10-25-01 00:38
No 228468
So, after a few successful b+ batches, what would be the next type to try?? Peurto Riccans or Equadorians maybe??
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." - Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)
(Hive Bee)
10-25-01 01:40
No 228488
SWIM has cultivated P. azurescens on agar, but has not yet got round to actually sorting out the necessary substrate... any tips would bee much appreciated.
Sweet dreamz,
IudexK
(Hive Bee)
10-25-01 18:07
No 228705
iudex, not sure on the substrate, but youve got temperature and environmental worries to go along with that...not an easy thing to do.
in fact some of the more reputed growers still brag on their ability to grow azures.
(Hive Addict)
10-26-01 05:41
No 228879
Sure we would all love to bee cool enough to grow P. azures, but that't not happening any time soon. I will swear on those damn PF hawaii caps. They are very small capped and lengthy and are supposed to be slightly more difficult to grow. In dave's house of porn,they began to pin(w/o casing) quicker than plain old PF's. They grew quicker, were more potent, and were more asthetic to the eye. Double casing is something all people should try that use the cake method. It really encourages second, third, and small forth flushes. I will also swear by that damn perlite method. A colander was filled with perlite and the dust was sifted off. It was submerged in distilled water and a splash (50ml or so?) of 3% hydrogen peroxide was added to this entire slop. Perlite was drained, added to ye' old rubbermaid, and an inch or so of distilled water was added. Then just set those damn cakes right on the perlite without a care in the world besides fresh air and eating those little boogers.
4:20
(Hive Bee)
10-27-01 00:47
No 229153
pf is a fucking ass...never mailed me my spores.
ryche hawk is good, sc is good too.
hope that saying ryches name doesnt count as a source...its not as if he is hard to find. but if it is, feel free to delete it.
54
(Stranger)
11-02-01 06:23
No 231941
yes PF sucks ass...they have never delivered to me. I thought HAWK's spores weren't gonna make it...but they got here today, so lets all be happy! He sent me one bunk syringe so hopefully all of my many are good...I trust him more then anyone lately...any BEES know if Dextrose added to the substrate gives more psilocybin/psilocin content? Interesting...........................
there is fungus amungus...LOVE...
(Newbee)
11-15-01 06:30
No 236905
SWIM gets his spores from ***. Sometimes workman there will even trade. That's how SWIM got the P.R's.
SWIM just re-started an old casing SWIM had of P.R's. The casing had absolutely no contams after providing a few good flushes, so SWIM just crumpled it and made layers with it and straw SWIM soaked in water in the oven at ~200F. The straw colinized nicely, SWIM just started cropping temps and humidity. SWIM hopes he gets good results. SWIM never used a bulk substarte before. SWIM hope the mushies grow a little bigger than that wimpy BRF casing.
(Hive Bee)
11-15-01 23:08
No 237126
man you guys have weird methods around here, its a real eye opener...the shhhh*****ery has a concensus that is hard to break from. (but it does work, so i guess theres no crie in that)
ha! it amazes me the stupid things that soe people do trying to grow...god help them if they ever move up to the chemistry, they would be dead in a week.
(Hive Bee)
11-16-01 01:27
No 237172
?Dextrose added to the substrate gives more psilocybin/psilocin content?"
Why on earth would you figure that?
(Hive Bee / Eraser)
12-16-01 11:33
No 248131
Here's a long, painfully detailed doc I wrote about my first successful try growing shrooms
________________
Psilocybin Mushrooms: 1st Attempt
So I decided to try growing shrooms. As I went through the process, I found myself becoming anxious over insignificant details, while at the same time being ignorant of important principles. Cultivating shrooms was fun, but it required patience and calm attentiveness over periods of weeks.
The extensive guides on the Internet helped to some degree. Some of them were more than guides; they provided detailed, step-by-step recipes. Nevertheless, I still felt insecure as I prepared my first batch. Was I missing some crucial but unwritten guideline? Had I not picked up on some assumption that any half-experienced grower would take for granted? Even the step-by-step directions were not specific enough to completely remove doubt in my mind.
I decided to record every detail of my first cultivation attempt, both as a potential guide to other novices and as a way of learning from my first experience.
First, a friend and I created a list of necessary ingredients and equipment:
Oven, Stove, Sink, Refrigerator, Blender
Two-Dozen ½ Pint Wide Mouth Canning Jars
A Large Bag Each Of Brown Rice, Perlite, Vermiculite
Two Psilocybe Cubensis Spore Syringes (10 cc)
Four Gallons Distilled Water, Aluminum Foil, Paper Towels
Two Mixing Bowls, Mixing Spoon, Measuring Cups
Disposable Lighter, Hammer, Thin Nail, Scissors
Two Enamel Turkey Roasters, Two-Dozen Dishcloths
Isopropyl Alcohol, Hydrogen Peroxide, Hand Sanitizer
Disposable Latex Gloves, Face Masks, Bleach, Lysol
Pro Masking Tape, Pro Duct Tape, Waterproof Epoxy
Large, Translucent Storage Container (Fruiting Chamber)
Ultrasonic Humidifier, Plastic Tubing, Electronic Timer
Digital Thermometer, Desiccant Compound
As can be seen from this list, we took a somewhat technical approach to the process. We figured that we were inexperienced, so it was best to just follow directions. Also, the list let us be confident that we lacked nothing and that all our equipment was new and clean and in perfect working order.
We already had access to the oven, stove, sink, refrigerator and blender, as well as the two mixing bowls, the mixing spoon, a pair of scissors and a disposable lighter. The rest, we had to buy… so that’s where we started.
The two PF strain spore syringes were very easy to order, and we received them quickly and without any troubles.
The canning jars proved more challenging to get. They were not stocked with any consistency at supermarkets, department stores or hardware stores in our urban area. We finally bought them from two different hardware stores, each having a single dusty package hidden on the top shelves. At one of these hardware stores, we also purchased two large turkey roasters, two medium grade facemasks, an all-steel hammer and a bag of variously sized nails.
Brown rice was no trouble at all—it was extremely cheap and available at the first supermarket we bothered to check. We also picked up four gallons of distilled water, two dozen dishcloths, aluminum foil, paper towels, isopropyl alcohol, a bottle of waterless hand sanitizer, disposable latex gloves, bleach, Lysol, measuring cups and a digital thermometer at this supermarket.
Perlite was found without any difficulty in the garden department at Home Depot. At the same Home Depot, we also bought the electronic timer, masking tape, duct tape, waterproof epoxy and a foot of plastic tubing.
This Home Depot, however, did not carry vermiculite. After a bit of a search, we procured a large bag of fine horticultural vermiculite from a local garden supply store.
Finally, we purchased an ultrasonic humidifier and a large translucent plastic storage container with a snap-on lid at a department store (K-mart).
In total, we spent a bit over $200 for supplies and transportation. This figure could obviously have been reduced greatly if we had been just a little more thrifty and resourceful… ah, well. The largest costs were for reusable items like the humidifier, the hammer, the enamel cookware, the jars and so on. We determined that the base cost for our project was only $30-$50.
After all this shopping, we were finally ready for some home cooking. We decided to wake up early and begin our work by 8 am.
At 8 am on a Saturday, we began by creating our working area, cleaning out the kitchen of our two-bedroom apartment. We closed all the windows and turned off all sources of air movement (besides the refrigerator). We removed everything from the kitchen countertops, and stashed the stuff in a cabinet if useful, or otherwise threw it away. There was a surprising amount of clutter that had to be eliminated. The two kitchen wastebaskets became filled, so we took the bags of trash out, sprayed down the wastebaskets’ interiors with Lysol, and put new trash bags in. It took about 20 minutes to lay the kitchen bare.
This done, we began scrubbing and spraying like madmen. We scoured the oven and stovetop with oven cleaner until they were spotless, then rinsed them off with water and dried with paper towels. We wiped down all of the countertops with soapy bleach water and sponges, dried them with paper towels, swept and mopped the tile floor with bleach water, and then fumigated the entire kitchen with copious amounts of Lysol. The air became acrid and we left the kitchen for ten minutes to let the droplets settle down. It took a total of another 30 minutes to get through this stage.
Once it was safe to reenter the kitchen, we gathered and arranged of the materials that we would be using in creating substrate-filled, sterilized and inoculated jars. This included the two mixing bowls, the mixing spoon, the measuring cups, the disposable lighter, the hammer, the bag of nails, the scissors, one of the spore syringes, one of the packages of wide mouth jars, the bags of vermiculite and brown rice, the two turkey-roasters, the dishcloths, the aluminum foil, the paper towels, the isopropyl alcohol, the hand sanitizer, the latex gloves, the face masks, the bleach, and finally the Lysol. (We’d put the jugs of distilled water in the refrigerator earlier, and they were also available.) We laid all of the items out before us on the countertop. Gathering and organizing the materials took about 10 minutes.
Now we were ready to begin doing things we had no experience with. First things first, we said. Let’s poke holes in the lids.
So we found a thick old newspaper to do the hole poking on. We opened up the package of canning jars and spread the jars and the lids out on the countertop. We selected the nail that seemed closest in diameter to the syringe tip. Then we selected a lid, put it down on the newspaper with the rubber seal facing downward, picked a spot about ½ inch away from the rim, and hammered the nail down through the lid without much trouble, but with a fair bit of noise. Continuing in the same way, we poked two holes per lid, each about ½ inch away from the rim and diametrically opposite the other. When we were done, we collected the lids in a stack in one corner of our workspace and threw the newspaper away. This took about 10 minutes total.
Next, we quickly rinsed the glass jars out with tap water and dried them out with paper towels. We arranged them next to the lids.
We were planning to use aluminum foil as a seal on our jars to prevent contamination. We cut out 12 6x6 inch squares of aluminum foil using our scissors. We then rinsed out the mixing bowl, mixing spoon and the blender’s bowl and dried these with paper towels. We placed the mixing bowl and spoon close to the blender, and replaced the blender bowl atop its base. Cutting the foil squares and rinsing the hardware took another 10 minutes.
Next, we snipped the large bag of brown rice open at one corner. We poured rice into the blender to a height of perhaps two inches, placed the cover on and pressed “liquefy.” The rice started jumping around madly, but soon a gradual swirling circulation became evident in the main body of rice. After two minutes had passed, we stopped the blender and examined the contents. Much of the rice had become powdered, but the powder was chunky and still had large fragments of rice grains all over. We shook the blender bowl to stir up the rice, and then resumed “liquefaction”. After another two minutes, the stuff stopped circulating. We turned the blender off and examined the contents. The rice had been turned into flour, with an interesting malted caramel odor and a tendency to clump together against the side of the blender bowl. We poured this into the smaller of the two mixing bowls with some tapping. We did another batch, which proceeded exactly as the first batch.
After two batches, it looked like we had a fair amount of brown rice flour in the smaller mixing bowl. We got out a one-cup capacity measuring cup, measured 3 level cups of the brown rice flour, and poured it into the larger bowl. We threw the excess rice flour away.
We then measured out 8 cups of vermiculite and put these into the large mixing bowl. The bowl was nearly full after this step.
Finally, we measured and poured 3 cups of distilled water into the mixing bowl. The pile of vermiculite and brown rice sank a bit as we did this, but the mixing bowl was still nearly full. We rinsed off the mixing spoon and tried to mix the substrate, but it was difficult. Luckily, we had plastic snap-on lids for the mixing bowls, so we put the lid on the large bowl, held it tightly on with both hands, and started shaking the mixing bowl like a maraca. Soon enough, the substrate mixture was uniformly mixed. Grinding the rice, measuring the vermiculite and water and mixing up the substrate had taken a total of 20 minutes.
At this point, we thoroughly washed our hands with antibacterial liquid soap, then again with waterless hand-sanitizer, and then put latex gloves on them. Better safe than sorry, we reasoned. It was 9:45 am.
We began filling jars with this mushroom food, one jar at a time. We used the mixing spoon to fluff up the crumbly, damp, beige stuff and to drop it into the jar. Our goal was to make the substrate as airy as possible, yet also as level as possible. First we filled the jar up to about ¾ inch of the top. Then, using the spoon, we removed any clumps or hills from the upper surface and then wiped down the margin/rim of the jar using a paper towel soaked in isopropyl alcohol. After that, we placed a square of aluminum foil over the top of the jar, crimped it into a tub-shaped depression that touched the sides of the jar and the top of the substrate, and filled the depression with vermiculite. Finally, we put the lids back on the jars (rubber seal facing down) and screwed the bands on tightly. The aluminum foil was like groupies, as far as the band screwing was concerned. The whole procedure took about a minute per jar.
We were left with a large excess of substrate after filling up the jars. We threw it out. (A few days later, we found that it spoils rapidly and smells awful in the garbage.)
Phew! We were finished filling up the jars. We wiped the sweat from our brows, removed and disposed of the damp latex gloves, and breathed deeply.
We rinsed out the enamel turkey roasters, arranged 12 of the dishcloths over the bottom of the roasters and placed six jars upright in each oval-shaped pot. We got out the distilled water again and filled each turkey-roaster to about ½ way up the side of the jars. We were cautious not to add too much water so that no problems with splashing would occur. Then we carefully placed the roasters on the stove (each one over two natural gas burners), turned all four burners on high, and sat down to watch. We did not place lids on the roasters right away. It was 10:10 am.
After about 10 minutes, the water showed signs of near-boiling temperature, so we turned the flame down to medium-low and placed lids over the turkey roasters. We waited for 10 minutes, and then opened the lids to see how things were progressing. The water was boiling gently and evenly in both roasters, so we put the lids back on, set the timer for 90 minutes, and went for a walk. The kitchen was becoming uncomfortably warm.
When we got back, there were 10 minutes left on the oven timer. We decided to spray down the kitchen with Lysol again, just as a precaution. Just as the Lysol settled, the oven timer expired. We turned off the heat and let everything sit undisturbed for an hour.
Patience was difficult, so at the end of the hour we took off the lids and removed the jars. They had cooled enough to handle… We put them in the refrigerator and set the timer for 180 minutes.
When the timer went off at about 4pm, we got the jars out of the refrigerator. They were cool, almost chilly to the touch. We decided to let them sit at room temperature in the living room for an hour so that hot spots would dissipate and cool areas could warm up. In the meantime, we took showers and put on newly washed clothes, and preheated the stove to the lowest setting. Finally, we re-fumigated the kitchen with Lysol, this time using all of it up. The kitchen was positively hot, and we quickly became sweaty.
At 5 pm, we were ready to begin the injection. This was the culmination of the day’s long preparations. We washed our hands vigorously, first with soapy water and then waterless hand sanitizer, dried them, and donned latex gloves and facemasks. Then we brought the jars into the kitchen, pulled out the oven rack and set three of them there. Warm air billowed around our heads. A landmark was passed as we broke the seal on the sterile spore syringe and removed the protective cap. Using the disposable lighter, we heated the metal needle until it began to glow. There were popping sounds as the liquid inside the needle exploded into steam and miniscule droplets peppered out the end. After 7 seconds, we let the needle cool a bit and then squirted a small amount of solution through the tip of the needle. Then, moving quickly, we stuck the needle through the first hole and penetrated the aluminum foil. We angled the needle so it would inject the spores about ½ way down the side of the jar. Looking closely, we could see the needle tip. We cautiously injected ½ cc of spore solution, withdrew the needle smoothly and moved on to the other hole. Quickly, we got the hang of it and finished off the rest of the jars without difficulty.
We replaced the jars in the original packaging, taped the cardboard flaps with professional grade duct tape and placed the box of incubating spores upside down (for CO2 drainage) on top of the refrigerator, where we hoped the temperature would be reasonably stable and range from 75 to 85 F.
At last, we were through for the day! We opened all the windows, washed out and dried all the kitchenware, threw out all the unneeded packaging and replaced the kitchen appliances to their normal countertop perches. It was close to 6pm, and we headed for the cool outdoors to celebrate, tired but happy. We decided to leave the second batch of jars to another time.
I waited exactly one week before daring to open the box and see how things were progressing. The temptation to handle the jars had been constant. With some nervousness, I opened up the box and was filled with joy. Everything was going according to plan: there were snow-white circles of mycelium radiating from every one of the 24 injection points! Some of them were quarter sized, but others were taking up a quarter of the jar. Most of them were already showing beautiful rhizomorphic growth. I replaced the jars in the box and decided to check up on them in another week.
Seven days later I opened the box eagerly with very positive expectations, but while my hopes were partially satisfied I also noted some troubling signs. All of the jars had progressed nicely; even the slowest jar had mycelium covering a bit more than ½ of the substrate and the fastest jar was more than ¾ done. Instead of islands of mycelia, the jars now looked like strips of uncolonized substrate in a white sea. The problem was, the sea wasn’t really white. In all of the mycelia, the older colonized areas had turned a pale pinkish/orangish/yellow color, as if they were under stress. These central injection sites looked denuded, as though the mycelium had grown sick in the core of an inner city. I checked the digital thermometer reading from the inside of the box—it was 97 F. Holy shit, I had fucked up. Bad, bad, bad… the box had probably been exceeding 100 F at some point. Heat death! I moved the box immediately to a cooler, shady location. How foolish to have neglected to factor in the warming weather. After all, the temperatures were in the 60’s when we’d started, but the weather was in the 80’s now and there was no air-conditioning in the place. I decided that there was nothing more I could do, and that I would check on the box in another week.
By the end of the third week, six of the twelve jars were visibly complete. Another four were over 90% colonized. The other two were lagging perceptibly and had not made as much progress as the others—each was about 75% done. These two had also seemed the most heat-stressed the previous week. I decided to remove the jars from the box so that I could monitor their progress and they would be exposed to light.
On the 28th day, I noticed two fat pins bulging up against the glass near the bottom of the most advanced cake. All but one of the cakes was completely colonized, and the standout had a tiny 3-millimeter patch of uncolonized substrate near the top. I decided, “screw it.” It was birthing time.
I rinsed out the clear storage container, poured in the bag of perlite, evened the perlite out (to a height of about ¾ inch) and wet the surface of the perlite as evenly as possible with 16 oz of 3% hydrogen peroxide solution. Then I splashed small amounts of distilled water on the perlite until it appeared well dampened. Using scissors, I snipped a small circular chunk from one of the corners of the lid (to feed the plastic tubing through,) and also poked four mini-holes at the bottom four corners of the container, to allow any excess moisture to dribble out and to let CO2 drain.
Then I rinsed the humidifier out and filled the humidifier tank with distilled water. Using duct tape, masking tape and waterproof epoxy, I managed to attach and seal the plastic tubing to the humidifier’s vapor outlet. Then I plugged in the electronic timer (which had been programmed earlier to turn on for 2 minutes 14x per day), and then plugged the ultrasonic humidifier into the timer.
The terrarium was ready and waiting, and the humidification setup was complete.
I washed my hands, once with water and soap, then again with waterless hand sanitizer. I put on a new pair of latex gloves. Then I unscrewed the lid of the first jar, gingerly. I removed the aluminum foil/vermiculite and the most glorious smell known to man reached my nostrils—that healthy, shroomy smell that I’d read about but never experienced. I was elated.
I took the band and lid from this open jar, placed the band upside-down on the perlite and then settled the lid inside it, rubber seal upwards. Then I tapped the cake out into my gloved palm and set it upside-down on the lid. When all twelve had been similarly placed inside the terrarium, I snapped the lid back on and ran the plastic tubing into the terrarium.
Every day (once at 6:30 am and again at 6:30 pm) I removed the lid from the terrarium and gave the cakes a brisk fanning for 2 minutes or so. I carefully monitored the temperature at these times, with the goal of maintaining a temperature of 83 F to within 5 degrees. Because my thermometer did not keep track of high and low temperatures, I couldn’t be sure how well I was succeeding…in the morning, the temperature was usually a few degrees below the desired range, so I turned on the halogen lamp in my room until I had to leave. In the evening, it was usually just above the high end of the range, but fanning corrected this. I also checked for excessive or insufficient moisture—my goal was to maintain an evenly damp perlite, and a faint steam on parts of the plastic, but not to have visible droplets of condensation. The humidifier had a sliding output control, which was very helpful in adjusting to changes in temperature. When the temperature rose above 90 F, the terrarium could accept the highest setting on the humidifier with no sign of condensation. If it fell below 75 F, even the lowest setting produced persistent patches of heavy condensation on the plastic terrarium walls.
It took about a week before most of the cakes showed signs of pinning. The first two pins that I had seen got up to about 1 inch and then quit growing. After two days at the same size, I picked them and ate them, mostly to get an idea of the taste (not bad—vaguely like walnuts, I thought). To my pleasant surprise, within half an hour I could distinguish mild but definite effects.
In the second week after birthing, the first flush began in earnest. I set up a drying chamber—a large pot with a bucket of Damp Rid in it. Over the top of the Damp Rid bucket, I stretched some plastic netting (the sort that they package bags of citrus in). I taped the netting around the container of Damp Rid so it would stay taut and put the metal lid back on the pot, placing it in a dark, cool place.
When the first decent sized mushroom started to unveil itself, I popped open the lid and wondered how to go about picking it. I put some gloves on, grasped the thing by the base and twisted very tentatively. It didn’t want to let go—there was this tough, rooty thing anchoring it to the cake. I yanked a little harder and a small chunk of substrate came out along with this nice four-inch mushroom. I brushed off the substrate until the mushroom looked clean—the mushroom bruised a pale yellow and then blue around the base where I had brushed it. It was fairly fat, but firm and fleshy. My first mature Shroom! I put it on the plastic netting and let that calcium chloride do its thang. It took two days to dry completely, but there didn’t seem to be any serious problems with decomposition.
The first flush was complete by the end of the third week after birthing. Total yield was around ¾ oz, dry. That week I went to see the movie Memento under the influence of an eighth, and had an intense and enjoyable time.
There was about a week’s pause before new pins began to appear, and it was over this period of time that I first began to encounter some problems. I made the mistake of leaving the shrooms alone over the weekend. When I came back, there was severe condensation all over the place, and the smell of the terrarium had changed slightly. The cakes, although covered in dew, seemed all right until I flipped them over to get a look at the bottoms. There were puddles of water on the lids. Several of the cakes looked slimy and pink in spots where they were being bruised by the metal lids. These areas were localized, like small wounds, but they smelled like rotten melons. I became very unhappy, realizing that I had treated the cakes too cavalierly and I could very well lose them as a result of my carelessness. Right then and there I decided I was never again going to interrupt my schedule of fanning and monitoring. The first thing I did was to fan the shit out of the terrarium, and leave the lid off so that the excess moisture could evaporate. I removed one of the affected cakes, took out and flame sterilized an X-acto knife and then cut out all areas within a centimeter of the places that had gone slimy. I repeated this procedure for each affected cake.
Before replacing the cakes, I decided that the lids were no good for the cakes since there were pressure points where the mycelia were being damaged and bruised. I removed all the bands and lids from the terrarium, and placed the cakes directly on the perlite. This decision was not a completely good one, as I later found out…
(I have since read that you are supposed to fill the lids with damp vermiculite—this would certainly have eliminated the bruising problem and improved yields. My next batch will be done this way.)
Thankfully, my surgery worked. Now that the freshly exposed areas were directly in contact with moist perlite, they quickly regrew in abundance. Soon afterwards, a second flush began. It lasted exactly a week and produced a little over ½ oz of dry shrooms. These I gave to my friend, who apparently sold them for $120 and received positive comments about quality.
It was after the completion of the second flush that conditions began to deteriorate. There was a hot spell in which the ambient temperature in my unconditioned apartment was hitting 100 F. The terrarium temperature soared. I was fanning every half hour, and the humidifier was on its maximum setting, but still the cakes began producing literally hundreds of very long, thin pins. All of them were almost horn-shaped and close to an inch long. I knew that very few of these pins were going to continue growing—and so I was faced with massive numbers of aborts which I could not distinguish from one another. I did not want to tear all of them off and eliminate the entire third flush. So I simply waited to see which ones of them would develop a greenish tinge and a pointy, small blackened cap.
Within a few days I got my wish; nearly all of them proceeded to abort. I ended up just scraping the surface of the cakes to get rid of them. Many of the aborts dropped on the perlite, and were a bitch to pick out so I didn’t bother. This probably contributed to the further deterioration of the terrarium environment.
Also, while cleaning off the aborts, I noticed that there were several squashy, bloated aborts forming on the bottoms of the cakes, where they were resting on the perlite. Some of these had already become soggy and slimy. I picked these off (they literally melted into a black mush within minutes) and flipped all of the cakes onto their sides, where the mycelium seemed to be dry and depleted.
The four mushrooms that did emerge from this period were relatively slender, but massive. One of them was over seven inches long, and couldn’t support its weight. In all, they weighed about ¼ oz dry.
After another week, a few of the cakes had pinned again and begun to produce some reasonably sized shrooms. Every day, there were another two medium-sized, classically shaped mushrooms just beginning to open up. Here I ran into another problem: I had depleted the Damp Rid. I headed to the nearest hardware store but they were out of stock. Thus, I began slicing the mushrooms into half and blowing a high velocity fan over them. This method was not as successful as the drying compound had been. The shrooms bruised bluish, remained somewhat “chewy” despite hours of fanning, and developed a definite odor. They were not decaying, but the results certainly left something to be desired.
As the semi-third flush kept dragging on, the yields seemed to be steady but it was clear that the terrarium had reached its terminal decline. The perlite was beginning to smell spunky, and the rotted primordia scattered all about certainly were doing nothing to help. All of the cakes were bruised blue, and some of them had rotten primordia in places where they were dampened by perlite. There were faint spore-shadows from mushrooms that had popped open overnight and were picked the following afternoon. The cakes looked shriveled up and spent, and they were covered with loose perlite. On the day I picked what appeared to be the last two mushrooms of the third flush, it became completely clear that there was to be no fourth flush. I turned over all of the cakes, and one of the weaker, non producing cakes had a violently green filamentous mold threading all over the perlite adhering to its underside.
I tossed the whole mess out, with mild regret but also with pride for my successful first try! The total yield had been 1¾ dry oz, over a period of six weeks. Not astonishing, but very satisfying for a first timer.
I have come to the following conclusions:
1.) Controlled humidity is the first critical parameter.
2.) Controlled temperature is the second critical parameter.
3.) Regular aeration is the third critical parameter.
4.) Cleanliness and cake maintenance are the final critical parameters.
5.) Get an air-conditioned apartment, you fool!
6.) Remain patient. Avoid carelessness, sloppiness and neglect.
7.) Avoid bruising the cakes; keep them moist but never wet.
8.) High-tech humidification is not all it’s cracked up to be.
9.) Get a pressure cooker and dehydrator, and try large scale.
10.) Above all, continue to enjoy the act and art of growing shrooms!
Those innocent eyes slit my soul up like a razor.
(Hive Bee)
12-16-01 18:30
No 248171
wow..very detailed. thanks for the writeup, but I should note something...your use of (lots and lots) or lysol could have been avoidied by using an old growers trick...innoculation over the oven.
basically, the rise of warm air currents prevent microbes from landing on the needle and jar openings...this has proved very successful to many growers, and I know from personal experience that conatamination is minimal to nonexistant if this tecnique is used. Just turn the oven on and crack the door open when you are ready to innoculate.
I rarely use more than a few sprays of lysol, but clean hands are essential, a mask is good, and for good measure I presoak many hardware items in bleach before hand, especially the jars.
Substrate-i noticed that you bought the whole brown rice...this is good, however grinding it into the finest powder isnt totally neccessary...in fact small chunks make for healthier mycelium. Its just that most people are too lazy to blend themselves.
overall..nice job! have you been experimenting further?
if so , you might wnat to look into other substrates for exeptionally quick growth and repeated flushes. (oh and I hate PF....get some really good strains next time)
(Stranger)
12-17-01 05:52
No 248310
Tc, I'm sorry but I disagree.
Here is the best (in my opinion) way to grow em.
Get some finch seed from wal-mart, use a 2:1 ration of seed to water.
put 2/3 cup seed per 1/3 cup water in a 1 pint wide mouth mason jar.
Pressure cook that for 50min at 15 psi.
The get some P.C PESA or P.C Thai K.S those are the best, Thai K.S is very resistent to contam. PESA is just a fucking awesome trip.
Anyway, do about 1.5-2cc per jar and wait until colonized, shake the jars about 1ce every 3-4 days.
When its colonized get some soil, that is formulated to hold a lot of water (make sure it does not have a fungicide)
and then bake that at 400F for 25 minutes, that that out let it cool. (put foil over it)
once its cooled down, scoop out a top layer, place your colonized substrate it (cut it into slices or crumble it)
and then place the top layer of soil on the top, this is ready to colonize.
With this method I get 25g +/-2g of shrooms per 1 pint mason jar. So if u had the room, with a dozen pint jars you could easily produce 300grams. :)
- LG
---
I am the analog synthesis of a digital sound
(Distinctive Doe)
01-02-02 09:40
No 251927
I had success with rye using the pressure cooker.
Maybee the weight on yours is fucked up?
Foxy STILL needs to get laid!!!
(Distinctive Doe)
01-02-02 13:41
No 251972
Its been a few years since I used it so I can't quite remember. It is an old huge Al pressure cooker, like 20 quarts(liter). I think it was 15psi as you said. Maybee you didn't cook it long enough??
The initial batch from the spore print took a long time to get up and running. I only grew a few batches but once I had micillea(however you spell that) to innoculate the RYE with they took off very quick. A full cake ready to bee cased in less than 5 days, if my very foggy memory serves me right.
The rye is really nice because it stays slightly loose and you can shake it up in the beginning. The mixing and breaking up of the micillea seemed to speed it up.
Foxy is doin just fine.
(Hive Addict)
01-02-02 23:12
No 252035
IF you are planning on serious production, that may be the way to go hydro, but for most players...
pressure cooker/over/syringe/beer/sex
is the way to go..
"The gods are too fond of a joke." (Aristotle)
(Old P2P Cook)
01-03-02 03:25
No 252092
Me too. I have used a standard food pressure cooker (I think mine is about a 20 quart) at 15 psi to sterilize 1 quart mason jars of rye grain (whole grain). Spores were germinated on agar in petri dishes and then the mycelium grown in the petri dishes was used to innoculate the rye grain.
The rye is really nice because it stays slightly loose and you can shake it up in the beginning. The mixing and breaking up of the micillea seemed to speed it up.
Yeah, I liked rye grain as a media.
(Stranger)
01-27-02 12:55
No 261470
>I will swear on those damn PF hawaii caps. They are very small capped and lengthy and are supposed to be slightly more difficult to grow. In dave's house of porn,they began to pin(w/o casing) quicker than plain old PF's.
This is very interesting to me! A friend of my brother's second-cousin by marriage grew some shrooms one time, and had a run of PF's growing right next to a run of Hawaiians. He had 20 jars running, 10 of each strain, and pretty much followed the PF tek "hippie tek variation" (which is let em grow in the jars as long as possible). As it turns out, the PF jars flushed huge 4 times, and the 10 hawaiian jars produced exactly two shrooms. Big long fuckers to be sure (I'm told that's what they looked like anyway), but only two. Perhaps it had to do with temperature. All the shrooms were grown under 24 hour light from a flourescent grow lamp. The grower in question speculated that were he to do it over, he would grow only PF's. Note also that said shrooms were *not* given Bach. They were stuck in a lonely closet throughout their growing cycle. The first flush was lost to poor dehydrating technique (thrown in a bag with some damp-gone). They all molded and had to be thrown out. Subsequent flushes were diced up with a knife, then thrown into a window-screen net which was hung in a large tea jar. Underneath the net in the jar was placed a bunch of silica gel, and the whole jar was thrown in a very cold refrigerator for a week or so. Those little shroomies (I'm told), dried hard as a rock and were made into some very tasty (and hoo-boy potent) tea. Oh yes, the jars were sterilized properly in a pressure cooker prior to the innoculation. Swim firmly believes that this step was/is absolutely critical to the success of the endeavor.