| Here are a couple that SWIM found out the hard way when he started recently.
Don't try to run if you haven't even tried to crawl. Although there are many VERY cool teks, most require some experiance to work with. Crawl by doing the PF tek, or a similar tek for beginners, and move on to the exciting teks after you have a successful grow or two under your belt.
Keep it simple, there is no need to spend $200 building the ideal grow room for your first try. You won't even know what the ideal grow room would consist of, based on your local environment, without a simple grow to see where your local environment falls short. A plastic box, and a spray bottle are all you really need to start. Add perlite if you can't keep the humidity high enough, add a heat source if growth is slowed by the cold, etc.
While the pet (ie: reptile) humidity and temperature guages may look ideal for a cheap price, they're a waste of money. The one SWIM bought only showed RH to be 80% when there was moisture droplets forming on everything. On the flip-side, a UTH (Under Tank Heater - with adjustable control) for reptiles, stuck to the bottom of your plastic box with a layer of wet perlite on the inside lets you control the temperature very well.
Be Patient, all but one of SWIMs failures were his fault for being impatient and trying to rush things. The harder you try to make it work, the harder you'll make it to succeed. It's amazing how if you let yourself get occupied with something else, and check back after a few days, they are not only still going great, but seem to be doing even better than when you checked on them every 30 minutes.
If you are using myco-bags, and have space, make twice or three times the bags you plan on using. The bags will stay sterile, shouldn't lose much moisture, and act as a control for your crop. If all your innoc'd bags contam, and none of the control do, you know your problem was in the innoculation or spore source. It's also very nice to have a substrate ready-to-go that you know is contam free (From being in the control group) to use when you don't have time to make any up. It usually only takes 50% more time to make three times the bags, and in SWIMs opinion is time well spent.
Everyone Fails, be prepared to yourself. Every successfull grower has had at least a few contaminations or other problems. SWIM is glad he had a few to teach him where he was prone to make mistakes. He learned from them and has watched himself in those areas. The failures cost very little, and taught him some lessons that he apparently couldn't learn otherwise.
When making syringes from prints, don't try to get the whole print in one syringe for extra-strength syringes. Similarly, don't use a whole syringe to innoculate one jar for faster colonization - You will get the opposite result. The mentioned 1cc / jar is plenty, more is a waste in SWIMs opinion.
If you're ever in doubt about how to do something, login here and use the search function. There are very few things SWIM hasn't been able to find on the board in great detail.
Although most of these have been mentioned somewhere on the board at one time or another, these are the particular ones that SWIM didn't seem to grasp. If you're a newbie, these DO apply to you, don't think that you're special and can skip the words of advice. If SWIM had been less arrogant, he would have had much less frustration when starting, and only paid 1/4 the amount he did to get started.
-RavN |