so ill pick up some straw and run it through a food processor, add the manure at a 50/50 ratio? then lay the corn down in a black bag in my aluminum pans and then the hay/poo on top of it, wait for it to colonize to the straw then a thin layer of verm and fruit? or forget the thin layer of verm? or just use verm and poo? if hay is better i can get more bang for my buck using it as a bale is around 5 bucks, same price as a small bag of verm and i get 100x the mass.
sorry i feel dense, hope im not coming off that way just trying to make sure i get it 100% so when i go to do my casing i do it right. i want larger yeilds so if i have to trial and error straw i will if it means higher yeilds than vermiculite.
Nope, you are still missing the point. What you are trying to do is increase the mass of mycelium you have. Now consider the proper approach. One first isolates a strain on agar, then puts it in contact with another healthy looking monocaryotic mass so that it has mated. Now you have just a little patch of dychariotic mycelium that is capable of fruiting (yes, you can fruit on agar - you get miniature mushrooms). Then you take a the very least a hyphae or strand of that and put it in your grain. Now you will have many times your original mass growing all over the grain. You can stop here, or, as you wish to do, you will use those kernels as innoculation points in another larger non-sterile substrate like straw or manure or compost. From each of those kernels will grow more mycelium but you want this to be a three dimensional process. If you simply layer your mass substrate over a layer of colonized corn you will be forcing your mycelium to grow slowly upward (or downward). No, what you want to do is to mix your now covered kernels in with your substrate. See to it that each kernel is surrounded by substrate, you want to have your kernels all through, mixed in, with your manure or whathave you. See,this is what I am talking about when I say that PF tek is no good. Those who use this process don't really understand dimentionality and they think in "layers". (not carping at you, just pointing this out).
What you will find if you broadcast kernels throughout your manure is that each kernel will send out mycelium in three dimentions growing through the substrate eventualy meeting up with the mycelium from other kernels and causing your entire substrate to become completely filled with myclium in the shortest amount of time. Had you layered your corn you would have to wait until the mycelium finally all worked it's way upward.
Your 50/50 mix of manure and straw is fine I suppose but I think you are inviting disaster. Were I you I would mix my manure up with vermiculite (coarse) in 70/30 manure/vermiculite. OR, I would abandon the manure and go straight straw, cooked in water at 160 - 180 for an hour or two and then let drain for a few hours. This automaticaly gives you a perfect moisture content. Then I would broadcast your colonized kernels as best I could all throughout the straw. Put all of that in a black plastic bag with a few holes preferably on the sides so light won't get through the holes - and then wait until the straw is fully colonized - maybe 5 to 12 days.
Manure is messy, it is inherently deeply contaminated - although it has some of the most potent nutrients they are not necessary and manure is hell for a beginner to bring to the correct moisture level.
Consider that the reason folks use vermiculite in their substrate is to deal with water issues, but what you are doing is diluting that nutrient with something that offers nothing save moisture and make your substrate more air permiable. So why not just go with straight straw and save yourself all sorts of problems.
If you will allow me to preach, everyone seems to want to make these exotic mixtures of this and that, manure, straw,coir, coffee grounds and the like. If you understand the mushroom you come to realize that because it is a primary and secondary decomposer, it will eat anything and most times additives are simply a waste of time.
The mycelum wants a degree of nutrient - but it can extract what it needs from almost anything. It wants a rather exact content of water, it needs the substrate to be such that it doesn't have to try too hard to invade that substrate with it's hyphae and it needs some way of exhaling co2 and inhaling oxygen. The mycelium will transport nutrient from one place to another - radioactive tracers have shown that nutrient from the bottom of a grow will be transported all the way to the fruit. Oxygen will travel as well but the more ways you can offer your mycelium what it needs the faster it will grow.
The simpler you make things the more your mushroom will like growing for you. The fact that manure, leached or not will become a sodden mass means that you will encourage contamination and actually create anaerobic conditions within your substrate structure. Those conditions will promote all sorts of contamination and it will slow down the mycelium.
If I have a species that requires manure based substrates I will always compost first. Composting will bring beneficial microbes out of the woodwork and it will create more basic nutrient that the mushroom enjoys
but I will only do that for secondary decomposers - those that are on top of the decomposition cycle. P. Cubensis is not one of those, it is just as happy working off of primary substrates such as straw. Now what is manure? it is the dead and live bodies of microorganisms and partly digested grasses and grains. that being the case, why bother with it as you can give your mushroom undigested straw and or grain just as easily.
Now, the secret to high yields has little to do with exotic mixtures and everything to do with timing. Your pinning strategy will be the primary driver to high yields. What you are attempting to do is to have the greatest mass of mycelium you can have - in the shortest amount of time because each hour an already established bit of mycelium continues to feed off of it's little bit of nutrient, the more of that "power", that nutrient, is being lost simply to the metabolism of the organism.
Say I lay out a bed of colonized grain but I keep that bed in the dark for three weeks before I case it and fruit it, I will have a sparse yield because the mycelium has been spending it's time and energy breaking down the substrate and consoldidating it's hold on the grow. 80 percent of your entire yield will come from your first two flushes so the better your first flush the bigger your oveall yield will be. Remember also that your second flush is already growing even as your first flush is getting ready to be picked.
Proper timing dictates that your mycelium just barely be finished expanding to all the area where there is nutrient - and then, very quickly, be set to pin.
PF tek does not do this, it depends upon the mushrooms aging cycle to trigger fruiting. If the mycelium is old enough it will begin to fruit regardless of the situation (even if there is little or no light). PF waits for that cake to be super saturated with mycelium - in fact, some suggest that "just to be on the safe side" one wait even longer - so that any spots in the middle of the cake be fully engulfed as well - all the while the already established mycelium is getting old, and using up the nutrient it is in contact with. In effect, a pf cake is half dead before it will yield it's first flush. What you want is for everything to be at the very peak of freshness as you are triggering your fruiting.
