Favorite / fastest substrate

Well, how did it go ??? I'm getting ready to run a batch of the Brasillian strain.I'd like to go with overdosing one big cake.Anyone ever tried it ?

atidd11 said:

If u need advice canndo is very helpful so is poly. Cindysid can also give u good advice. Hope this helps

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canndo is the man when it comes to mushrooms, but he's gonna say off the bat not to do pf tek. but its a bit late for that now, its ok though, finish it up see how u like it, then try something new. i did the pf tek last year, and it was ok. however i feel i couldve done better, but my enviroment wasnt completely stable, and it wasnt as big a success as i thought, im considering doing them again after my harvest, considering i still have a shit ton of spores in the fridge that need to get used. but am going with cased substrates, and grain spawn(not sure which one yet, still have to widdle down the details) next time around, with a better regulated enviroment for them.

sonar said:

Yeah but I've done experiment with crushing them and and adding them to coir and also using them alone. I never seemed to yield any more than fruiting them whole. If you are going to run cakes, my advice is to run cakes. Dunking and rolling after each flush. I know canndo has a difference in opinion on this subject than I do but I think they are fine for the hobby grower. He's right in that they are a pain making all those little jars and always dunking and rolling but if you just want some boomers to eat with your friends a few time a year and that's it I think it's a cheap and easy way to accomplish that. Before I went to grains I got pretty damn good with cakes. I could easily pull 2-3oz dry off 10 cakes over 3 flushes.

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shit i thought i was doing bad my first run, i got a little over 2 oz of 4 flushes, but i wouldnt consider the last a full on flush, guess i did ok

I got a half ounce off two jars that fruited first. More are going now.

monkeybones said:

I inoculated a bulk substrate of 6 parts coir, 4 parts vermiculite (i may have that backwards), and 1 part granulated gypsum with colonized popcorn

it was fully colonized in 7 days and ready for fruiting

but that's the full extent of my experience so far so I can't say if that's any good

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I seem to remember replying to something like this before but I don't see it - oh well.

there is no point in using so much vermiculite if you use coarse coir. Vermiculite is primarily used in order to retain water - and coir has the capability of retaining just the right amount all by itself. The other reason for using coir is to establish "pinning points", where there are tiny extents, places were there is less nutrient and will serve as little beach heads for the mycelium to begin to fruit. This is the principle of the PF tek and this is the reason for the dunk and roll. If you intend to case your substrate, you want the most nutrient dense substrate you can get short of bringing the substrate to a level that would invite contamination - which is why we don't just soak rye kernels in malt extract and use that.

So, putting vermiculite in coir is actually depriving you of the perfect substrate. I am curious however, seeing that coir makes a terrific casing for a straw substrate indicates that coir has less nutrient value than straw - and straw is not very rich unless we consider the lignin.