Anybody growing mushrooms willing to talk???
- Thread starter 7L!fTeD24
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Aeroknow
Well-Known Member
I was scoping out some tidalwave#2 until i found out it was blob. I just dunno.
Aeroknow
Well-Known Member
One thing i’ve yet to do is PC some cvg, usuing the same coco brick as you, spawning to bulk in the tubs and see what happens. What if it’s the coco bliss?
It kinda would make sense if there was trichoderma added to the shit for growing bud lol.
Had my absolute worse results with 180F water in the bucket tek. Like, way worse than boiling water.
Drop That Sound
Well-Known Member
I won't even use any brand coco coir as a plant medium (let alone a fungi substrate) without pasteurizing it at the least with boiling water first (I'll even bake dried out coir in the oven if it sat around too long). Then rinse 2 more times because it's usually filthy, no matter how many times they claim to have washed it. Still has EC showing on the meter with slurry tests, but yeah I know its basically inert right?.. I don't even trust that the steam compressed 11kg bricks don't have a gnat egg latched on before the machine wraps it in plastic after cooling, lol. All the bricks shipped around the country are likely stored in the same warehouses as the pallets of organics, and if there's even a little hole in the wrap you can bet something probably crawled in 
.
From trich, to bug eggs, to the air quality or factory conditions where the piles sit around outside.. Yeah I dunno..
It seems like the least you could do, considering you can't really use additives, pesticides, or cal hypo/bleach, or or anything else with mushroom substrates like we when using for plant mediums right?.
Instant pots can work good to pasteurize it with, if you need a small batch. Just leave it on the warming function and it will hold the perfect temps for hours.
Bucket tek is cool too, (coolers work best) but I would rather know that its actually holding temp for so many hours with a heating element, or come up with a cheap steamer barrel deal that can do whole bricks at a time, really cleaning the heck out of it, and also squeeze it to perfect field capacity every time after the cycle somehow. Juice out all the silty high EC coco water instead of leaving it and mixing as is..
. From trich, to bug eggs, to the air quality or factory conditions where the piles sit around outside.. Yeah I dunno..
It seems like the least you could do, considering you can't really use additives, pesticides, or cal hypo/bleach, or or anything else with mushroom substrates like we when using for plant mediums right?.
Instant pots can work good to pasteurize it with, if you need a small batch. Just leave it on the warming function and it will hold the perfect temps for hours.
Bucket tek is cool too, (coolers work best) but I would rather know that its actually holding temp for so many hours with a heating element, or come up with a cheap steamer barrel deal that can do whole bricks at a time, really cleaning the heck out of it, and also squeeze it to perfect field capacity every time after the cycle somehow. Juice out all the silty high EC coco water instead of leaving it and mixing as is..
Thundercat
Well-Known Member
You are overthinking and working with all the washing and doing slurry tests and stuff. You just need to figure out your field capacity for the type of substrate you are mixing(or type of coco used) and then pasteurize it all properly. That will kill anything that would cause a problem. Then get it into a clean workspace. At my last job I was processing 6-800 lbs of substrate a week. It was extremely rare that we had contam issues, let alone anything that could be traced back to the substrate. We put the substrate into turkey bags and squeezed all the air out before cooking them. Then when they were done cookng they went into sterilized totes and into the lab to get turned into grow tubs the next day when they were cool.I won't even use any brand coco coir as a plant medium (let alone a fungi substrate) without pasteurizing it at the least with boiling water first (I'll even bake dried out coir in the oven if it sat around too long). Then rinse 2 more times because it's usually filthy, no matter how many times they claim to have washed it. Still has EC showing on the meter with slurry tests, but yeah I know its basically inert right?.. I don't even trust that the steam compressed 11kg bricks don't have a gnat egg latched on before the machine wraps it in plastic after cooling, lol. All the bricks shipped around the country are likely stored in the same warehouses as the pallets of organics, and if there's even a little hole in the wrap you can bet something probably crawled in
From trich, to bug eggs, to the air quality or factory conditions where the piles sit around outside.. Yeah I dunno..
It seems like the least you could do, considering you can't really use additives, pesticides, or cal hypo/bleach, or or anything else with mushroom substrates like we when using for plant mediums right?.
Instant pots can work good to pasteurize it with, if you need a small batch. Just leave it on the warming function and it will hold the perfect temps for hours.
Bucket tek is cool too, (coolers work best) but I would rather know that its actually holding temp for so many hours with a heating element, or come up with a cheap steamer barrel deal that can do whole bricks at a time, really cleaning the heck out of it, and also squeeze it to perfect field capacity every time after the cycle somehow. Juice out all the silty high EC coco water instead of leaving it and mixing as is..
The only times we had definite substrate issues was when we switched to a new industrial-size cooker we made out of a 200 gallon stock tank. The first couple weeks took some figuring out to get the temp and duration for proper pasteurization on that amount of material.
I've known a few people who use the yellow and black totes from HD, and plumb steam into them from a simple pressure cooker through the blow-off port. They put a temp gauge into the top of the tote and monitor the temps and control the times.
Drop That Sound
Well-Known Member
Yeah like this right ^
Simple!
Thundercat
Well-Known Member
Yep basically just like that. The guys I know used mushroom grow bags in theirs to keep each individual batch separate and clean until it was used, but that video process would work well for small batches. One homie would run 6-8 of those in his kitchen at a time packed with bags of substrate.
Drop That Sound
Well-Known Member
Yeah I can see scaling it up some with that method. I wonder how many totes one PC can handle?
This is the next upgrade right?
This is the next upgrade right?
Drop That Sound
Well-Known Member
Way outta my league, lol.
Thundercat
Well-Known Member
This looks similar to how we ran, but ours was powered by a gas powered steam generator that pumped steam in from a manifold on the bottom of the unit. WOrked great once we got the times and temps figured out.
rkymtnman
Well-Known Member
i've got one grain bag that was injected quite a while ago and it seems to have stalled at maybe only 1/3 of the way. any suggestions of what i can do to get her going again? the only thing that changed was that the room temps have dropped since we are getting colder temps at night here.
Drop That Sound
Well-Known Member
I wonder if you could hook up a huge boiler (or a gas powered steam generator? 
) to a couple free hot tubs, and do massive commercial forklift sized quantities at once, on a poor mans budget? 
) to a couple free hot tubs, and do massive commercial forklift sized quantities at once, on a poor mans budget?
rkymtnman
Well-Known Member
i think i started in near sept 10 and i did the break up thing after about a month. so now 2 weeks later it still hasn't progressed.
i gotta go out of town soon so i might just do the cvg and put it in the shoebox and see what happens
rkymtnman
Well-Known Member
wouldn't something like a steam table from a used restaurant supply place work?I wonder if you could hook up a huge boiler (or a gas powered steam generator?
Thundercat
Well-Known Member
Yep I'm sure that could work. I've also seen guys use the large plastic gaylord totes so they could move them with a forklift.I wonder if you could hook up a huge boiler (or a gas powered steam generator?
Thundercat
Well-Known Member
It could as long as it got hot enough. When we first started the farm I worked on we were using electric turkey cookers. We packed the substrate into turkey bags and had 3 of them that ran for a few hours a day multiple days a week to meet our needs. It took a couple of hours to get up to temp and then you had to hold temp to pasturize. It worked great for a while, but when we started expanding we needed something more efficient that we could fill all at once and run in one batch.
rkymtnman
Well-Known Member
i did a few weeks of work at a hormel plant that had the huge walk-in pasteurizers for their chili. (more like dog food than chili but that's a different issue). when one of the cans exploded, that was the nastiest smell when they had to open them up.
Thundercat
Well-Known Member
Yep Big boy commercial mushroom farms also use systems like those.
I've got a buddy down in Cali that grows in big open beds. He pasturizes the whole conex unit all at once. He pumps steam in from a boiler.