Ever wondered how all this works?
If after having read this lesson, you would like to further your learning in a simple to follow, fully illustrated, step by step guide to growing cubensis on bulk, grain to grain transfers, liquid cultures, agar work and more, check out this wonderful 80 page booklet available on E-book format for only
4 dollars!
The Closet Cultivator's guide to MAGIC MUSHROOMS.
So let's get started, shall we?
Ok, so assuming you now have your spore syringe from a trusted vendor or by making one from a print, you are going to need to do two things.
The first step is to inoculate your substrate jar.
This is done simply by sterilizing the tip of the syringe, and then injecting about 1cc of solution into each jar.
A substrate jar is simply a sterilized, pre-moistened nutrient filled jar, fashioned with a tyvek lid for gas exchange.
The easiest to build design uses high temp silicone ports as a self healing injection site. This way they can be used again and again without risking contaminants from lifting tape off of a hole.
To fashion your own grain substrate jar you are going to need a 15psi pressure cooker/canner.
Although there is another method that allows the use of boiling water, I do not suggest it.
This method using brown rice four, and vermiculite is much more likely to contaminate, and the yields are sometimes not at all worth the effort.
Grains such as popcorn, rye berries, or wild bird seed grains, are perfect candidates for jar substrate, but also have bacteria and mold naturally living on them, so they must be soaked for 24 hours to germinate the spores, rinsed, drained well, and then pressure cooked for 60 minutes at 15 psi.
Because our lids are fashioned with a tyvek filter material, there is an allowance for gas exchange, but not enough air to stop vegetative growth..
On my jar design a large droplet of high temp silicone is added to a small hole in the center of the lid plate, which acts as a self healing port for inoculation using a 10 or 20 cc syringe.
The Liquid Culture
The second step you will defiantly want to take at the same time as your first jar inoculations is to create a liquid culture.
A liquid culture or “LC” as they are normally referred to in the mycology community is a liquid nutrient solution that allows the growth of mushroom mycelium in a form that can be taken up into a syringe and used to colonize substrate jars at a much, much faster speed.
A mixture of karo syrup, or other nutrient solution, and distilled water can be combined inside of small canning jar fitted with a modified inoculation lid.
The modification being only one very small air hole is left in the lid besides the silicone covered hole.
This will prevent a vacuum from being created when liquid is injected, and taken in when creating an inoculation syringe.
This jar is then pressure cooked at 15 psi for about 15 minutes.
If you don’t have enough spore solution left over from your jar inoculations don’t worry.
It is actually better to use live mycelium from inside the base of the stem.
This is referred to as Cloning.
This process will result in a mycelium culture that once fruited, will have a much more even, thick, and uniform “Pinset”.
A pinset is simply describing how the mushroom pins form right before they sprout up into large, mature fruits.
A bad pinset will have clumps of mushrooms in some areas, and nothing in others.
A good pinset is a nice, even layer of pins covering the entire surface of your final substrate.
Cloned liquid cultures produce some of the largest yielding flushes of mushrooms ever seen.
I highly suggest giving this a try at some point in your mycology hobby.
If you do have a tiny bit of spore solution left over from your first jar inoculation, go ahead and start a liquid culture now.
Just squirt what you have left into your LC jar that you have either made on your own, or purchased.
Once you have successfully fruited your first harvest, you can simply make a cloned LC using “still air glove box”, a small knife or scalpel, and a lighter.
Simply put all components inside your freshly cleaned glove box, flame sterilize your knife blade, then split the stem in half scraping just a small amount of freshly exposed white mycelium and dropping into your jar with the lid ever so quickly cracked open just enough to slide the mycelium sample into the solution.
Seal the lid back up and you are done.
Once this culture grows into about a marble sized ball, you can simply shake the jar back and forth to break up the culture, insert your sterilized syringe into the liquid and suck up 10 to 20 cc depending on the size syringe you are using.
A still air glove box is without a doubt something that you are going to want to make or buy for this hobby.
Now that you have your first substrate jars, and possibly your first LC as well it is now time to incubate. The best temperature to incubate in my opinion is right around 84 degrees F.
Since the micro-climate needed for mycelium growth has already been created inside the jar, there is no other requirement for incubation besides temperature, and darkness.
Because light can , and when used at the correct time, will aid in triggering the pinning stage of growth, you will want to completely cut off your incubating jars from any sources of light.
After about seven days of incubation, I like to give my jars a good shake to redistribute all of the infected grains throughout the rest of the un-colonized portions.
Because un-colonized, moistened grains are so likely to contaminate when exposed to open air, it is very important to stress letting the mushroom culture fully consume the provided grain before removing your lid.
My rule of thumb is once I see no more un-colonized grains; I wait another three days just in case the core of the substrate has not fully been overtaken.
Once you see that your jars are completely overtaken with thick white growth, it is now time to “Bulk Spawn”
Bulk Spawn
Now that you have eight or nine jars of fully colonized grain, you are ready to spawn to a bulk substrate.
This is going to increase yields and potency to the point of actually making this entire complicated procedure worth the effort and money invested initially.
For many years serious growers resorted to using pasteurized horse manure, or manure and straw as a bulk spawn, and achieved amazing results.
Very recently however it has also been discovered that the use of coconut husk fiber mixed with an additive of used coffee grounds, then pasteurized or sterilized with just the right amount of water content produces almost identical results as horse manure, without all of smell, and hassle.
If you decide to mix your own bulk spawn, remember to pasteurize or sterilize, then once cooled simple do all of your mixing in a good sized contractor garbage bag.
My method has always been to mix my bulk in one bag, then in my fruiting tub, lay another thick, black garbage bag inside on the bottom sort of as a liner to pour your bulk into.
This way your mycelium is protected from light on the sides of your clear tub.
When fruiting conditions are induced, a clear sided container will cause pins to form on the sides first due to the already higher humidity, caused by the restriction of the plastic.
If this method is used, instead of just keeping it in the original bag, you will want to cover any exposed grains on the top of your coir layer with some extra coir.
Since coir is PH adjusted, it is much harder for mold spores to germinate on it.
Grain however is a landing zone for contaminants, so anything exposed to open air should be covered for protection.
I will note here that it is very important to try to get your coir at a nice flat plane before it is colonized.
I will explain why this is so important in a just a few lines, so bear with me.
This spawn should only take about five to seven days to completely overtake all the coir. Once this has happened you are going to need to add a “casing layer”
Casing layer is made of a non-nutritive substance, ph adjusted to about 7.5 to 8 for contaminant fighting properties. This layer will also add lost of humidity to the mushroom fruits as they start to form while keeping them safe from mold spores.
The mixture is then sterilized at 15 psi at a pre-moistened consistency for perfect humidity increase during fruiting.
Casing layers are probably the most complicated and most important part of your myco-grow.
An improper PH level can do two things. To high and you burn your mycelium, and your grow is lost.
Too low, and you are a landing zone for mold and bacteria, and your grow is lost, or severely diminished.
I suggest buying your first couple batches of casing mixture until you really understand sterility, and ph levels.
Once your casing batch has been obtained, using rubber glove, air sanitizer, mask “for the mushrooms safety, not yours” you will want to spread about a half inch layer as evenly as possible over the top of your coir.
The surface layer itself doesn’t exactly have to be even. It is the distance between your colonized coir, and the top of the casing layer that has to be as exact as possible.
You should try to get this as close to .5 inches as possible.
Once finished your will want to continue to incubate in darkness until mycelium starts to poke through the top. This should only take about three to four days.
As the mycelium has popped through the top of the casing layer you are more than likely going to need to “patch”
Patching is the technique of keeping the exposed mycelium completely even across the entire fruiting surface.
The little patches of white that are exposed to the surface of your casing before the other parts of the casing layer should be covered with about an 1/8 inch layer of moistened casing material.
This will allow a evenly colonized surface as the rest of the mycelium still growing under the casing layer will eventually catch up to the parts of the colony that have already popped up on the top layer, but where then covered back up.
The trick to perfect pinset for mushrooms of any kind, is to expose the mycelium to fresh air, high humidity, and light all at the same time.
This will ensure a totally even blanket of medium sized fruits instead of small patches with one or two huge fruits, and several tiny, or aborted pins.
This is the reason to patch. A perfectly patched casing layer should have little bits of un-colonized peat/verm evenly spread across the entire surface. The rest should be covered with nice white healthy mycelium.
Once the casing and patching has reached what you consider to be perfection. It is then time to fruit!
Fruiting
Fruiting can be done in a number of ways, and after some time, and a little experience under your belt, your own designs will come flooding to your mind. Until then, here is how I would do it.
A medium sized clear plastic storage tub is modified with four golf ball sized holes, and then stuffed with “polyfill” Polyfill is a synthetic stuffing material for pillows, stuffed animals etc and has a wonderfully resistant property to contaminate.
These four holes will allow for gas exchange with filtered air instead of just fanning.
A small container is then attached to the center of the inside of the tub, against one of the walls. This will be filled almost to the top with distilled water.
A small fish tank air pump is connected via plastic hosing, though the polyfill gas exchange hole, and then attached at the end inside the tub is a three inch fish tank bubble stone that is then placed into the distilled water container, and allowed to bubble.
Combined with the moisture given off by the casing layer, these bubbles with kick the relative humidity up in the tub to the required level for fruiting your mushrooms.
The trick to getting quick and healthy fruits is to wait until your coir has been consumed before casing, and fruiting.
The number one trigger for pinning is running out of food.
Think of fruiting as a survival method for the mushrooms.
When the colony runs out of food, it knows it is time to reproduce, so it begins to look for the next pinning trigger, fresh air exchange.
Fresh air exchange keeps the co2 levels down far enough to stimulate what is referred to as “Knotting”.
This might seem like an easy condition to induce, but this has to be done while keeping the air in the tub at 80-90% relative humidity, and keep the casing layer from drying out.
This is when the feeler mycelium that have been looking for food in the casing layer, but not finding it, start to poke up towards the next pinning trigger.
Light.
These knots will push towards the light, and entangle within themselves, merging into what will quickly become tiny pins.
When a pin starts to form you will see these solid white masses of mycelium start to turn brown at the top of the formations.
This is when you know you have actual pinning going on.
From here you have about four to six days to go until the “fruits” of your labor can be reaped.
I hope this helps anyone who wanted to give this a try.
If you would like to further your learning in a simple to follow, fully illustrated, step by step guide to growing cubensis on bulk, grain to grain transfers, liquid cultures, agar work and more, check out this wonderful 80 page booklet available on E-book format for only
4 dollars!
The Closet Cultivator's guide to MAGIC MUSHROOMS.
Remember, growing this particular variety of mushrooms is only legal in certain places.
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