Hyphal

Hey guys, though I should chuck these pics up in this thread as it was in the same area around the same time - these were found in SE QLD, around early to mid January....

Definitely time for a first flush, if you knew what you were doing but probably not for your first grow.

Amen - beautiful report, and nice to hear this change has come about in your friend. Yet another unnoficial documentation of the genuine benefits that can occur through the clever use (not abuse) of the funky fungus...

Thankyou Gerbil! Interesting read indeed. Would the ratio for WBS be the same as the ratio for 'grain mixes' in that tek? While I agree that its hard to get the right moisture content with the other methods, one way that works consistently well for me without a rice cooker, using Wild Bird Seed is this - Measure out a predeterimned amount of grain. To determine how much you need, times the number of jars you have to fill by 0.7. Then add this many jars of dry WBS - eg. if you have 8 jars, you need 5.6 jars of dry seed. The seed will expand to a tiny bit over 8 jars (better to have slightly too much then slightly too little). Bring a large pot of water to the boil. Turn off the stove. Wait until the water stops boiling, then pour in the seed. Stir well, and go to bed.... In the morning, strain the seed in a colander. Rinse the seed very very well, then shake well to get all excess water off, then allow to drain for 20 mins - if you shake well enough you dont have to wait for it to drain. Spoon seed into the jars and your ready to rumble.

Any links to this 'rice cooker tek'? Sounds intriguing...

Just start getting your hands dirty man - thats the best way to learn. You seem to have the basics down, time to start getting into it!

You ask a lot of questions Ace - Read the answers properly man.... If you have to spoon the substrate out, then one would assume it has a shoulder, right?

Follow this guide to the letter - http://www.fungifun.org/English/Pftek The foil works fine to keep out contams when combined with a dry vermiculite layer. Your pressure cooker sounds ok as well, no harm in experimentation. Good luck!

Yeah I know that feeling - but think if you did find a nice patch, really cool spot that yielded well - would you take a complete stranger there off the internet? Just keep looking, asking, researching and dont give up hope, I'm sure you will have some luck in the future.

If you are tkinking the pf tek, just use those small empty vegemite glasses or any other drinking glasses with a foil lid. If you are thinking grain - Kmart sells canning jars perfect for the job, but any jar that will fit in your pressure cooker will work fine.

I think you knew the answer you'd get from a post like this...

Amen. I seriously cant imagine NOT using it, and I have never worked with agar (just dont have the spare time, space, resources or energy). So it does baffle me that some people hate it. I dont use a glove box, I do all work in the kitchen and I have never had a contammed LC out of at least 20 individual attempts using the exact same process as in the link I posted above. I once started an LC with a 3 year old print and it took off without a drama. You can use many more ml's of LC to innoculate your jars, increasing colonisation times dramatically, without wasting spores. You can easily clone using a core sample of your favourite fruit and squirting that into a sterile LC. You dont have to have any special equipment or even a pressure cooker for that matter to start an LC, making it a very very cheap and effective way to turn what could be a single spore print into Litres of viable culture. But, as you said, horses for courses!

Do you agitate it regularly while its colonising to break up the mycelium? LC's should remain in the vessel, once colonised, and in the fridge. Only aspirate innoculum into a needle when you are ready to shoot some jars. Hope that helps because i would never ever even think about NOT using one now...

I couldnt agree less - LC is easy as, it requires nothing more than a clean empty jar, some nutrient (honey or maple syrup), a pot, a spore print and half a brain. http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.p.../0/fpart/1/vc/1 But it doesnt offer anything better for you than a multi spore innoculation, other than you get a lot more innoculum to work with, and it colonises your spawn quicker - after, of course, the waiting time for the LC to colonise. However, Using LC's to clone with, is where it really begins to get interesting.... :drool:

So where did you end up eating them? Go on, photo shop your ugly mug out of the other pics - you know we want to see more!

Great pics! Would have been great to somehoe get a print of them - nepalese strain!

What strain is that?

I say if you dont post pics, we should hunt you down and steal your camera.

Hey man, just dug this up - http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.p...&PHPSESSID= I say give it a crack! You should be fine.

Very very interesting method... I stand corrected!

You cant use a verm barrier with grain jars though....

You actually want GAS exchange for your jars, not AIR axchange, and yes its very important. http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.p...&PHPSESSID= Cotton wool isnt a synthetic fibre so is open to introducing contams to your grow - go to the pet store and get a bag of polyfill instead (used in fish tank filters, or even larger bags can be found in Kmart - its used for stuffing toys and pillows). Your grow could also have been contaminated from another aspect of yoru technique so dont rule that out either. As Creach stated, dont shake the jars while their trying to colonise! Just once after innoculation, and once again when they are about 25% colonised.

Awesome box, my friend was planning a similar design but hes lazy and not too good with woodwork so he gave up and resorted to investing in one of these - http://www.ezidridehydrators.com.au/ The 'Snackmaker' has three temp settings and on the lowest temp it runs at 35C. The best thing is you can make oodles of tasty dried snacks on its 'days off'...

Your obviously referring to picked fungus, not cultivated.... Even still, just the fan is enough and if you get any wild harvest mushrooms cleaned, laid out on paper and a fan blowing DIRECTLY over them, the little worms dont stand a chance. You'll actually find a pile of the dead and dried little worms leftover on the paper afterwards... (have the vacuum cleaner handy!) Tell your friend to try this and he will see it far superior to chopping em up. The heat debate is one that for ages my friend thought made a big difference as well, so my friend even liked to make sure the room they were drying in was cold too... bBut my friend and many others can testify that a little heat towards the end of the drying process (like 30C or so blowing from a heater, or just in a warmed room) makes no difference to the potency whatsoever and really dries em crispy dry which is beneficial in the long term for storage. A food dehydrator runs at 35C and dries em crispy overnight (depending on the size) with no potency loss of drying in a cooler environment. Tell your friend that once they are 'crispy' dry, to grind them to a fine powder in a coffee grinder, pour this powder into an air tight jar and compress it down. Put a silica dry pak from a medicine bottle on top, tighten the lid and keep this jar in the fridge and it should last for many moons with no potency loss.

Man - DONT RESEARCH MAGIC MUSHROOMS AT WORK! Seriously, its asking for trouble. Good luck to ya