[TheBagman]

I am currently growing some shrooms for my first time. Not my first attemp as my first attempt got contaminated. The reason they got contaminated was because I did not steralize well enough. Something that is really important when growing mushrooms is steralization as it is KEY!

I am going to take you step by step on what I have done. It will be kind of a Tek and a journal in a way.

Well here goes.

The first thing I did was get everything ready and prep my work area. This includes steralizing everything with rubbing alcohol and hot water, and Spraying lysol around.

My work area:



The next thing I did was take a 3 penny nail and a hammer and poke holes in the lids of my 1/2 pint shoulderless jars, like so:



Once that was done, I mixed my substrate. My substrate consisted of 5 cups of vermaculite (1/2 cup per jar), 2.5 cups of Brown Rice Flour (1/4 cup per jar), and 2.5 cups of spring water. I mixed this well in a mixing bowl, like so:



Once the substrate is mixed well, I put the substrate in the jars, not quite filling it leaving about an inch from the top. Then I slammed it down on my palm to pack it, and evened it out with a fork.



Once I have it evened out and all that I put dry vermiculite on the top of the substrate to ward out contaminants.



Now I put the lids on the jars. I am using lids with two parts, regular canning jar lids. I put the part with the rubber up, and keep the lids loose, but not real loose. Once I have the lids on I cover the holes with masking tape.



Then I cover the lids with tin foil to get them ready to steam.

Now time to steralize the substrate jars in a steamer on the lowest boiling point for 1.5 to 2 hours...



Well that is preperation of the PF Tek Jars. I am using the B+ strain from www.raphstersspores.com.

www.shroomery.org is where I am getting most of my info.

And a few links to the Teks that I am following for this grow.

http://www.shroomery.org/index/par/23593

http://www.shroomery.org/index/par/3372

http://www.shroomery.org/index/par/7919

[TheBagman]

And, Now for inoculation.

Once the jars have cooled down for about 2 hours it is then time for inoculation.

First I put the needle on the syringe to get it ready for inoculation.

Then I took my Crown Royal glass and turned it upside down, and poured some denatured alcohol on it and lit it. Then I flamed my needle to sterilize it. Once it is red hot I pull the needle away and wipe it with a rag that is douced in rubbing alcohol.



Once the needle has cooled, it is time for inoculation. Shake the needle well. Pull the masking tape away from the holes. Then insert the need all the way into the jar through the hole that was poked with the nail. Put the needle against the jar so when pushing the plunger it is running down the glass of the jar. I innoculated the jars with 1cc of liquid per jar. That is 1/4 cc per hole.



The jars are now innoculated.

[TheBagman]

For keeping the jars at the correct temperature I am going to use the TiT technique.

Fist you take a rubbermaid tub and put a fish tank heater I bought on the bottom of it.



Then I put another tub in the other top, hence TiT (Tub in Tub). And, fill the bottom one with water. Then Zip tye them bitches down. This should keep it at about 80F - 86F which is where we want the temp to stay.



Here they are.

[TheBagman]

Here is them after day three. You can just start to see some colonization (white fuzzy looking stuff).

[TheBagman]

Day 5 or 6, I forget which. Notice it is colonizing real well. The TiT is keeping them at about 83F, and about a 50% RH. So far so good.

[TheBagman]

This was from about day 10...keeping a stable temp and looking good, with some fast growth...

[TheBagman]

Here they are day 20. Most of them are damn near ready to go into the terrarium. They got some nice myc growin, and the bottoms are filled out.

Looking good. Some might go into the terrarium Monday/Tue/Wed, or whenever I think they are ready.

But, here they are day 20...





Here is the bottom of one, when I turned it upside down it got bruised just a tish, but that is no biggie, happens alot.



And, here is the only jar where the whole cake is not quite completely colonized. This one and another were the slowest ones, but the other one finally completely colonized, and this one is a day or two from.



That's it for the update. Looking damn good and mighty proud of myself so far.

Right now, I am working on getting the Terrarium Prepared. And, I will have pics and a walkthrough on how I did that when I am done later on today.

This is another website I was pointed in the direction of thanks to budslide: http://mycotopia.net/site/news.php

[TheBagman]

This is how I got my terrarium ready to grow these babies.

First off I got my other TiT setup ready, as the ideal temp to have this stage at is 70-90F, which no where in my apt is it 70F, I decided to do the TiT for this stage.

Here is my TiT set up again. I had to rig it so the Zip Ties did not get in the way of sealing the lid. Once I got this set up I proceded to rub down with rubbing alcohol to steralize everything. And, I didn't forget to Lysol my work area.



Now for the steralisation of the perlite. I put the perlight in my Pot, and dumped in a mixture of 1:20 water:bleach into the Pot for an hour.

I got the perlite at a garden center, all garden centers should sell perlite. The particular garden center I went to had only one bag left, but he went to the back and gave me 3 ripped bags, so I only had to buy one bag and I got an equivelant of 2.5 bags for free. It was pretty sweet.



Then once the perlite was sterile, I dumped it into the terrarium after draining it out. Then I evened it out on the bottom. Then I put the Plexiglass in its place leaning situated at about a 45 degree angle.



I cut a part of the lid out of the terrarium and replaced it with clear packing tape. This will allow for some indirect sunlight that will be needed to keep the shrooms growing up and out instead of all over the place.



Now the terrarium is set up and waiting to be filled with some beautiful mushroom cakes.

[TheBagman]

Last night I birthed the cake.

Steralized my cutting board and my work area. Take off the lid of the jar, and scrape the dry vermiculite out into a trash recepticle. Then I took a jar than turned it upside down, and it came out nice and easy right onto the cutting board, only had to tap one.

Here is a birthed cake.

[TheBagman]

Dunk Tek is dunking your cakes in water to hydrate them to initiate pinning. Cold shocking makes them think winter is coming so they pin faster, because they want to spread thier spores to reproduce. Pinning is basically the start of a mushroom that looks kinda like the end of a pin.

Anyways...

I put the cakes in a big steamer pot (steralized of course). Put a steralized plate on top of them, and put a cup of water on top. Then filled the pot with water mixed with 5% H2o2 (Hydrogen Peroxide) an inch above the plate, hence dunking.

Here is the dunked cakes.



Now for the cold shock.

Well, that is simple. Put pot in the fridge.

[TheBagman]

I then proceded to steralize some vermiculite. Steralized everything again. And, spread the vermiculite out where the cakes are going to be set.

Once I have that I steralized my cutting board and took the cakes out of the pot handling them as little as possible, and put them on my cutting board and brought them to the fruiting chamber, situatated them in the chamber, and replaced the plexiglass, and sprayed with a spraybottle on the plexi glass and all around the chamber.

The plexiglass is there to protect the cakes from direct contact with water.

Replace the lid and leave till tommorow morning where I will open the lid and fan it to get some kind of air exchange.

Here is a pic of 7 of the cakes, the other 3 will be dunked and cold shocked on Sunday.