Nice work your your grow thus far. It appears that your pcorn jars are healthy and going nicely. Good work. I would like to see how things go from here. I'm about to transfer into some pcorn jars on friday.
thanks Sprout. Here's hoping things go well for you too
I believe the oysters are just there for a pH buffer. I'm sure you could use lime instead. As MZ said in that thread, that it would work probably work fine with just regular cubes, but some differnet psilocybe species require a more alkaline casing layer, hence the oyster shells. He did also say that the oyster shells will add structure to the casing, allowing for better G/E.
I'm sure you could find some online with relative ease. If you do go this route, remember to get the chunky kind, and not the finely ground kind!
sounds like they are a good addition to look into adding. i like the idea of a physically structuring PH balancer
the mycelium will be more lush. The balance is that if it is too wet the kernels burst and you invite contamination. If you intend to fruit from your spawn, water content is critical. The major limit to your final yield is not nutrient but water content (and finally PH). This water content is why folks "dunk" their cakes. This is also why casing is such a good idea, one can continualy bring the casing layer back to the correct moisture content which lets the mycelium continue to produce until finally the PH changes enough to make the substrate or the casing hospitable to green or forest mold - and then good bye.
You have two things confused.
Firstly, your corn will "knit" and become a solid block (if your moisture content is high enough).
Secondly, what you now have is spawn, these are individualy mycelium coated pellets (corn) that you can break up and spread into high nutrient substrate in order to continue the process of spreading mycelium. This material is not casing.
You can put your corn in a tray, wait for it to knit (a little), then case the surface with LOW nutrietive value material or you can place your broken up corn in HIGH mutriative material, allow that to grow out and then put your casing (the low nutrietive material) on top and let that colonize. Then go through your fruiting sequence and you are done.
i do understand the difference between the spawn and the casing, but the process of deciding how to fruit the spawn is where i am stuck. so from what you say i can maximize my fruiting potential by going with a method that utilizes a PH regulating casing layer. it also seems like this method is more convenient and leads to less problems.
i have been looking at grow journals at places like shroomery.org and the grows which have the spawn cake placed whole on a moisture retaining bed of hydroton or perlite, they seem prone to green growth (as you mentioned arises from PH issues)
alright, so i am thinking that perhaps i will try both of the models you suggest for the sake of getting the most out of this learning experience
a tray of spawn mixed in high nut. matieral, allowed to knit and then cased, and a simpler tray with just the spawn and a low nut. casing. this might maximize my chances of getting at least some successful fruiting
i'm saying this based on the assumption that mixing the spawn with high nutritive material can produce higher yields than the spawn alone. but also that the spawn alone is simpler and less prone to fail.
my next questions are, what is a good source of nutrients for the casing and the stuff underneath it?
also, can i carefully take some kernels from a birthed cake, place them into a jar which is ready to inoculate, and continue the growth of mycelium while i fruit the rest of the spawn?
and i have a mix of perlite, vermiculite, peat, and dolomite lime. if i added vermiculite so that the verm was about 50% of the content would this make a good casing?