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sobriquet

First mushroom grow.

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Hi guys.

I'm growing my first edible mushrooms and have soaked some birdseed overnight. This morning I drained off the water and picked out all the little grain weevils that were visible in the mix. I thought these seeds were heat treated to prevent these little pests but nevertheless I've had the seeds for a couple of months and who knows how long they were stored at the shop.

I've put the microwave bags on their sides now with some paper towel at the top so it can drain a little more.

I'm planning to cook the bags up in a PC that only goes up to 13 bar. So I'll cook for a minimum of an hour. I'm about to prepare my spore syringe using clean technique. I have to make a glovebox soon and will do it in there.

I have 4 bags. 10mL of sterile water to rehydrate the spores with. I'll leave them to rehydrate for a few hours. I'll inject 2.5 mL into each bag and hope for the best.

What are some of the crucial things at this stage? Do the seeds need to be drained off for longer than an hour or so?

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Sounds awesome Sobriquet, Can I see a picture of your glove box? Thats the next step in my preperation for my first grow too :P

Good luck :lol:

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Sounds awesome Sobriquet, Can I see a picture of your glove box? Thats the next step in my preperation for my first grow too :P

Good luck :lol:

I used an idea shared with me on the Lab. I just took a carton from store bought water and adapted it; ( a beer carton was suggested but I don't drink and neither do my neighbours it seems ).

I cut out the carrying handle area to make one hand hole and cut the water dispensing spout area for a second hole for the other hand.

I then cut out a big hole on the side and put glad wrap around the box allowing a window to see in. Its smaller than a beer carton but has more depth so its probably equivalent in terms of convenience.

Now I have my print, 10mL sterile water, 10mL unused syringe, and 25 Gauge needle, butane blow torch, and some scissors. I'll prepare this soon after I put the cooker on to boil with the bags of seed.

I'm taking pictures as I go and will post them up when I download them.

The seeds haven't really drained much more so I think I'll start soon.

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The grains will absorb some more water during the Presure cooking so a little water in the bag is ok - but not too much! . Try and aim for a consistantly moist grain - I often check the 'doneness' of my grain by breaking open some of the bigger grains which should be cooked through (no startchy/ dry inside) I have found though it doesn't really matter that much, as long as they are not dry or have water sitting in the bottom of the bag.

Good luck!

You shouldn't have to drain the grain post PC.

:)

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you sound well researched and ready... sounds good.

The only other thing I would recomend is to get a can of glenn 20 and spray the inside of your glove box and ANYTHING that goes in like a wild thing... i spray my hands... put on gloves... spray everything inside the box like scissors and stuff and let it sit a few mins before starting. Then i spray my gloves and stick them in ready to go.

You probably want to try and avoid using the blow torch in the glove box.... the heat can melt the gladwrap. Also DONT use it if your going to be spraying a stackload of glen 20 in there because it is flamable!

You shouldnt need it. I take in sterile syringe... spore print which i have sprayed outside of to kill germies and a jar of pressure cooked water. I half open up print... take lid of syringe and squirt some water into it... scrape side with needle then suck up. Repeate as needed. You dont need to get all the spores, even just a few will be fine.

Then put on lid and your done, I have never had a issue with doing it this way.

Also, use jars over bags if you have a choice... I find them much easier to work with. And if your bags are quite large you should up the time on the pressure cooker so the grain in the middle of the backs reaches sufficient temprature.

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Glen20 is good. a little cheaper but not as nice to use is diluted metho. If you use metho in a spray bottle dilute it to somewhere around 80% alcohol. 95% alcohol isn't as effective a sanitiser as 80% - I'm pretty sure it has to do with absorption into cell walls

havn't seen you around here for a while smogs!

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I don't bother soaking birdseed. I just give it a thourough wash and cook it in a rice cooker with an equal amount of water. I then spoon it into jars and pressure cook. Works beautifully.

Hope it goes well for you. I am sure it will :shroomer:

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Can't go wrong with Rev's rice cooker tek :wink:

Just watch for indian meal moths...keep your grains in the fridge...or spend 10 bucks on 2 measly traps :rolleyes:

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Well I couldn't help it and had a peak inside the esky to see how it was all going on day 10.

Because they are in bags I didn't want to interfere too much and simply lifted the lid slightly. There was no strongly disagreeable odours; just what you might expect, a woody/sweet/grainy smell like what you get during the cooking phase.

In one bag that had shrivelled down where the heat had affected it I saw an amazing thing indeed.

60-70% of the bag was colonised with the white mycelium so familiar to experienced growers. It wasn't a fully thick growth but areas of it were dense and there was definitely success going on there.

The other bags were too difficult to really examine fully, but just one out of four bags would be a happy result for me so I'm not unhappy at all.

I'm surprised by just how quickly it has progressed for day 10!

These bags are quite large containing about 500 grams of birdseed mix each and I thought it might have taken significantly longer given the 20 days it takes most to colonise smaller jars. Maybe its the esky keeping fluctuations of temperature slower than otherwise, maybe the warmer weather recently, maybe its the birdseed mix containing currants and therefore more sugar? I'm not entirely sure why but I'm happy.

Now I have to get some aluminium trays and prepare a wicked casing mix. I think even if one bag fully colonised I could break that up and spread it into several trays for a nice first result.

What I plan to do is to blend up some sphagnum moss and lay it down under the mix. I'll use a mixture of blended sphagnum moss and vermiculite for the casing.

With just one of the trays I am going to try an experiment in using an 'enriched' casing mix containing brown rice flower that has been microwaved for 30 seconds. I think that giving the mycelium more substrate in the casing may allow me to continue laying on more and more casing material leading to an extended harvest beyond the 3 or 4 people report.

So yeah you might say I'm pleased at the moment. Thanks to everyone who said to not worry and that it would all turn out given that I put quite alot of effort into keeping things pretty clean.

Peace.

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You might not have much luck with the enriched casing layer, one of the benefits of the casing layer is that it has no food in it which along with CO2 levels & humidity (also light for some species) triggers the mycelium to fruit. In my experience the best casing is a 50/50 of peat and vermiculite with a dash of gardening lime. Do not use coco coir pete (or whatever that cheap crap is called) as it is anti fungal! and does not hold moisture as well.

It sounds like one bag has growth way too fast to be what you want. It is possible it could be cotton mould, especially if the otehr bags in the same conditions are not showing the same progress. If your able to post up pictures for us to have a look at it might help.

500gms is a big bag! How long did you stick these in the pressure cooker for? It needs to be long enough for the middle of the grains right in the centre of the bag to reach a sufficient temprature (i think around 120*??).

Sweet and fruity = a bad smell, im not sure exactly what makes the fruity smell but i know its a contaminent. You want just a nice strong mushroomy smell. Make sure you have some gas exchange going on, while they dont need much oxygen they still need a little.

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Here is a picture of the bags after draining following soaking..

500gms is an estimate. Its certainly as much as in a normal bag of supermarket rice; maybe a bit less but I didn't weigh them and just eyeballed it. I know that I used about half of a 4kg bag of Harmony wild bird seed mix (that came with free grain weevils!). So divided into 4 bags its close enough to 500 grams each.

http://www.harmonywildbird.com.au/products/mixes.asp?p=1

The whitish growth looked like mycelium that I've seen on the net.

The smell wasnt fruity as much as just grainy. I can liken it to one occasion where I fermented some grain liquor - the smell after I soaked the wheat and prior to fermentation is what I can smell. Certainly not offensive.

It's not as wispy as mould but yeah it could be something else I guess.

Why is it so fast? Well I must admit I had two spore syringes in the end -: 15 mL worth with almost a whole spore print used up in one of the syringes - about 80% in one and 20% in the other. I think one bag got alot of spores into it; maybe 6 to 8mL of a heavily laden mix. It may be that the increased spore count facilitated the colonisation?

The bags were put in a pressure cooker for almost an hour of heating followed by another half hour with heat off but still on the hotplate at full pressure and allowed to cool.

Anyhow, I'll check them tomorrow I guess and see if there has been any changes. It's definitely a fast growth of something, whatever it is, but I don't want to disturb the 'sterility' of the bags too much to get a photo. If it has fully 'colonised' then I'll remove it and take some photos prior to casing it. Otherwise I should know if its a flop tomorrow I am thinking.

What say you?

You might not have much luck with the enriched casing layer, one of the benefits of the casing layer is that it has no food in it which along with CO2 levels & humidity (also light for some species) triggers the mycelium to fruit. In my experience the best casing is a 50/50 of peat and vermiculite with a dash of gardening lime. Do not use coco coir pete (or whatever that cheap crap is called) as it is anti fungal! and does not hold moisture as well.

It sounds like one bag has growth way too fast to be what you want. It is possible it could be cotton mould, especially if the otehr bags in the same conditions are not showing the same progress. If your able to post up pictures for us to have a look at it might help.

500gms is a big bag! How long did you stick these in the pressure cooker for? It needs to be long enough for the middle of the grains right in the centre of the bag to reach a sufficient temprature (i think around 120*??).

Sweet and fruity = a bad smell, im not sure exactly what makes the fruity smell but i know its a contaminent. You want just a nice strong mushroomy smell. Make sure you have some gas exchange going on, while they dont need much oxygen they still need a little.

Edited by sobriquet

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Definately need longer with the pressure cooking... I cook my jars for 1hr and 20 mins.... then let them cool down. With bags that size I would do probably an hr and a half just to be on the safe side. You still might be ok though. I usually use cleaned wheat which is a pretty big grain, holds moisture well (does not weep and leave wet bits like bird seed tends to).

Grain smell is good.. fruity or sour = bad.

I should be able to help you more when I see a pic of the mycelium... It can be quite hard to tell the difference between a wanted and an unwanted fungus.

Sometimes it helps if after it has colonised you chuck it somewhere it gets a bit of light... not in direct light, but out of the box of solutide you have it in currently. The light should stimulate more ropey growth after a few days if it is one you want (dont worrie you wont get mushrooms forming.... unless you leave it like this for a few weeks!), or you may see a fine, pale yellow looking powder form which i think is cotton mould spores?

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Definately need longer with the pressure cooking... I cook my jars for 1hr and 20 mins.... then let them cool down. With bags that size I would do probably an hr and a half just to be on the safe side. You still might be ok though. I usually use cleaned wheat which is a pretty big grain, holds moisture well (does not weep and leave wet bits like bird seed tends to).

Grain smell is good.. fruity or sour = bad.

I should be able to help you more when I see a pic of the mycelium... It can be quite hard to tell the difference between a wanted and an unwanted fungus.

Sometimes it helps if after it has colonised you chuck it somewhere it gets a bit of light... not in direct light, but out of the box of solutide you have it in currently. The light should stimulate more ropey growth after a few days if it is one you want (dont worrie you wont get mushrooms forming.... unless you leave it like this for a few weeks!), or you may see a fine, pale yellow looking powder form which i think is cotton mould spores?

Well I checked them yesterday and took them out of the esky and into the laundry cabinet which gets a little more light.

Three bags had white with almost silvery-sheeny growth in spreading spots and I would say I overestimated the colonisation in the bag the other day having only seen the top surface. I would say its about 30% in that bag, and 20-25% in the other two.

The final bag which I had microwaved for 30 minutes had no growth at all. Nothing except the grain, so obviously the spores were probably destroyed due to heat in the bag.

I guess it means that microwaving does achieve sterility since I would have expected some contamination otherwise.

So I don't think what I am growing is mould though the bags are more vulnerable now I've moved them out of the esky. I'm hoping they will colonise fast enough now that I should be able to case them in 10-14 days. Its slower than what I thought :)

I'll get pictures up when I am confident the risk of contamination is lower ie. top surface of bags is fully colonised.

Edited by sobriquet

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Sounds good!

I was mainly concerned that 1 bag was growing HEAPS faster than the others... but if they are growing at the same rate it sounds promising

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I've been checking the progress every 12 hours or so and there's a steady increase in colonisation as would be expected.

I decided that the insulation from the esky had been a good thing.

So I cleaned out a styrofoam box I had lying around with isocol, let it dry and put water in the base.

I then put the bags in the box. Put a foil lid on and placed the box in the garage of my friendly neighbour who has agreed to allow it to sit on the bonnet of her car at nights and in a corner during the day. I keep some of my stuff in there aswell which is nice of her.

I was visiting her place yesterday night and noticed how warm the garage was with the car in there. She drives at least 30km on her return journey home so the engine's pretty warm at the end of the drive home. She said in her previous house with a carport the cats of the area would commonly sleep on and under the bonnet of the car for the warmth. I've seen this on city streets too I must say.

She says the garage stays very warm at nights well into the morning hours and her car is a bomb so she doesnt care about the paintwork on the bonnet or anything.

She loves oyster mushrooms. I've promised her some, and to satisfy the promise I'll just buy some from the local supermarket and give them to her for her help. I never said anything about mushrooms specifically from this particular grow :)

So don't forget the humble motorcar as a source of bottom heat. A great use of otherwise wasted heat.

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I came home today to find that all three bags now had very quickly grown contaminated areas.

The appearance in those areas was the same in each bag. A green mould. The two bags I had shaken up as wel as the one that had been sealed and untouched had the same organism in them at the same time.

So day 20 spelled the end for the bags.

I was pretty confident about the technique I'd used to sterilise but nevertheless I think the event was brought on by the suddenly higher temperatures during the day 30+ degrees which accelerated the growth of the contams all of a sudden.

All was not lost though.

I cooked up some agar I'd gotten just in case something like this happened. I mixed some potato flour, dextrose, and agar and heated it for 15 mins and poured into three jars and one microwavable Decor plastic container. The three jars went into the PC for an hour. The microwavable dish went in to the microwave for 15 mins.

The agar set after a couple of hours in the fridge after the PC had been allowed to cool to close to room temp.

I thought taking specimens from the shaken bags was almost guaranteed to pick up some contam spores/material so I'm glad I had the foresight not to shake one of the bags. I swabbed the outside of the bag I hadn't shaken with plenty of Isocol. I flame sterilised a knife and cut out a square of plastic from the bag, in a spot overlying a good area of mycelial growth. I took some strands with a flame sterilised tweezer and placed it on one jar of the PC cooked agar, and a piece on the microwaved agar.

I put both in a box and placed them in a room now. Hopefully I should be able to salvage something from this grow.

Disappointing, but a learning experience. Also allowed me to become acquainted with agar which I believe is almost mandatory knowledge if you're going to pursue mycology in earnest.

The rest of the contents of the bags? I put them in the carport area and will throw them out into the mulched bushes around here. Hopefully the mycelia may be able to latch onto something and grow resulting in a surprise later.

Any thoughts or tips for what else I can or should do about this?

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Hi Sobriquet,

I wouldn't be able to tell you how many jars, plates, bags, blocks i have tipped on the compost. things can go wrong pretty quickly!

putting the mycelium on agar is a good idea. I use agar for everything I do with mushrooms. keep a keen eye on the agar and be prepared to reculture if any contams appear - the trick is to culture away clean mycelium onto new plates away from the contam.

Also adding hydrogen peroxide to the agar helps with certain contams. Use approx 7ml per litre of agar, it should be added when the agar is cooling and is below 60C I wait untill the temp is 60C - I then add the H2O2, mix well and pour the plates.

It works really well.

It can be disheartening to get contams when things are going well. keep at it and things should be fine.

keep fighting the good fight.... :)

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Hi Sobriquet,

I wouldn't be able to tell you how many jars, plates, bags, blocks i have tipped on the compost. things can go wrong pretty quickly!

putting the mycelium on agar is a good idea. I use agar for everything I do with mushrooms. keep a keen eye on the agar and be prepared to reculture if any contams appear - the trick is to culture away clean mycelium onto new plates away from the contam.

Also adding hydrogen peroxide to the agar helps with certain contams. Use approx 7ml per litre of agar, it should be added when the agar is cooling and is below 60C I wait untill the temp is 60C - I then add the H2O2, mix well and pour the plates.

It works really well.

It can be disheartening to get contams when things are going well. keep at it and things should be fine.

keep fighting the good fight.... :)

Thanks for the encouragement watertrade.

I think the mistake I made was using almost all the print to innoculate. I didn't realise only a small amt was needed. I may have picked up a mould from that mistake since it wasn't a sterile print I used. But I'm pretty sure it was at the innoculation stage this contaminant got into the system. From the syringe.

Yes, I've kept two prepared agar jars in the fridge ready for any further action needed.

I'm not sure how long it will take before I know what is going to happen with the agar innoculations. 24-48 hrs maybe?

But yes, if I have been lucky enough to isolate a relatively pure strain without contams I'll replate the best part onto the next agar jar, and try to isolate again if I don't have purity yet.

In the long run I think this will serve me better since I'll have a master jar from which to grow from then.

I'm hoping the agar innoculations will be successful in the next 2 days or so. When would someone know they'd failed and require another start?

Anyhow the experience has been great if nothing else (yet). :)

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What a shame Sob - I'm feeling disappointed for ya :( At least you have gained a lot of knowledge out of the expirience and you'll know what to look out for next time :wink:

Best of luck with the agar - sorry I'm no use in this department due to my zero expirience in the field, though I'm sure someone will be able to help out in this regard.

Good luck and fingers crossed for next time!

-Ace

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Just an update on what's been happening in this epic saga!

The growth on the agar has been fine. The one in the plastic container after a week had developed colonization the area of a 50 cent with very slow growth. A sector developed a few days ago with 'linear' growth ie. not cottony and not rhizomorphic but in between.

The other plate in the jar had mycelium emerge onto the surface several days ago and it hadn't developed a pattern but was more vigorous than the other one.

Anyhow last night I decided to isolate the nicer linear growth onto a new plate which I had prepared. I also put some on a second agar jar in order to colonise and separate out further.

I was getting frustrated with the lack of any other material to play with so I prepared 4 containers of BRF and vermiculite mixture PF cakes (just so I can say I've tried it too) in the microwave and let them cool. I injected 10 mL of sterile water into the jar of agar with the growth. I used the sterilised needle tip to mix up some of the cultures under the surface and the surface mycelium and drew the 10mL back into the syringe.

I used this agar based mycelium syringe to innoculate the 4 BRF substrate containers and put them away in a dark warm place.

I put all the agars back to their box and into a dark place. The two old and two new agars can continue to grow for my further experimentation. I'm hoping the headstart mycelia has over spores will allow the substrate to fully colonise in a couple of weeks now.

Just shows how a little mycelium can go a long way.

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Just an update on what's been happening in this epic saga!

The growth on the agar has been fine. The one in the plastic container after a week had developed colonization the area of a 50 cent with very slow growth. A sector developed a few days ago with 'linear' growth ie. not cottony and not rhizomorphic but in between.

The other plate in the jar had mycelium emerge onto the surface several days ago and it hadn't developed a pattern but was more vigorous than the other one.

Anyhow last night I decided to isolate the nicer linear growth onto a new plate which I had prepared. I also put some on a second agar jar in order to colonise and separate out further.

I was getting frustrated with the lack of any other material to play with so I prepared 4 containers of BRF and vermiculite mixture PF cakes (just so I can say I've tried it too) in the microwave and let them cool. I injected 10 mL of sterile water into the jar of agar with the growth. I used the sterilised needle tip to mix up some of the cultures under the surface and the surface mycelium and drew the 10mL back into the syringe.

I used this agar based mycelium syringe to innoculate the 4 BRF substrate containers and put them away in a dark warm place.

I put all the agars back to their box and into a dark place. The two old and two new agars can continue to grow for my further experimentation. I'm hoping the headstart mycelia has over spores will allow the substrate to fully colonise in a couple of weeks now.

Just shows how a little mycelium can go a long way.

Good news Sob, keep us posted :D

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^^ Hi Sob...just curious any update? :)

AJ

With the high temperatures that occured last week and continues to this week the chances for the mycelia appear slim.

Two of the main agar isolations unfortunately ceased growth at the end of last week and by the time I'd moved it to a cooler area the mycelium appears to have died. It has regressed showing only a yellow stain like area on the agar where it once grew.

The jars were probably also affected in the same way I would say but I'm sitting on those for a while longer.

I had isolated another three agar containers and they appear OK with very slow growth but the high temps are playing havoc with this attempt to grow. I really need to obtain an incubator or some such to control temps I think.

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