MUSHROOMS HELP ME PULL TrIGGER!

ok so i got x2 10cc spore syringes(as i learned they are no longer called prints unless they are in dry format) from a friend UNKNOWN strain from 2009. the syringes are full and the bag looks as if it has never been opened. pristine.

i know about general sterilization procedure so we can skip that nut its been 2 years since ive had my hand at this and im looking for some advice to do this for the cheapest possible amount and using mostly what i have already.

first few questions, when mycelium is germinating is fresh air needed or can i put the meal lid on the jar?

is there any special process to spawn? i would like to have a steady supply forever if possible. cluster headache sufferer, i dont like to trip will be giving these away mostly some for and another friend that suffer from CH

how sterile does the fruiting chamber have to be?


ok so heres the list of supplies i have currently:

pressure cooker
mason jars 8oz and 12oz wide mouth
wormcastings
Hay
perlite 1.5cft
vermiculite 1.5cft
agar agar
peatmoss
rubbermaid totes
x2 13w cfl on extension cord
heating pad with low- med -high setting thinking about hooking up to a timer 15min on low 15off
18w single manifold air pump


well i got a lot of stuff to work with laying around just need some help setting it all up and getting started with a good substrate and inoculation method, i dont have an oven any other alternatives to help me be sterile?

You seem just about "fully loaded". First. As for the FC steriliaztion. Just use water with about 10% bleach to wipe it down. Also. As per a medium to begin colonization. I may suggest a bag of yellow/white popcorn. Search shroomery or google for the easy popcorn tek. Or you can go with the easy pf tek with the brf (brown rice flour), since you aren't looking to do bulk. You can also mix the brf with the worm casings. If you are going to use the peat moss, you may need to get some non-dolomitic lime for upping the ph. I believe that you can also use gypsum for that. But if you're not going bulk, then there's no need to worry about the lime or the peat. You can combine two teks the popcorn with the pf to make cakes. Or you can just order pre-sterilized spawn bags. The reason I suggested the popcorn is that it may be the easiest to process, easiest to acquire, and not as expensive grain type tek to do. Wild bird seed is cheapest. But, you have to spend more time processing the seed. You can go to any market and/or dollar store for the popcorn (1lb bag). If you feel confident. You can use your agar to transfer to the grain. But its been a while so. The choice is yours. At least you can get started and read up till the next part.

im gonna get some brf(brown rice flour) tonite. gotta love acronyms.

2-1-1 ratio corect?

what about the lids for the jars?(they have to breath right?) i dont remember how to germinate or builld the chamber. i know i got all the right shit i just dont know how to put it together efficiently..

whats better a bed of perlite? or just some regular soil like what i use for growing with an increased amount of perlite?

whats better to case or not to case cakes?

I dont recommend BRF mixtures in your case but you should do as sprout suggests - rye or popcorn. The reason is that your syringes are doubtful, they are pretty old and may not have the ability to germinate. If they germinate poorly or not at all, you will be waiting with your PF tek a long time before you realize that you aren't going to get anywhere. Beyond that, you can shake free grain and both improve your chances of sucess before contamination and speed your process up tremendously. I see you have agar but you don't have dishes or premixed agar. If you have agar then you can squirt your syringes in dishes and confirm in short order if your syringes are alive.

I have been suggesting another way for Cluster headache folk - just do sclerotia and forget about fruiting all together - it is easier and your yields are plenty for what you need the stuff for.

If you only fill your jars about half full, no, you needn't worry about breathing but it will be dicey near the end. The no fresh air system will NOT work with brown rice flour.

One more thing, they are still called "prints", prints are a paper, dish or aluminum foil square upon which a cap was laid and has deposited its spores - they are sort of pretty actually. Syringes are simply a sterile solution of spores and water (sometimes activated charcoal as well).

well then hook me up with the info canndo!

no i dont have dishs and this is the kind of agar you buy from the asian store.... what can i say im a DIY guy, but i got a big order from bio-med coming soon.(about a month or so saving some money for the order)

so whats the TEK im looking for popcorn tek? im mean honestly what would be most likely for these baby to survive, i mean they are pristine she had them in a drawer(shes old so her temp is always 70 degress) untouched post box and everything.

yeah ive seen spore print art its pretty sweet.

gods thumbprint as they say

Have you only done cakes before? You have a pressure cooker, so why not move on to grains? A lot of people use WBS as spawn but I prefer popcorn. As for a substrate, coir has been very good to me lately. Very easy to pasteurization tek and foreign spores rarely germinate on it in my experience. 5 quarts of popcorn spawn and one block of coco coir can easily produce 1/2lb of dried fruits.

polyarcturus said:

well then hook me up with the info canndo!

no i dont have dishs and this is the kind of agar you buy from the asian store.... what can i say im a DIY guy, but i got a big order from bio-med coming soon.(about a month or so saving some money for the order)

so whats the TEK im looking for popcorn tek? im mean honestly what would be most likely for these baby to survive, i mean they are pristine she had them in a drawer(shes old so her temp is always 70 degress) untouched post box and everything.

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Spores will tend to degrade when immersed in water. There are some who maintain that there are still some sort of contamination in that water and it isn't completely sterile - I am not sure I subscribe to this, but what they say is that metabolites will destroy the spores. At any rate, i have yet to see syringes last two years but others have. As I said, you are probably best going out and getting the Atlantis strain or a mexicana strain, innoculating your quart jars of boiled grain and putting the jars in a cool dark place for two months - that is ALL you have to do, in the end you should get as much as 30 grams wet of product from each dry cup of grain. Sclerotia are 2/3 water so you will get about 10 grams dry - a dozen cups will give you all you need for many years if you are treating cluster headaches but it is so easy, there isn't any reason why you shouldn't do it again. BTW - popcorn is not the best for sclertoia. I would use rye berries - rye grass is too difficult to work with.

ok ok canndo they were a freebie some im gonna try and grow these(a trip on shrooms once a year isnt too bad? plus other people want them) i will look into buying some more spores but i currently get medicine for my headaches (i was a beta tester with the one that was similar to lsd chemically, yes it distorts your vision and gives a little bit of "energy" or insomnia but it works fast and the effects last a long time not the trippy effects but keeping the headaches away, but anyways my insurance run out at the end of the year. so i wont need spore till then but i will keep that in mind.


@sonar yeah all i have done is cakes and this is while i was a kid just fucking around i never got deep into it. had a simple set up used a friends pressure cooker and did the basic grow thru using brown rice flour.

now i have been growing for years went thru a lot shit learning all that the good the bad the ugly the uglier well you get the idea. started making my own tissue cultures(alas no luck yet but good for practice till i make this order) now im back to shrooms for fun now that im a little more stable in my life and can do more things for fung!

plus every one i know keeps talking about morals... seems like there is a market where im at!

okay did a brush up less stupid newbish questions.

would coffee filters work in place of tyve? i i get get tyvek or coffee filters how should those be sterilized?
next questions given spore germ.

im gonna do grain tek, now that i understand, s my casing should i just pressure cook it to be safe?

last question but no least should i just do layer like perlite mycelium grain then casing, what the best casing for my situation?

here im just gonna sum up the questions i need answeed so i can get this moving....

how sterile does fruiting chamber need to be?
'how many flushs b4 shrooms stop coming?

if using grain do i ever water the perlite bed?(with cakes you could Dunk if it dried out)

last but not least grow room be okay to fruit in 80-90 degrees? 50% humidity if i add a box with air sone im sure it will 100% should i put the airstone in the perlite bed? if i do this should i build a hepa box around my airpump?

found my answers to all my other questions(the ones not in this post)so just ignore them unless you have some more input, picked up some popcorn seed doing popcorn tek so i can spawn with it. building a laminar hood(got an extra blower available)/glove box too.

polyarcturus said:

how sterile does fruiting chamber need to be?
'how many flushs b4 shrooms stop coming?
if using grain do i ever water the perlite bed?(with cakes you could Dunk if it dried out)

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Clean not sterile. Fruiting mushies NEED fresh air.

3-5 flushes. I usually toss everything after the 3rd, no point in milking it when there is another tray in the wings.

NEVER water perlite unless you can drain immediately. The point is for all sides of a a perlite grain to be moist but not under water. If it is under water, then the only point of evaporation is the top layer of the water, which will mean the humidity goes DOWN when there is any standing water.

polyarcturus said:

last but not least grow room be okay to fruit in 80-90 degrees? 50%

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No. myc likes 85ish, but you want to drop 5-10 degrees to 75ish for fruiting.

polyarcturus said:

humidity if i add a box with air sone im sure it will 100% should i put the airstone in the perlite bed? if i do this should i build a hepa box around my airpump?

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Talk to cannado for stone specific questions, but no HEPA, don't pretend to be sterile, it's OK.

thanx man im gonna get started to night, popcorn tek then i i will use it to inoc my casing substrate. got my ducks in order if the spores survive than ks guy i know you know more than you let on CANNDO but im still gonna plus rep you.

Good luck. I hope everything works out. Later.

OKAY! now that i got all the kinks worked out and a plan, popcorn is in the pressure cooker staring the timer now 90min. im gonna build my glove box and incubation chamber right quick while it does its thing...

heres how im building my glove box, standard tote (18 gal white to let light in) x2 4x4 plastic square pots, a 4x4 hole cut in side of the tote the pots get wider as they go up so push them in tight and glue. then on the inside of the tote i will cut the bottom off the square pot and attach yellow long armed gloves with tape.

then i was gonna cut a big sqaure in the lid and add a plate of plexiglass i had laying around from an old t5 fixture'

my incubation box is just gonna be an old tool box that has a lip and will get x2 13/8" vent ports covered with tyvek and the lid taped to the bottom. then im just gonna place it in the grow room(nice and warm) then when i need to look i will just take it back to the glove box.

only thing i spent money on lysol, alcohol, tyvek coveralls, popcorn and yellow gloves. not bad if you ask me.

now if i make it to fruiting, (big if) im gonna case it with a hay vermiculate mixture and let it partialy colonize before inducing fruiting, i want to know if i put an air pump with air stone(filtered with tyvek at the pump and the stone) in the bottom layer(im doing perlite) if it would help or be better?(seems like it would help the humidity) or be a risk?(from the air rising thru the mycelium)

thought i would up date everything is built and sanitized substrate is finished cooking ran into a problem tyvek filter melted so im gonna keep them in the cooker and put the cooker in the glove box and open the cooker and inoculate one jar at a time removing the rim and putting a new filter on. i dont know why they melted but i had no water left in the cooker after an 1 and a half... anyways moving forward regardless, another thing when i finally got the glove box built i put the syringes in the bag stil in the glove box then i picked them up and you no what they had labels, one was B+ the other was ECU

Time for a bit of pressure cooking 101. Don't worry, it's happened to all of us at least once.

When a pressure cooker is cooking, it is VERY important to balance the heat against the steam escaping.

You do not want to hear or see much steam at all. If you have a weight type hole cover, you should see it rock (not spin or dance) SLIGHTLY during cooking, with SMALL puffs of steam coming out in a near continuous basis.

No whistling or spinning, too hot, you are boiling off all your liquid and will lose it before cooking is done, and then you are merely roasting everything at high heat, not heating it at a a near exact temperature that is maintained by balancing the pressure and stream.

You have a very limited set of spores, right? And you are attempting to use those and not order any more. If so, I strongly suggest you throw away this set of jars and media and start over. It'll cost another 20 buck, but it will have a far better chance of success for a variety of reasons.

Not sure if this suggestion is too late though.

not too late i iwll clean the jars and get a new bag of popcorn. thanks for the 101 that bitch(pc) was screaming for an hour last night.. so just steady puffs? reason i have it up so high is my pc is on a electric burner 1000w and it doesn't hold temp very well. good thing i didnt pressure cook all the jar i still have 2 that didnt get cooked im gonna try you way this time