Anybody growing mushrooms willing to talk???

Thundercat

Well-Known Member
Hell if I know. If I had any real intentions of getting that deep into mycology, I probably wouldn't still be buying all-in-one grow bags from eBay. Considering that it seems a fairly common thing for ostensibly reputable spore sellers to sell "crosses", I just found your blanket statement pretty noteworthy. That ad I linked to is bullshit? That business does/should know that it's bullshit? Is there some sorta gray area there?
My only two cents on the ad is this. I don't know how "transkei" is supposed to grow, but I don't see any Penis Envy traits in those pictures. There are lots of "crosses" out there. I have a friend in Michigan who has done several crosses through intense single-spore study and a bunch of microscope work. His crosses always show traits from both parents.

The crosses we did on the farm didn't always work at all. Sometimes they were bullshit tubs that never grew much of anything. Sometimes they produced weird little mutant mushrooms, sometimes they just grew looking like the original spores we started with, sometimes we actually got a cool cross of both parents. It all takes time, space, and luck I think.
 

canndo

Well-Known Member
We accomplished a cross of Penis envy and Blue magnolias at the farm I used to work at for the last 3 years, it's called "Steel Magnolia" and it's been fairly well documented on various social media by many different growers we sent the spores out to. It clearly grows in a unique manner that is not Penis Envy or Blue Mag, but an absolute combo of them both. Cubes are cubes so there is no reason you can't combine 2 different ones from what I've seen, no different than an African person and a caucasian person having a child.

It was done by combining the spores from both mushrooms on several agar plates. The spores found a mate from the opposite strain and grew. When we fruited out those plates it was very obvious that there were combined traits on some of the batches. Not all the plates produced results that show this, but a couple did. So then we took clones of specific fruits that showed those shared traits and grew those out again. When the shared traits persisted we took spores from those specific fruits and did MS runs with those to again look for fruits with shared traits from the original parents. That generation produced mostly mushrooms with those shared traits and we ended up gradually selecting 14 slightly different phenos. We ran those for over a year and eventually widdled them down to about 4 that were the overall best for our growing environment.

We did other experiments and had obvious combinations of parent genetics in the offspring, the Steel Magnolia was just the most potent and prolific grower we had. It tested more potent than either of the Parents and was stronger than anything in our lineup other than "Pearl Harbour" which was also right up there with the PE and Steel Mag. We actually did a cross of the Steel Magnolia and that Pearl Harbour which turned out looking awesome. It grew with wide chocolate brown caps, and the stems all grew with brownish "veins" running up them from the bottom to just below the cap. It was a very distinctive appearance. We never released that one, but there are still spores that I think would be fun to play with someday.

Thanks for the clarification. I tried diluting a spore solution down to e
Where I got germination at two or three points in each dish and transplanted them to dishes with a single germination of another "type". Spores often clump together so a fresh germination of what looks like a single spore could actually be more than one. Checking sectors might help bt it never did. I never got anything notable from the trials.
I figured a test of a true cross would be to put the cross in a dish with a known "pure" pheno and see if they grew together. I presumed they should not but they always did. Does that happen in a cross? I have always been able to put two phenos in a plate and easily see a permanent separation.
 
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canndo

Well-Known Member
Cubes have 4 sexes, only two will create clamp connections so one needs to put the correct pair together. Who knows how many natural phenotypes might occur from one load of spores from a single cap but I might try again
 

A.k.a

Well-Known Member
There’s a guy on shroomery using a microscope and needle to scoop up a single spore and grow monoK cultures on agar for a bunch of varieties. Then he starts mating them it’s pretty cool. I think ape x natal was one of his first which must have a wicked trip to it.
 

rkymtnman

Well-Known Member
i had to occupy the grow room so the shoeboxes got sent to the garbage. didn't weigh it out but it seems lilke about 8 to 10 good doses. i've got one grain bag colonizing slowly but surely.

thanks for all the help from everybody!!!!
 

7L!fTeD24

Well-Known Member
Crosses are extremely easy. Mix spores or even spawn together and it happens.

where do you think the billion new varieties coming out each month are coming from
Looks like Skeleton Crew doesn't fuck around when it comes to order fulfillment. Ordered Tuesday, received today.
View attachment 5337129
Yes sir!!! You've seen my pics. Almost all of them are from skeleton crews spores.
 

7L!fTeD24

Well-Known Member
Personally I don't understand how crosses are that impossible to do. So the thousands of crosses that have been going around for decades from thousands of different vendors aren't real crosses? I'm no scientist but doesn't seem too hard. There's a lot of people who have spent a lot of time crossing and isolating to give us some of the strains that we have now. I've mixed spawn, lc, and spores either on accident or just fucking around with extra stuff I have laying around and I've definitely had some come out that have looked crossed or maybe they just didn't look the same as they do when grown by themselves and that's just me playing around.
 

Fangthane

Well-Known Member
Personally I don't understand how crosses are that impossible to do.
Yeah, the statement pretty much completely caught me off guard. It was said confidently enough that I actually thought maybe I was the one who was missing something obvious. As Abe Lincoln once said, "Don't believe everything you read on the internet."

Hell, I'm thinking of inoculating a small bag with B+ to mix in with any leftover Jack Frost sub just to see if anything weird grows out of it.
 

canndo

Well-Known Member
Something odd will Always emerge from multi spore innoculations. There are millions of spore in there and combinations happen, each with a different expression. These aren't crosses.

The only way you can know for sure is if you isolate one compatible spore from each pheno and then get clamp connections and fruit it.
 

7L!fTeD24

Well-Known Member
I’m still yet to see if i’ll get that 1/4 from a 3 flush bag grow. On the third flush right now in some bags with that one. . Isn’t looking like i will though. Close though.
Dudes i know that blow shit up, they grow in bags like i have finally submitted to. They also told me that the jack frost isn’t that great of a yielder. But that’s from dudes growing in bags and they also don’t have the isolate i got.
In the tubs, i haven’t lost one tub before the second flush with the JF. Where as tubs and me have some really bad luck. In bags the other strains that were failing in tubs, with beautiful grain spawn. Are all good.

tubs are pissing me off. Can’t figure out why i suck. I’ve done 180f water into bucket tek to try and be more pasteurized. Didn’t help. Same results as boiling water into coolers. Load them up in front of the flow hood. Only thing that kinda helped most strains was only 3.5 qts water per cvg batch. 650g coco. 2 qts verm and the gypsum. 3.5 qts when testing field capacity is allot less drops coming out when you squeeze really hard. One of my buddies who kills it says you don’t need to squeeze harder than you would your nuts. Lol
I really fought the advice from my friends who had a good 1 year on me doing this. I really wanted the tubs to work as the whole bag tek is so wasteful

i do three bags from that cvg batch. With 1/2 of my 1800g grain bags of milo doing up 2 of them. I’m currently babysitting som pc’s with millet grain bags :-)
View attachment 5335071
20 bucks a bag. Little cheaper than the red sorghum. Same 2:1 no soak no simmer recipe tooView attachment 5335069
you got a nice setup there. Don't get discouraged everyone gets contams or shit just doesnt go right. A lot of times when I have a lot of tubs going I'll have tubs turn green and thrown out before the first flush and it's also pissing me off LOL. Here's an example I hate when this s*** happens. What's confusing is I have the same exact box sitting right next to this one that's doing great. Same strain same spawn same substrate and one will do great one will turn green. 20231020_154511.jpg
 
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