Anybody growing mushrooms willing to talk???

7L!fTeD24

Well-Known Member
Holy s*** the big ones are like a footlong.
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Crammed all four levels of the dehydrator this morning. Which comes out to a few ounces dry. So I harvested a few ounces this morning from a few tubs on their third and fourth flushes. It seems like when the flushes go on the mushrooms get bigger for me and then they stop.
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Drop That Sound

Well-Known Member
Should I use high alkaline 8ph drinking water, and some hydrated lime in my CVG mix when I do the bucket tek to pasteurize it? Just trying to gather the rest of the supplies I need, and noticed some try to alter the PH for better resistance..
 

Drop That Sound

Well-Known Member
Gotcha.. I'm guessing there could be times where having other additives in the sub, then you maybe want to alter the PH though, correct? All I know is some are doing it.. didn't look into it much.

Should I also just skip the gypsum when I prepare the bulk substrate? Just use C and V? Just coir? What would your guys mixes look like on the calculator I linked? Would your mix change depending on whatever tek, for example unmodified tub vs drilled out tubs, or other factors, etc? Thanks!

I love being a newb at something again :)
 

Drop That Sound

Well-Known Member
I'm starting my first few (actually a lot) batches with brown rice if that makes a difference.. I'll go ahead and just use coir, and keep it simple to start with. Then maybe try some other additives later.

I'm headed to town right now to pick out tubs. My new plan, is to get 4x large 100+ qt totes, and then set 3-4 standard 6qt shoe boxes inside the larger modified ones when ready to fruit.. I'll make the substrate depth around 4 inches in the shoeboxes, or deeper, to make up for the ratio of being in a larger fruiting chamber.


I know I'll lose a little surface area compared to just spawning into one bigger liner, but i like the idea of having 3 or 4 separate cakes in there own trays for now. I feel like I would get way more than dub tubbing the shoeboxes on shelves too, because they will have room to grow out and over the sides of the smaller containers, not trapped by a smaller lid.


Also, I found my cheap pressure cooker pot, but can't find the weight that hold in the steam. I'm looking to see if they make universal 15psi weights, and will also check value village for a new one. I wanted to try making some agar, but not sure if I should trust the no pressure cooker recipes.

Last but not least, I have started building a mini flow hood, with real hepa filter. I got a 4inch inline fan with speed controller, (and going to use a damper duct to fine tune) and will have a prefilter before the fan intake too. I'll adjust flow so that it barely puts out a lighter flame in the center of the hood, and does not stir the air around in the room its in.
 

A.k.a

Well-Known Member
Yeah shoeboxes are perfect for starting out. Full size tubs using multiple jars of spawn can be risky because one bad jar will ruin the whole thing.
 

Drop That Sound

Well-Known Member
Still have few more containers to check out before I bite..

Headed to target next to to look at these, for $16.99:

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Sterilite 110qt Clear View Storage Bin with Latch Purple
  • Outside Dimensions: 34 5/8" x 18 3/4" x 12 5/8"
  • Interior Dimensions at bottom: 31" x 15 1/2" x 12 1/4"
I want to make 100% sure I can fit 4 cheaper shoe boxes in there first, and this tote looks like a winner! 31" inner length, and good price.




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^ The matching shoe boxes do fit, especially without the lid on, according to the specs (as if they're made to!) but are about $4 a piece, yikes!



Anyway, with this method.. I can not only start with shoeboxes, but also fruit them in the large tubs too. Then.. later I could spawn directly to the wholetubs (probably with 2 different liners, or possibly in DIY food grade plastic mesh liners i'll make, that I can clean and reuse, to pick up the cakes) later on, once I find something good to work with, and have the process dialed in.


I got some good ideas on FAE mods for the large tubs, that I haven't really seen. I'm gonna make PVC bulk heads, just like I do for RDWC systems, that have different caps. I can have different "EZ Dial" hole configurations on different caps, etc. ;) Extra little holes with plugs as well as the bulkheads if needed, but then again I could use mini bulk heads..

Or, I can stuff the inside length of the 2" bulkheads with poly (not like trying to stuff a drilled out hole in thin material, lol), or even cover with MP tape instead if i wanted. I'll be able to try multiple different monotub teks, all with one system, all on one tub. Or run test on different tubs\configs, and find what works best..
 

Drop That Sound

Well-Known Member
Good morning guys!


So I'm changing my flow hood design around a bit, to be more like this ^

Not cutting into 2 tubs like I was about to, and siliconing the filter in place, making something more turbulent than laminar..

I've heard nothing but good results from using the above low tech flow hood design. Seen multiple actual side by side tests of agar dishes with and without, and no contams from anyone using it that i've seen..

I will be skipping using the desktop air purifier unit itself though (i'm not spending $60 on a new one and already have some replaceent filters and fans, etc), and instead will be sticking the 4x9" filter into a 4x10 x 4" metal register duct fitting.. Then hook to a speed controlled inline fan with some 4" flexible ducting. Or any good blower I got laying around, even a small shop vac or leaf blower would work.
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I'm gonna try using cheap 30 gallon clear trash/recycling bags instead of dry clean suit bags, and just use a new one every time, and cut new slits. I'll tape them up and reuse for garbage after doing flow hood work, using a new bag every time for cleanliness. Heard they work fine too.

Oh, and i'll probably set some kind of flat grill down inside bag before I tape it up, for flat work area inside, and to keep things up a little higher off the surface i'm on. Mostly to hold the bag down and off to the sides.

Now that I got my flow hood worked out, I need a way to sterilize needles, scalpels, etc, without a flame blowing out inside the flow bag.




Which brings us too:


DIY induction coil heaters!

Checking into them now..
 

keifcake

Well-Known Member
This looks like a good discussion to get in on, imma have to start at the beginning.

But here's what I have going on.

So I grew some orangeglo watermelons this year, and finished racking 5 gallons of watermelon wine on 10/31, that I added 4 lbs of strawberries to, after primary fermentation. I don't really like drinking, but I'm working on a Psychedelic Wine project I've been thinking about for a while. I started the mushroom culture by using spore swabs on agar on 10/5, and made water darts that I inoculated sterilized popcorn with on 10/25. Man is the Z strain very aggressive, and it will take another 2 months for secondary fermentation of the wine to finish. Once I get the mushrooms, I want to add no less than 25 wet grams of fresh mushrooms per serving (which is about 3 grams dry), which I think about a wine glass equivalent of about 6 ozs is a good target. I'll add a little ascorbic acid when putting the shrooms in the wine for extraction to protect the unstable psilocin, and allow the water to extract both the psilocybin and psilocin for 2 days, and I will probably have to rack the wine one last time and be sure fermentation has stopped before bottling. I'm thinking it should have long shelf life with 14% alcohol and vitamin-c acting as a preservative. I have some frozen infused kool-aid in the freezer, but something I feel more confident in staying shelf stable would be pretty awesome.
The 2 mycelium pics are 10 days difference, no break n shake has been, and I don't believe I'm gonna bother disrupting the colony

I'm actually hoping for about 50 wet grams per serving
 

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