My first trip down the rabbit hole...

I feel ya! Today I got the WBS (actually I got parakeet food @ pet supplies plus, almost pure white millet) and got it rinsed and it's soaking for 12 hours to wake all the bacteria up. Then I will drain, rinse, boil and drain again before PCing. Did the poly filter tek and tape over inoc hole. Plan to inject through tape and retape. Seems easiest to do in the glove box. Made up enough for 6 jars, 3/4 full (when hydrated hopefully) so I have to decide what to spawn. Figure there's no reason to respore the GT or Hawaiian as I can g2g those. I guess depending on when my other stuff shows up I could do a couple new ones, hell idk. I got a day or two to figure it all out lol... also got some of those paper baking trays. They are micro/oven safe as well as opaque and looked to be non-liquid absorbent. Have 6 8x8s which are 2.125 inches deep. Is that going to be deep enough or do I have to go to 3 or 4" for bulk? I think I'm going to skip casing and just do the top layer as bulk substrate when spawning and call it good.

You don't have to go any deeper. No homo. You can go with deeper trays later for whatever reasons. Everything seems fine. Whatever you feel comfortable with. 2 inches seems to be the standard. Then when you get used to your sub recipe and timing. You can move on, or even improve upon your own techniques.

Sputtering in the background lol loud ass thing. First time it went off I bout shit... I was like is it suppose to be that loud? haha 7 qt jars en route.

Someguy15 said:

Sputtering in the background lol loud ass thing. First time it went off I bout shit... I was like is it suppose to be that loud? haha 7 qt jars en route.

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You will find it to be a comforting noise. Oh, you DO want to make adjustments so that it doesn't sputter too loud, loud sputtering means you are using water, too much water means you dry your pot out, drying your pot out means several hours of scrubbing and bitching.

You don't want to be scrubbing and bitching.

canndo said:

You will find it to be a comforting noise. Oh, you DO want to make adjustments so that it doesn't sputter too loud, loud sputtering means you are using water, too much water means you dry your pot out, drying your pot out means several hours of scrubbing and bitching.

You don't want to be scrubbing and bitching.

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Yeah got it turned down now to about 4 and the sputtering is more under control. I'm keep a close watch and nearing the finish line so I think I added enough h2o!

One more thing. I find that one of the mistakes people make is making too few jars. Some methods invite more conamination than others and an expected average is about 20 percent failure (some are fortunate, their teqnique is great or their house has a low particulate level or their bodies simply don't maintain the same or the level of contamination that others do - some, not so much). Plan for that failure up front so you don't have to start from scratch. It only takes a bit more time to make a second set of jars, and not much more money. If you are 100 percent sucessful GREAT - hell, if you hadn't expected it you could even throw jars away (like that is going to happen). If you get the expected loss rate you are still in the sweet spot.

Sooner or later mushroom growers reach a state of distinction - they imagine they see the unseen, the bugs and fungus in the air, the dust on the shelf. What begins to happen is that they switch into the underworld.

We live in the world of growth, the bright side, the side where one plants a seed and it takes nutrients and creates sugars and such. We live in the world where basic elements are magicaly made into the more complex, where chlorophyl reigns.

Very few live in the other world, the world that is the other half of life on this planet - we few live in the world of rot and decay, the upside down world where there is no green (except for the bad things) where life is reorganized into the basic elements. The other half that is just as necessary and just as magnificent. We live in the realm of the decomposers. The two sides of life, the seen and the unseen, the yin and the yang.

It is akin to looking at a leafy tree up in the sky - most see....the leaves. Some see the spaces between the leaves. Those spaces are where we reside when we grow mushrooms.

If you want to do repeat grows I recommend you buy shower anti-mold spray and spray the crap out of everything in your house occasionally.

Flame the needle after every jar, and don't let it touch anything in between.

Looks like your generating your army of darkness. Good luck. Let the games begin.

ANC said:

If you want to do repeat grows I recommend you buy shower anti-mold spray and spray the crap out of everything in your house occasionally.

Flame the needle after every jar, and don't let it touch anything in between.

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Like http://www.plainjanes.biz/main/products/antimold.html? probably smells good too lol. Can't I just lysol the room I'm working in, close it up to stop as much air flow as possible, and then work in a glove box? Only thing I was wondering about is the carbon from flaming the needles, most of it comes off on the papertowel/iso but is it any harm? Just sterile carbon I would assume.

A single spot of, oh, say enriched agar - contaminated by, oh, say, Aspergilis Niger, 40 feet away and in another room from where you are working can easily contaminate your entire suite of work. ANC is correct in that the cleaner you keep your house the longer you will be able to grow mushrooms. As I was saying, there is an eco system in your house, and a sub system in each room. These systems can change throughout the year and depending on what it is that you do. I grow and can tomatoes, my kitchen becomes filled with the spores of tomato blight and rotting tomatoes (I believe an aspergillis). The cleaner you keep your home the better but of course you can simply lysol the room and it will likely work.

The soot won't make any difference - but for the most part I have given up flame sterilization in my work - especially micropropagation, denatured alcohol and a duplication of instruments serves me well. I leave one instrument in the alcohol while I use the other and then switch every few minutes. This of course may not work so well with syringes.

lysol is fine, even recommended for cleaning the air of bacteria, it realy reduces the amount of airborn crap drasticaly, I don't know if it does anything to mold spores though.

Knocked up 7 jars tonight. 2x Penis Envy, Treasure coast and Hawaiian. As well as a single Golden Teacher. The last of my syringes only had 5ml of each left.

Also I found a better incubation spot that maintains 76-81F. Would like a tad warmer but it's the best I can do without a mat/thermo setup.

Sounds good. Are you going to be putting up any more pics?

DaSprout said:

Sounds good. Are you going to be putting up any more pics?

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Yea just not for a week. Camera was stolen by gf... And everyones seen a jar of WBS rite? lol actually I could post some pics of my 2 good bags, they are starting to look decent...but slooow

You will pay... with pics!

Hey I sent you a pm that may help you out on your next move

stonestare said:

Hey I sent you a pm that may help you out on your next move

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yea I am ready to spawn to poo. I know about g2g but have to be more sterile and syringes only last so long so I figured I'd just use them up. I will prob g2g any strains I want to keep around and then just print anything else for storage. A well stored print can last over 5-10 years.

G2G is indeed a bitch, I have an abysmal fail rate with it. When I grow shrooms, I just space cooking up new jars evenly on the calendar and make sure there are new batches of everything in every stage.

ANC said:

If you want to do repeat grows I recommend you buy shower anti-mold spray and spray the crap out of everything in your house occasionally.

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Agreed. But when I go into dexter mode, I create multiple airlocks into a walk-in closet, and have ozone generators to kill everything everywhere. I run the ozone while scrubbing down in the airlock, and then have to wait 15 minutes until the poison level goes down.

It seems my most dangerous moment (for contam) is pressure cooker unloads. Before depressurisation I cover them with lysol impregnated towels, and then I put them into their own area behind a vinyl glove wall, spray the shit out of them in there, and try to always work everything behind the wall.

Think of a multi-level premie baby unit.

Once everything is settled in behind the wall, I am done all sterile prep and can work at my leisure. I hate rushing while wearing a moonsuit in stagnant air.

ANC said:

G2G is indeed a bitch, I have an abysmal fail rate with it. When I grow shrooms, I just space cooking up new jars evenly on the calendar and make sure there are new batches of everything in every stage.

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Aw man. I'm a new reader of these forums, and I heartily agreed with your trailer. Dude, you are (were) a god. But now you dropped to demi-god. Please, please, redeem yourself. Oh, dammit, I have no right to judge or ask. But please, this is NOT an insult, this is a hopeful statement. The cornerstone of my production method depends on g2g, and I REALLY have about a 95% success rate (no contams, even using jars that had been loaded, cooked, and then stored for months before use).

If you have the workspace, setup a premie unit, and then all the various "high end" methods become easy.