Let's Grow Mushrooms - A Beginners Gigantic Bulk Attempt with PF Tek

AlaskanGrown84 said:

Nice stuff you have goin on!! What is the pressure cooker used for? And what is substrate from ebay?

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Thanks! The pressure cooker is the KEY to your ENTIRE mushroom arsenal. Once you put the brown rice flour, vermiculite and water into the jars, you boil them in the pressure cooker for 60-90 minutes at 15psi. I do 90 minutes every time no question, but an hour can generally suffice. The pressure cooking basically kills all the existing spores, mold, bacteria, germs, and ethel-methel-bad-shit in the brf/verm/water. If you dont pressure cook them, and you inject spores and put the jars into an environment that is mold productive, you want to make sure ONLY your mushrooms grow, not all the bad mold/bacteria/etc....

WIthout a pressure cooker, you'd probably lose half your jars to contamination.

With a pressure cooker, I lose exactly 7% of my jars.

To sum it up cliffnotes style, pressure cooker = sterilization part one. (Part two is a clean room or a 'glove box' where you inject spores into the jars). After that you generally dont worry much about other molds or contaminants.




On your next question, substrate for ebay, search for "mushroom jars" and/or "magic mushrooms" in eBay. You'll find jars of pre-mixed substrate already cooked ready to just inject and colonize. Substrate is the fancy term for what brown rice flour, water, and vermiculite mix. Or, it can also have other things like bird seed, horse shit, etc.... Substrate is to mushrooms as rockwool & nutrients are to marijuana. I like to make marijuana terms crossing because we're all pot growers here first and it makes more sense I hope.

Hope this helps!

Impressive photos woman! Looks real good and is inspirational. I have a multistrain going as well. How do you maintain 100 percent RO with all them holes drilled in the fruit chambers?

aeviaanah said:

Impressive photos woman! Looks real good and is inspirational. I have a multistrain going as well. How do you maintain 100 percent RO with all them holes drilled in the fruit chambers?

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Wouldnt 100% humidity be liquid water?

Humidity is maintained in the tubs by Perlite. The slight temperature difference in the perlite allows the moisture (you pre-soak the perlite in water) to evaporate up. The holes in the tubs are tiny, about 1/8". The holes allow a little fresh air in, and a little bad air (full of co2) out. That does modify humdiity, but that's why you keep misting and fanning the drawers around 4-6 times daily.

researchkitty said:

Wouldnt 100% humidity be liquid water?

Humidity is maintained in the tubs by Perlite. The slight temperature difference in the perlite allows the moisture (you pre-soak the perlite in water) to evaporate up. The holes in the tubs are tiny, about 1/8". The holes allow a little fresh air in, and a little bad air (full of co2) out. That does modify humdiity, but that's why you keep misting and fanning the drawers around 4-6 times daily.

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100 percent is raining. which would be bad inside your tubs.

"Relative humidity is the ratio of the current absolute humidity to the highest possible absolute humidity (which depends on the current air temperature). A reading of 100 percent relative humidity means that the air is totally saturated with water vapor and cannot hold any more, creatin*g the possibility of rain. This doesn't mean that the relative humidity must be 100 percent in order for it to rain -- it must be 100 percent where the clouds are forming, but the relative humidity near the ground could be much less."

http://science.howstuffworks.com/dictionary/meteorological-terms/question651.htm

What is the humidity in your fruiting chamber?

aeviaanah said:

What is the humidity in your fruiting chamber?

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No clue. Having a humidity meter in 30 chambers would be pretty expensive. They are fanned and misted just as one would expect and require and the perlite is re-soaked if its dry (generally between flushes).

researchkitty said:

No clue. Having a humidity meter in 30 chambers would be pretty expensive. They are fanned and misted just as one would expect and require and the perlite is re-soaked if its dry (generally between flushes).

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Good point...

Mega gratz on your bountiful harvest. Some of those flushes are just artistic to look at!

You should make a stop motion video with a Mario figure in one of the fruiting chambers. That would be dope.

HowzerMD said:

You should make a stop motion video with a Mario figure in one of the fruiting chambers. That would be dope.

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up up down down left right left right b a b a start start!!

researchkitty said:

up up down down left right left right b a b a start start!!

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LMFAO! The only thing that came to mind when I saw the sea of caps was our little italian plumber friend.

HowzerMD said:

You should make a stop motion video with a Mario figure in one of the fruiting chambers. That would be dope.

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Your a GENIUS!

Gotta run to the store real fast. Will upload pictures soon. The Dehydrator is here, and each tray is about 14" in diameter. It came with 4 trays. All are full. The other trays arrive tomorrow. After just an hour in the Dehydrator the shrooms are already much drier.

Harvested the top two drawers again and stuck em in water to re-hydrate and flush #2. The first time you fruit shrooms, that's flush #1, right? Or is the flush after you've literally harvested then re-dunked? Either way, the first re-dunk for a lot today. The rest of the drawers are all pinning like mad and will be harvested probably by the weekend.

I figured I would post this here since im already in on this thread but seriously reasearchkitty, you are the shit at what you do. Bud, Shrooms, Glass. and you go all out too, i respect that. If your gonna do something do it right i suppose.

looking forward to those pictures!

Picture time! These are from lunch time today, about 7 hours ago or so.


002: Plucked the big one, the rest will be ready to harvest in a day or tow.



004: Another few days for these too.



005: Bottom left drawer, starting to pin more and more.



006: Next one above, more pins.



007: Next drawer above, more pins too.



008: Harvested the cakes that were ready, and dunked the cakes to get them ready for flush #2.



009: Harvested the cakes that were ready, and dunked the cakes to get them ready for flush #2. (Remember, most of these have been plucked already, I just like to flush them all at the same time )



010: And harvested all of these.



011: Todays harvest (Can you believe this much grows from only a few drawers within 24 hours? WTF? )



012: The new Dehydrator. Nesco 1010 model. 1000 watts of drying action, it stays at 95(F). It stacks up to 30 trays tall, but only four are full right now.



013: This is the ENTIRE harvest from everything. All being dried now.



014: This is what the dehydrator looks like just doing its thing. Its loud, so I keep it in its own room. It doesnt smell at all.




That's it for now! Next update tomorrow at lunch.

Bountiful harvest you've got there.

That's a beautiful harvest, Kitty! A+++ It'll be interesting to see how many flushes you get. Frickin' Gorgeous!

Edit: And if you don't mind, could you post your final weight for the first flush when they're dry? Thanks

Fuck me that dehydrator works like a CHAMP! Some of the shrooms turned a dark black-ish color and crisped a tiny bit so that only hurt me in weight not helped, though. I think the key will be letting the dehydrator run for 10 minutes on, 10 minutes off, 10 minutes on, 10 minutes off just to keep everything cool and more of a cure-dry.

It dried all four trays within 2 hours.






So, lets talk about weight and all that stuff.

28 cakes, one flush. Total dry weight: 12 ounces (340g).

That puts me at 12 grams per cake.







Now lets talk about storing them properly. I found these metallic bags that hold exactly 2 ounces of Mushrooms perfectly. They are ziploc'd on the top, AND heat sealed above the zip that way you tear it open then use the zip after its been opened as the 'end user'. Kinda like a bag of coffee. The bags stand up tall too, and allow you to view the entire contents of the package easily.



Here they are!






























I'm still in shock at the 12 grams per cake. And they are all cracker dry shrooms.

Oh yea, and I put a pack of dessicant in each bag, the same size as a pair of shoes would get. Just as an extra protection so they stay perfectly dry, I dont know if its necessary or not but it looks pro pimp so fuck it!

That's it for now, probably have another dozen cakes to harvest in the morning.

Oh, and on the 12oz dry weight -- That's just from 28 cakes out of the 120 or so cakes in the drawers. It's not the full weight from the full entire first flush. I cant wait to see that number, but if my math is right it should be around 48 ounces (3 Lbs).