Okay, I have finnally found my memory card so im gonna fill everyone in on whats been happening in beaners world the past few weeks, to start with i will show you the process i went through to convert standard brown rice flour cakes into a cased substrate...
First lets talk about supplys, before i started i collected;
1. sterile casing material (50/50 peat moss/vermiculite, with oyster shell powder to raise the ph)
2. fully collonized brown rice flower cakes, I used 2 for this experement.
3. paper towels and evaporating hand sanitizer
4. light resistant substrate container
5. freezer bag
First i used the hand sanatizer and paper towels to somewhat steralize the container that the substate will be birthed into. after the sanitizer evaporated I layed a 1/4-1/2 inch layer of damp casing material on the bottom of the pan, casing should drip a few drops when squeezed but not a lot.
I then birthed the two cakes into the freezer bag, and using my kabar, broke the cakes up into 4-5 peices each, be carefull with this step if you try it, i stabbed a pretty deep hole in my hand, most teks recomend a fork.
afterward i broke it up into pieces the size of a dice, by mushing them from the outside of the bag, then i poured the crumbled cakes onto the casing.
the final step is too pour another 1/4-1/2 inch layer of casing on top of the crumbled cakes.
the casing layers simulate the wild, the casing is sprayed daily to be kept moist, after casing they are put back into a dark warm place for another 5 days or so, if mycelium started to sprout through the casing after a day or two i added a bit more to keep the mycellium layer even. 5 days later they were put into a second fruiting chamber (ice cream bucket with a bit of damp pearlite, nothing fancy) and given a few hours of light a day, durring the bulk of the day they sit 2 feet above ground on a shelf in my closet. this is done because the majority of contaminants are within 12 inches of the floor. after a week or so, bam! pins are forming!!!