Let's Grow Mushrooms - A Beginners Gigantic Bulk Attempt with PF Tek

I've been wanting to start this thread for a few months. Grew a batch of shrooms in tubs, and now have a general idea of what to do.

Now its time to go big. Here in Canada we cant exactly go outside to pick them like everyone in the Southern/Central USA can.

I'd like this journal to be interactive. Give me tips, suggestions, insults, criticism, anything that would help. I'm a novice, and sure as heck dont know all!!!

Took this picture this morning..... About half of the jars have colonized to the bottom, so I'm going to separate them out later this afternoon and let them sit a few days more then dunk and roll and mushrooms!!! We'll have TOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNNSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS of edible Mushrooms before two weeks is up from today. At least, I think. They've been in jars since September 20th, so that puts the jars at 23 days old today.

Of all the jars you see there (150 to 175 of em or so, I'll have to count them again), only 2 had contaminants and had to be discarded, so my innoculation sterilization seems to be perfectly in order. A few jars hadnt colonized much at all, you see them in the front of the pictures. There's about 4 of them in total, which isnt bad either.









STRAINS:

Golden Teacher
Cambodian
B+
Brazil
Ban Hua Thanon
Z Strain

....to be continued

+rep to all who help!

Whats going to be your birthing method?

timeismoney1 said:

Whats going to be your birthing method?

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Dunk N Roll. For those unaware, you take the white cakes out of the jars, dunk them for 24 hours in cold water in the dark, and then you roll them in dry vermiculite and then in about 5-7 days pins start to form on the cakes and voila, mushroooooms.

93 jars are fully colonized. I set them on separate shelves to wait and additional 3 days before I dunk them, some of the jars have shrooms growing in the wall space already which accelerated my wanting to wait a week, 3 days + dunking will be plenty.

45 jars are mostly colonized. Probably 5 or so wont be worth anything and will be discarded due to LOW colonization.

14 jars were contaminated, 3 with green mold and 11 with a weird orange color contam which might not even be a contam but since it isnt white I toss it.

(Colonized means that they are almost all white and full of mycellium, which is the seed of the mushroom per say)

Time to go setup the fruiting chambers now and get air lines run. Its going to be mostly automated for air, but manual misting. Pics soon once its worth showing. The fruiting chambers are all triple stack shelving drawers for super space consolidation. Tubs took up too much room and fail vertically.

Thanks for all the compliments!

researchkitty said:

Now its time to go big. Here in Canada we cant exactly go outside to pick them like everyone in the Southern/Central USA can.

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There are strains of hallucinogenic mushrooms that grow in canada
for example conocybe smithii ,gymnopilus vadilipe ,panaelus cinctulus ,psilocybe cyanescens.

But anyway nice grow,good for a beginner,low contamination rate.
If you isolate a strain it should take care of the weak jars and give you faster grow speed.
What did you use prints or syringe?
What's you cabinet temp?

Was not thinking anyone would do a pf tek so big ,i would of gone for a rye jars and rye to rye transfer easier when going big.
You could stack you jars on top of each other to save space as long as bottom of glass jar on jar metal jar lid and doesn't cover up the filter paper all the way or create a seal around the metal lid.
Good job i tip my hat to you, if i was wearing a hat. Should produce a good yield.
.

Where did you put all your campbell soups at

That's a wide variety of strains. I hope all the best for your mycelium endeavors!

l333t said:

There are strains of hallucinogenic mushrooms that grow in canada
for example conocybe smithii ,gymnopilus vadilipe ,panaelus cinctulus ,psilocybe cyanescens.

But anyway nice grow,good for a beginner,low contamination rate.
If you isolate a strain it should take care of the weak jars and give you faster grow speed.
What did you use prints or syringe?
What's you cabinet temp?

Was not thinking anyone would do a pf tek so big ,i would of gone for a rye jars and rye to rye transfer easier when going big.
You could stack you jars on top of each other to save space as long as bottom of glass jar on jar metal jar lid and doesn't cover up the filter paper all the way or create a seal around the metal lid.
Good job i tip my hat to you, if i was wearing a hat. Should produce a good yield.
.

Click to expand...

Even with some in Canada, I aint the go in the field and pick stuff type Here, I can control everything!

I hope to isolate some good spore prints once the cakes start fruiting. Right now, I used syringes and still have about 20 or 25 in the fridge. My cabinet (or cupboards) temperature is around 79(f) so 81(f) in the jars.

For stacking jars, I didnt think that would be good for jar air exchange, but they cant cover all of it and its all tyvek so I guess it would probably be good. I'll give a few a stack next time around and see if it helps or hurts. Thanks

It is pretty silly to do SO MANY jars, but it really isnt too much work. As a novice (my second mushroom attempt), I'll get into bulk stuff later but not quite yet.

ndangerspecimen101 said:

Where did you put all your campbell soups at

That's a wide variety of strains. I hope all the best for your mycelium endeavors!

Click to expand...

Thanks! No Campbell, you know you can make a kick ass chicken soup yourself that tastes WAAAAY better than Campbells? Screw the kids and their box tops on cans!!!

After sorting through the jars, about half of the "ready!" jars that would be dunked in 3 days already have shrooms pinning inside of the jars. Therefore, they are 100% ready to go. I'm dunking them now and will post pics shortly.

You've been labeling those jars haven't you?

And yes I know home made chicken soup outbeats any canned stuff... just thought you'll appreciate the humor

That was a fun few hours. Ok, lets get rolling.



All done with the dunk, now they sit in the dark and soak up that water for 24 hours. We'll show what to do after when we get there, take it slow



Cakes!



More cakes!



These are all of my contaminated jars. The green is pretty obviously bad. The orangeish looking ones dont look like mold, it just looks gross so I figure they'll get thrown away unless someone here with experience tells me what it is and if its safe or could rinse off.



The reason I dunked these earlier than I planned is because of these. Mushrooms mixed in with the dry vermiculite layer. When the cakes in jars start to show shrooms, its fully colonized and ready to be dunked.



Here's the rest of the unfinished jars. I think about 70-75% of them will make it no problem by the end of next week.



So what the hell do we do with all these cakes? (The white puffy stuff from the jars is a cake, full of mycellium brown rice flour vermiculite and water) We put them in these, my fruiting chambers. Consider this the 'flower room' of shrooms, and the jars as the 'veg room'. Most people use tubs. I'm not, they take too much space up. When the cakes are ready tomorrow, they will have a few inches of soaking wet perlite on the bottom and the cakes go on top under a piece of foil or the jar lids.



Now that the holes are drilled.......... These allow fresh air in a little bit and co2 out. Normally you'd have to open each drawer up a dozen times a day to let stale air out and fresh air in, but we're going to automate that as you'll see in a bit.



The drawers are big! Should fit about 9 to 12 cakes per drawer, I think 12 will be fine but if the shroomies get too big they might have to space out a bit. It's OK, I have 10 of the drawer sets for 30 total drawers.



Tomorrow I'll be hooking up an 8 port Eco Air pump (25 watts) on a timer. There'll be a hose that goes to each drawer top and blow air down the railings. The railings will have a hole in them and same with the drawer so when its closed it allows that air to flow right in no problem. I'm not sure on the timer settings yet though, somewhere around 1 minute on every 15 minutes sounds about right though, so please help here if you can.

I'll still have to manually mist them, just wont have to do air exchange fanning quite so often.



Compare what space 18 drawers take up compared to 5 tubs. Cant stack the tubs, either! Optimize, optimize!



Remember those jars that I said had shrooms already? Here's a few of the bigger ones that I kept since they are still just as good and potent. These were all snugged up the side of the jar and growing the tops through the dry vermiculite germ barrier.


--------------

Next step -- tomorrow the cakes get dunked and rolled and the tubs get the rest of their holes, wired up to the air pump, and layered with wet perlite. Stay tuned.............

Thanks for looking and please let me know if I've fucked up in any way.

Kitty

It's awesome that I can watch as you go. I just noticed the first signs of mycelium in my jars today and I can follow what you're doing instead of fumbling along.

nice job researchkitty, im jelous.haha. ill be watching this thread, i plan on startin some grows soon also. jsut getting all my supplies ready

"You have given out too much Reputation in the last 24 hours, try again later." Haha I've got 8 hours before all the cakes will be rolled and put in the tubs so I've gotta get to work!!

Definately subbed. Been thinkin about startin up some shrooms here soon. +Reps.

I subbed yesterday but my post didn't go through lol any ways thats a lotta jars this is gonna be bad ass to see + rep and subbed

This is going to be a great show in every way ... I can't believe that you are not doing mono tubes .... as this is going to involve so much more work on your part.
I will be glued to this thread .... as your success in volume .... is definitely something to study.
All the luck !!
Can't wait to see more pics ...

One quick question .... how is the ambient air cleaned/scrubbed .... in your chamber room ?

DarthD3vl said:

I subbed yesterday but my post didn't go through lol any ways thats a lotta jars this is gonna be bad ass to see + rep and subbed

Click to expand...

Glad you made it

Puffer Fish said:

This is going to be a great show in every way ... I can't believe that you are not doing mono tubes .... as this is going to involve so much more work on your part.
I will be glued to this thread .... as your success in volume .... is definitely something to study.
All the luck !!
Can't wait to see more pics ...

One quick question .... how is the ambient air cleaned/scrubbed .... in your chamber room ?

Click to expand...

Thanks..... I am doing mono tubs -- they just look like plastic drawers instead of a tub itself.

The ambient air isnt cleaned or scrubbed in any way. We're doing it with "tap air" (pun on water, wasnt really funny, but left it here anyway). Fresh air is pumped in by an air pump, and I need more hosing and pumps oops! I'll get them tomorrow.

Pictures shortly, almost done rolling the cakes and putting them in the drawers.

ohh gooodness, and by goodness i mean.. shrooooms!

Yayyyyy picture time!

Dunk N Roll (aka Birthing of the Cakes) is now done. Filled up 8 of the drawers with cakes. The others in the dark room are still on their way, another few days on them still.


The cakes are rinsed and then rolled in dry vermiculite.



See? Rinsing!



Each tub has a ton of small holes in them around the sides. Then, super wet perlite is rinsed and added to the tubs, about 4" thick. Then, jar lids (or aluminum foil, your call!) are placed 12 per drawer.



And then we put the cakes in them! They stay dry for a few hours, to let the vermiculite really stick to the cakes. Then we start misting and fanning the drawers every few hours.



All of the completed drawers.



Nom Nom Nom!



Because lazy is gravy, the tubs will be (but arent yet) set on a timer to pump fresh air in them for one minute every fifteen minutes. They'll still be manually misted every few hours, this is just an extra for air exchange.



Each pump will do 8 drawers, so I need to buy more pumps. This one is a 25watt pump.



See how the lines go in? From the side of the frame to the top middle of each drawer. The old air will vent naturally as new air is pumped in.



Now that they've been in there a while, they've been misted and the drawers will be humid 100% all day long.



More to do still, lots of air lines to run and holes to drill




That's all for tonight! Thanks everyone for all your encouragement, expect more soon when there's something to show. I expect to see pins on them in the next few days and be plucking shrooms from them within a week. We'll have pics of the drying chamber setups too shortly, full of screens and dessicant!

Kitty