lindsay

I only use the fridge to colonise. the garbage bag has about 70 skewer holes in it. I did set the thermostat to 21c, but after a day it became self heating. had to leave the door 1cm open to stop over heating. the temp has been sitting around 22-23c. the basket will go outside with board wider than the top, on top, with a plastic sheet over hanging.

that's maybe why a casing layer is recommended for agrocybe to get a reliable pining across the surface. I have missed the boat to grow these this year indoors- well they do call them winter mushroom.

seel up with silicone. I have mine under the heat shrink.

wow more I learn the more I need to know. Hyphal and NSF I think your so so right, the pooling of CO2 seems to be part of the trigger to pinning. so many times I have seen were I cut my bags of a inch higher than the substrate that they have pined better across the sub than bags cut level too. the bags cut level too, will in most cases pin in that gully around the edges. CO2 settles to the bottom - so I believe. this is why I have always put my out going air in my grow chambers at the bottoms of my grow chambers. wow now I am thinking is it better to fluctuate fresh air exchange than to have a consistent FAE? dam it! now i have more experiments. Fantastic guys. in nature we have a more of a mixture of high and low humidity and high and low CO2 in autumn and spring in the temperate zones at ground level - so I believe.

heat is very minimal. better than the 5050 leds I was using. with the 5050, eg, if the outside grow room temp got to say 25c the inside would get to 27c- 28c. having lights set to go on at 10pm and off at 10am, the cooler parts of the day helps a lot when days start to warm up. these 5630s are cooler, so they should help keep temp down a bit. the thinking with tubes mainly was to be able to remove them easily when it came to cleaning out the grow room (they don't handle vinegar or bleach very well). and despite being so called waterproof, under consistently damp humid conditions, I have had moisture get in 1 set, out of 6. so I covered these with the clear heat shrink. had to use some talcum power to get the tubes to slide up the 2 mtr length of flat heat shrink. the round tube does give the option of running water through them to keep room temp down. if I select the right mushroom, for the right time of the year then I should not have to. cable ties are the best option for mounting. these are handy for joining the leds if your soldering is not flash or for a quicker method.

pulled 3 bunches of these out of a shotgun fruiting chamber last week. they started as foot long straw logs in a larger grow chamber. they fruited for several months until I needed room for another project. so I striped them back and soaked them for a day and jammed 3 of these logs in the shotgun tub and filled half way up with coir. I thought they were done after not seeing pins for a week. had a close look today and found a pin. had a little scratch around in the coir and found the myc was getting into the coir. I hope, I just get one fruit this time. kings can get huge growing in singles.

I have started the alcohol extraction of 100 grams of dryed reishi. ground down the reishi to almost a powder and put in a quart jar, added 700ml of a 40% vodka. already I have come to the conclusion that it is to far expensive to make your own alcohol extraction. so I looked into the legality of possibly distilling my own alcohol, but it is not legal to use a still in Australia to produce alcohol for consumption without a license, it is not legal to separate water and alcohol in a still.

went looking today for a bottle of 100 proof vodka (50% alcohol), to do a mushroom extraction. look everywhere and all I could find was 80 proof (40%). so I have some questions. Will 80 proof work at all. or could I freeze the vodka and then separate the alcohol from the frozen water.

thanks everyone, I think I will go with the 40% vodka extraction. it will double extraction so in the final product there should be 25% alcohol.

thanks TheExplorer, a reishi duel extraction is what I am looking to do. thanks Foo for the idea

NSF, got the fruiting temp set at 24c. come think of it, its be the same for the grain and the colonisation of the blocks. except for when I checked one day and the temp had climbed to 27c because of thermogenesis. had to open the door of the incubator a bit for a day or two. yes Nut i think the conks would make better specimens, than the antler form. the antlers seem to wrinkle a bit. But i have been slicing them up to dry, so they can easily be chopped in a coffee grinder. I will try a whole bit next time. they do darken to the colour of dry chilli's and the tips stay white. The impression i get is that peoples in the east keep specimens for there shamanistic quality's. here is a great talk on reishi. Now this guy has done his homework on the health benefits of reishi, He talks about the benefits, physical and spiritual. what reishi product is best to buy, and how it works and other stuff. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vm33bzTa8u4

pure white mycelium no piss. got to be the strongest mycelium I have experienced. got to keep the grain jars well shaken and not over incubated or they may never come out I know very little of SRA. myc piss on agar? never seen as yet, over done jars, yes.

had to post this one. now I know why some people dry these out and use as ornaments.

here is a bag.

after harvesting some blocks 4 days ago. they are bubbling up and starting to fruiting again. i did give them several wet downs with a spray bottle over this time. wow, becoming my favourite mushroom to grow.

blue is what I use. in stamets book, he recommends lighting between 380 to 480 nanometers. 380 is the blue end of the spectrum 480 is green. this spectrum range is meant to be most stimulating for primordial formation. i have always fruited indoors under the same lighting, so i don't know how white would work. if i had a choice between cool or warm white, i would go cool white. warm white, at a guess maybe closer to the red end of the spectrum than the cool. i would be happy to be corrected. white maybe good for a more natural colour. um maybe worth a try or a search.

thanks Worowa. really enjoyed growing the calocybe indica, they really took some heat last summer and they just keep growing. building a large shade house over the next month. hope to have crack at a outdoor grow of these. maybe a kiddys pool and some silver perch will be a good combo. well I owe you one Worowa free. You know, Karma always finds it home. pm you addy and I will send out when ready done few plates last night and they were a real bitch to get out of the slant. tough stuff reishi mycelium. think I will put in larger mouth viles when I reslant down the track, instead of thin tubes. the culture came from WA

thanks for all the thumbs up here everyone. it makes learning and growing even more enjoyable. Zen, that interesting about the fat stem AAs. be nice to compare.

time to harvest a few bags, spores are starting to appear on the blocks. this one showing the most. here, is how the shelves are looking at the moment. this if my favourite block. harvested 7 blocks, filled my dryer, wow house smells sweet.

ulmarius is what I am after. I just finished growing out, a handful of isolated sectors, from print. ended up with a pleurotus. yep the gills are the big give away. tessulatus (shimeji) I have on slant and its the only one in the fridge I have not grown out. Thank for the reminder. Agrocybe would be a good trade I recon. you have 2 strains of these?. I have seen fat stems a thin stems in some pictures. I like the look of the fat ones. either way, happy to trade.

the cost? NSF you ask. well it scares me to think. at a ruff estimate, about $800. a shit load. but saying this, its given me a shiit load of mushrooms. oysters of all sorts, shiitake, lions mane, milky mushrooms and others. sold, and swapped some for fruit and vegies. I have eaten mushrooms almost every day for the last 12 months either fresh or dried. Yep I am trying justify why I have spent so much. "Here I go again" Its almost set and forget, apart from checking water in the humidifier and giving the walls a wash down now and then. I get through most grows relative free of contams. 48 blocks fit easily into it. I could get 60 if I wanted, but I like having a gap between blocks so air can move around easier. culture swap NSF could be possible,. here is what I am still on the hunt for nemeco- pholiota nameco black poplar- agocybe aegerita turkey tail- trametes versicour hypsizygus ulmarius any cordyceps

any idea or reason, Shrooman, why they are not fruiting for you? yep I have up the FAE Waterboy. I had the blocks in another smaller grow chamber that does not have the FAE that this one has. I had another crop to finish first so I could start with a clean room again. so hopefully I can get them to conk up a bit.

nice finds, love the colour of blewits. I miss liven in hills.

yep Zen there be a lot reishi. got real sick of buying from china, had to do something about it. have another 10 blocks to go in tomorrow not far behind, in growth. the grow chamber is 190cm x 125cm (base) mini greenhouse. it was a single shelf greenhouse but I converted it to 3. lighting are led's mounted on 12mm alum tubes for easy remove when at end of grow. humidity is from a 3 head ultra-sonic mister, controlled by a TH70 series temp and humidity controller. heat comes from one of those wall hanging heat blanket thingy. it sort of, looks like a car rear demister, but with wider strips. air is pushed in the top by fan that has a hepa filter from a vacuum cleaner and the air exits out the bottom then out the window. well that's the basics of it.

found these when picking slippy jacks under pine trees.