tiny wee caps

[Lono]

Okay so a FOAF put her first P. cub casing in the fruiting cahmber a couple of weeks ago, and while she got a pretty sizable flush (32 in a 10x20cm tray!) there's a problem.

The caps are open and dropping plenty of spores but are about the size of a 10 cent piece. The stems too are really thin but even width and about 10cm long.

She's thinking substrate depth could be the issue (about 3.5-4cm). But I said I'd ask the board whether there's anything else she should be doing to stimulate bigger fruits for the next flush.

temps in the box are around 22-25C all day and humidity seems okay if not a little high (fuzzy myc growing on the bottom 1cm of the stems.

I know they all taste the same but she had hoped to print a few to, sort of share the wealth as it was only someone elses generosity that got her started in the first place.

[Hyphal]

The only thing I would suggest is more fresh air exchanges and a deeper substrate - but really, they sound fine - you can easily print something with a cap the size of a ten cent piece.

Pics?

[paradox]

would spores from small caps be genetically inferior (in terms of size) to spores from large caps?

would you get small caps again when growing with spores from small caps?

do mushrooms work like that?

does anyone know?

[Aya]

would spores from small caps be genetically inferior (in terms of size) to spores from large caps?

would you get small caps again when growing with spores from small caps?

do mushrooms work like that?

does anyone know?

The size of the print in regards to future fruits is not indicative nor inherent, it depends on a myriad of different circumstances.

My friend recieved a B+ print the size of a 10 cent piece if not smaller and the caps on the fruits were much bigger. He also had a very large Mexican Palenque print which yielded very small tiny fruits, but lots of them. He then crumbled the cakes up after the second flush and put them out side with some manure and it produced very short but thick stems with rather large caps. So as you can see many things can happen in different circumstances.

Back to lono though for your next flush definately dunk for 24 hours, this should increase size and yield.

Hope that helps

Aya

[reshroomED]

Back to lono though for your next flush definately dunk for 24 hours, this should increase size and yield.

As aya says, give a good dunking.

My first guess as to stunted growth would be low moisture-content in your substrate.

cheers

ed

[Lono]

Thanks for the replies guys.

Couple of other things have come up.

The first flush was harvested a few days ago and there was no bluing of the fruits though they were found to be mildly active (20=light 4hr buzz).

After cruising around The Nook for a while I noticed a post by someone else with the same issue. consensus there seemed to be that RH was way too high. Any thoughts on this?

Thirdly the casing layer was almost totally overtaken by mycelia, could it be that the myc had actually colonised the coir and the fruits were drawn from this nutrient resovior only.

The cake was dunked for about 16hr prior to casing so I'm pretty sure substrate moisture wasn't the issue. It has shrunk considerably so I will advise my friend to dunk again and this time case with straight verm.

Would it be worth scraping back the old colonised verm/coir casing, and recasing the exposed colonised grain? Also, with "between flush" dunks is it advisable to just fill the existing tray with water then pour it out after a day and recase, or dunk in the existing tray and transfer to a new one for recasing?

[Hyphal]

My thoughts on your shrooms not being the most potent in the world, comes down purely and simply to the fact that there isnt enough nutrients in a pf style cake to support the optimum development of the fruit body - and by optimum, this encompasses everything from size to potency.

You need to spawn those cakes to a manure based susbtrate or coco coir that has been enriched with used coffee grounds and any other goodies to give your mycelium the nutrients/moisture it needs to thrive.

[Lono]

The cake was WBS with most of the wheat and sunflower seeds scooped off the top during the soaking process (only cause they float).

So in reality it was like 90% millet.

Sounds like the theory that the coir casing generated the fruits has some merit no?

[Aya]

The cake was WBS with most of the wheat and sunflower seeds scooped off the top during the soaking process (only cause they float).

So in reality it was like 90% millet.

Sounds like the theory that the coir casing generated the fruits has some merit no?

If your coir casing developed overlay, meaning that the coir was completely colonised, then a lot of the myceliums energy and resources was used colonising the coir instead of producing big healthy fruits. It also would have made the purpose of the casing layer obsolete, which is to retain and hold in moisture for the mycelium underneath, while it's producing fruits.

So there's a few factors to why it turned out how it did.

Better luck with the next flush.

Aya

[Lono]

So should the overlayed casing be stripped back do you think?

[Hyphal]

I think you should leave it, OR, crumble what you have and spawn it to coir or something similar - the problem you are faced with is a result of using WBS to fruit as a cake.

If you have a fully colonised jar of WBS you should go to the extra *minor* trouble of spawning it next time.

WBS crumbled and cased will fruit OK on its own - but as a cake, your lucky to get much off it at all.

Either leave the casing as is, give it a heavy misting and keep it nice and moist - or preferably, crumble what you have now and spawn it to some coir... cheap, effective, and doubles the amount of fruiting mycelium you have in a matter of days - doubling your yield.

[Lono]

At the moment our hero is without a pressure cooker and so believes bulk substrate success will be a little sketchy + she deliberately refused to move from PF tek to casing before she had at least had reasonable success if not mastered the technique. Something about respect for your medium I think.

Anyway we've both seen much better yeilds (high quality/bigger fruits) from relatively identical casing experiments. so I think for this batch at least she'd want to stick with a cased cake.

On your advice hyphal, prints were made from the 10c caps so the chain is not broken, and a new round of oven pasteurised WBS cakes should be ready soon to branch out tekwise, but she'd still like to bring this cycle to it's conclusion without trying to force the myc to give up its secrets.

BTW. You can use coir as a nutrient on its own??? Did you use that as a suggestion because you assumed there's some on hand or is it really an A grade mycfood?

[Hyphal]

Coir is not A grade myc food, but if you havent the time or the energy to get some horse poo or straw together, its a cheap and effective way to spawn your colonised grains to and fruit from.

Its lacking in nutrients, but if you simply add the grounds from a brewed pot of coffee it becomes a reasonably ok substrate.

You dont need a pressure cooker to make a bulk substrate, you simply stuff your substrate into and oven bag and submerse this bag in a pot of water thats heated to 80C for an hour minimum.

Another easy way to achieve pasteurised substrate is to simply pour the 80C water into and esky with your substrate and put on the lid for an hour.

[reshroomED]

The cake was dunked for about 16hr prior to casing so I'm pretty sure substrate moisture wasn't the issue. It has shrunk considerably so I will advise my friend to dunk again and this time case with straight verm.

Some shrinkage is to be expected, but I'd still think initial substrate was too dry. Dunking is an *attempt* to re-moisten the cake replacing water used by the first flush. It doesn't achieve this well, but is better than not doing. The colonisation of the casing material is further indication that the mycellium was lacking water. Coir has little nutrient value, the myc was seeking more moisture.

ed