Bulk grow plans, and a humble request for advice from the mycogods...

[fulcanelli]

Greetings to the denizens of the ethereal Mycotopian realm from a humble aspirant to the Mysteries, a fellow journeyman on the Path of Understanding!



I've been lurking the last few weeks and have been astounded at the level of experience and knowledge assembled in this forum relating to the numerous and wide-ranging subjects discussed here.

I’d like to offer my most sincere thanks to you all for the sheer amount and quality of information you’ve all made available here so selflessly and for the good of all who may need it. You’ve certainly suffused this jaded old alchemist’s eyes with a long lost mischievous twinkle in the light of the possibilities you’ve helped reveal to them!


This post is something in the nature of an initial hello, and a request for help in the last stages of planning a small scale ‘stealth’ bulk grow op.



This will be my second grow – the first was MS Transkei (via syringe on three pre-sterilized ‘Mycofarm’ 1Kg rye grain bags, large plastic sealable box w/ perlite humidification, misting and fanning and pure verm casing), and that was quite successful, but unfortunately my setup for this grow did not exist in time for me to clone/LC one of the better Transkei specimens, so I’ll have to work from a spore print I took.


I’d like now to experiment a little further with bulk grows after cloning/selecting a superior sub-strain, and I have my eye on Invitro (a-la-Sandman, BuckarooBanzai, Morthos, Indicaz, et. al) as the logical way forward.

However, I started this op very much from scratch – I had to buy tools, materials, a PC, and all that good stuff, and I’m now at the point where there are a few more questions to be answered before I get going, and I’ll thereafter keep a log (with pics) religiously of how it all goes.


I’ve had enough lab experience to know the importance of communicating every pertinent detail of an experiment between scientists such that the experiment is reproducible; I hope to be successful and learn as much as possible from this experience, and in order that I do so I’m going to try and give all the details I can. I’ve read so many posts on so many things here that if I fail to credit someone for an idea please forgive me as I mean no offence – I’m approaching you all with honest questions so please don’t misunderstand me as telling you all how to do it!


Anyway, I have a 3m x 4m box room in which everything will be done; at the moment I’m afraid I can’t supply you with pics (coming soon when I get hold of a new cam), but I’ll try and make the descriptions as simple and illustrative as possible.


I have built a laminar flow hood;

• 24” x 24” (610mm x 610mm) Erislam Minipleat 99.999% DOP HEPA, 1” (250Pa) static pressure at working point

• Dayton 4C445 shaded pole blower, 495CFM @ 0” SP (Manufacturer states 265CFM @ 0.8” SP so this should be okay at the working point of the filt

• Inline fan speed control unit, 300W power transformer

• Box made from salvaged 20mm thick medium density fibreaboard (MDF) cleaned, sanded, buffed, sealed with internal gasket frame for HEPA. All joints silicone sealed.

• ? Prefilter – could anyone suggest a suitable prefilter from a supplier in the UK?

• Additionally, I’ll be running a Bionaire HEPA/Ionizer in the room during and outside ‘working’ time to keep the air clean, as there is smoking going on in the rest of the house!

I’m awaiting my blower fan and fan motor control unit to arrive from the US (I live in the UK) – for some reason I couldn’t easily get hold of a fan of the appropriate output and type here.



For an incubator;

I plan on using two HDPE 80Ldustbins (the black stackable kind) as a kind of T-I-T incubator with a thermostatically controlled 250W aquarium heater in the water between them, with that aluminium foil type insulation/cladding wrap around the outer bin to seal in heat, together with an aquarium pump running filtered air into the incubator on a timer.



There will be chickenwire around bulk substrate bags to maintain their shape and to provide spaces for air circulation.


I hope to be able to easily incubate bulk substrates in this cavity, although never having built and tested one before I can’t be sure whether it will work well or not – could someone give me a suggestion based upon their own experience of T-I-T setups if this would work, or what improvements or alternatives are a good idea?



I Also toyed with the idea of using a couple of my Habistat heat mats (17"x11" 20W each) inside the inner bin on chickenwire ‘shelves’ wired to the thermostat to ensure the temperature inside the incubator is evenly distributed and constant. Alternatively, maybe putting a smallish ‘Heat Bomb’ (Hippie3) suspended inside the incubator wired to the same thermostat as the immersed aquarium heater.
Please advise on whether this hypothetical incubator would be suitable and viable to incubate 50L or more of substrate in invitro ‘sandbags’ (bulk) and large autoclavable gusseted filter patch bags (spawn).



For sterilization/pasteurization;


I will be using a Hawkins “Big Boy” 14L pressure cooker (I couldn’t afford a larger one – or I could, but I didn’t trust the quality of some of the other offerings available in the UK. I would have waited longer for an All American but the shipping costs proved prohibitive) to sterilize consumables, tools and containers.


I’m yet to decide definitively on a pasteurization technique; I’ve read many but I’d like to get some feedback first on which method you guys would recommend for the grow after you’ve got all the info on what I’m doing, strains, substrates etc, so please advise as necessary.



Strains;

I’d like to begin with spore prints of the following strains (any comments or suggestions on the performance of these in vitro and nutritional preferences of these varieties would be extremely helpful. I will select for preferred substrains over a a month or two by first inoculating agar and selecting rhizomorphic tissue over three or four iterations plus or minus producing casings from LC of the favoured agar sections, to birth and clone the strongest fruits from the best pinsets;

• Orissa

• P. mexicana “A”

• Ban Phang Ka

• Palenque

• Koh Samui Super Strain

Thereafter, the preferred substrains of each of the above (please correct me if I’m using the wrong terminology – I’m a medicinal chemist by training, not a mycologist!) will be prepared as LC (probably simple dextrose solution) to inoculate grain (spawn).


I’ll be using popcorn in jars with filters sterilized via PC. This will be used to colonise a bulk substrate in large PE bags (similar to sandman’s sandbag TEK and some aspects of BuckarooBanzai’s bulk nugget TEK – namely the PA).



At the moment, I’m thinking 50/25/25 manure (I got pasteurized cow poo pellets)/coir/Polyacrylamide bulk substrate with a wrinkle – I’ll be using a liberal amount of M. Hostilis whole rootbark fibres mixed in before pasteurization. I’m curious, and I’ve got a whole load of M. Hostilis from previous elf-spice experiments so there’s no added expense, although I’ll be experimenting with how the rootbark affects the overall consistency, water retention (field capacity) and pH of the substrate (which I’ll try to keep at or near 7.5) before going ahead – any suggestions? Of course I’ll be doing controls in parallel without the DMT admixture to test the difference in potency.


The large heavy duty clear sandbags will have polyfil patches I’ll make myself sealed at intervals over their surfaces (could someone point me in the right direction for a supplier of polyfil in the UK, or an effective alternative? I’m not convinced Tyvek is the way forward).



Once fully colonized, the substrate will be shaped into 4” deep clear plastic trays while still in the bags, incubated again for a few days, then set into fruiting conditions (indirect sunlight for 5 hrs daily, room temp. maintained at approximately 24 deg. C / 76 deg. F, HEPA filtered/ionized air blown at shelves via fan twice per hour for 10 mins).


The idea is to maximize the surface of the bulk substrate in contact with fresh air in the bag as well as encourage fruiting from the sides (and possibly the bottom, since the trays are clear and the shelves on which they rest will be transparent?).

This is my (tentative) reason for the shaping of the colonized bulk into trays while it is still in the ‘sandbags’, with the sealed top of the sandbag suspended from the underside on the shelf above to keep the volume of air above the substrate as large as possible (and to expose as many of the polyfil filter patches to clean air fanned along the shelves).


After first flush harvest the substrate in the bags will be sprayed with H202 solution (all done under HEPA laminar flow) and the bags closed to await the next floush. If I can come up with some method to dunk high volumes of substrate, I’ll probably do that instead (had excellent result with dunking my Transkei casings!) - maybe put some dry, microwaved verm in the bottom of freshly PC’d sand bags with filters, and transfer the dunked substrate into those under the FH.


Talking numbers, I’m thinking of spawning 1:4 ratio of colonized WBS to bulk substrate – invitro fruiting will take place in trays on up to 8 shelves of length and width 25” x 18” each, so the trays the bags will be fit into can be any area up to those dimensions but the depth of the trays will be approx 4”.



If someone could suggest the best (maximal) dimensions for the trays given that shelf size and substrate depth, that will allow me to calculate the volume of bulk substrate in each bag and therefore the quantity of spawn I’ll need, etc.


I’d greatly appreciate any advice at this stage, especially on the choice of strains and substrates I’m mulling over – if there are improvements or any information anyone here can suggest to help me before I finalise my plans, please do so and it will be greatly appreciated.


F

[BuckarooBanzai]

Wow, great post. A few thoughts…

1. Does your flow hood design provide a plenum chamber? Have ya seen this: http://forums.mycotopia.net/glovebox...flow-hood.html (How to build a "mondo ghetto" laminar flow hood.)

2. Any home air conditioning filter makes a great pre-filter. Layer two or three and the HEPA will last much longer. A HEPA graded AC filter is even better. If you layer two or three, seal em with a little silicone caulk as glue and wrap Duct tape around the outer edge (mondo-ghetto thread above has details).

3. No need to introduce fresh air into the incubator. Be certain your TIT can’t crush the aquarium heater. Run your setup for 3-5 days to profile temps before using.

4. A good quality aquarium heater with a remote temp probe and digital read out would be a good investment for the TIT (Won Brothers makes some good units hardened against salt water). Pour a bunch of salt in the bottom of the TIT to cut down on algae.

5. A little tiny 12V computer fan will circulate air in the incubator and keep heat very evenly distributed, no matter how you decide to provide the heat. I am a huge proponent of the little fan in the incubator to avoid hot spots.

6. The bigger a controlled temp environment you build, the happier you’ll be if you keep going with experiments. Being able to incubate bulk trays makes things MUCH quicker and less likely to contaminate.

7. Any of those strains you listed will work invitro. Any Cubensis will fruit invitro. Nutritional requirements for all cubensis strains are identical. Pans and Cyans are entirely different.

8. 25% may be more polyacrylamide than you need. Poly is only there to hold water and balance water content and a little bit goes a LONG way. One tablespoon will hold 4 cups of water…

9. Polyflill is also known as polyester/synthetic batting for stuffing pillows – any sewing/fabric supply shop will have it.

10. Tyvek works great, but so does polyfill – use whichever you can get easier.

11. Don’t worry too much about keeping the fruiting areas sterile. Once your substrate is fully colonized, it is very resistant to contamination. As long as you are fruiting invitro, in BB-Nug or Sandbag setups, you could do it in an open sewer pit.

12. Invitro projects really need almost no free air at all. Just what comes in through a standard filter patch bag is enough for a bountiful harvest:

That got no more fresh air than what came through the filter patch - no circulation at all. Please note that is a particularly sweet invitro isolate as well.

13. Don’t use H2O2/bleach unless you have a contam issue. Both products will damage the mycelia slightly. You can dunk the harvested nugget by just putting it in a plastic bag full of water and sucking the air out. If you use filter spawn bags, you can dunk in the bag itself (just keep the patch dry).

14. 1:4 spawn:sub is considered excessive by some. I like to spawn even heavier than that, about 1:3. Grain is cheap and the heavier you spawn, the faster you run and the less likely you are to have contamination issues.

15. Dimensions are really more based on what size shelves you have, how easy trays are to get and how much harvest you are looking for. I would humbly suggest starting with one or two trays and nailing your process before deciding how to fill up 8 shelves. You may change your process 10 times in the next 6 months!

Any additional questions are welcome and please bear in mind, all the above is just advice/suggestions. I hate continually saying "In My Opinion" in a long document, so realize the IMOs are implied in each of those sentences!

Pick and choose what you want and realize other folks will have other thoughts.

There are a zillion ways to skin the mycological cat. The only "right way" is the way you understand. The only "right equipment" is what you can find cheap and easy in your area. You can substitute for anything but the spores...

One way or the other, good luck and great first post!

are you gonna grow mushrooms with P. mexicana “A”?
those are known to be very difficult to fruit and are better of for making sclerotia..
good luck!

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[fulcanelli]

Hey BB, many thanks for taking the time to help me; especially on the issue of air circulation. That's simplified my incubation chamber considerably. I was originally going to use a GH for a FC but then I snapped out of my characteristically overcomplex and ambitious plans when a lowly dung-loving saprophyte laughed at me on another, more elusive plane of existence, and awoke me to my senses again! KISS!

Also, on the polyacrylamide, I'll amend my substrate recipe accordingly; could you tell me roughly how many tablespoons of PA I should use with every Litre of Manure/coir? (being from the UK I'm not familiar with cups as a measure of volume, although I think it's 1 cup [US] = 0.21 liter? so if I'm reading you right 1 tbsp PA hols 0.84 L of water?! WOW!). This feels like a silly question (as I'm 99% sure the answer is yes, but just to dot all I's and cross all T's) but will the PA be okay in the pasteurizer?

For pasteurization I'm thinking of simply immersing the sub while inside a porous bag in hot water and keeping the temp. of the water between 160 and 170F for 2-3hrs - would this be sufficient?

Wow, I wish I'd stumbled across this site before I built my flow hood! Yours looks the business BB.

On the subject of my FH, I originally chose wood as a construction material rather than storage boxes because its a material I'm familiar working with, and I wanted its construction to be as solid as possible.

My original design included such a 'plenum' chamber and a GB, but unfortunately wood (even MDF) is prohibitively expensive here; where I live it costs around 40 GBP for a 1m x 2m panel with another 30 GBP for delivery costs! Thats around 140 USD, and I would have needed at least two of those panels to construct my original design. I therefore had to modify and simplify my design to make best use of the wood I had available (which was salvaged from shelving thrown out of a nearby commercial property being refitted). Had I known of alternatives then I probably would have done things a bit differently, but all in all it's not bad - I spent a grand total of under 190GBP on a 24" x 24" 99.999" FH, and hopefully it's all work okay when the fan arrives and I test the sucker's laminar flow and also its output air sterility (with agar).


Of course, this is a more long term project, so while I'l be posting pics here (when my new digital camera gets here) of each step, I'll be spending a good few days to a week getting everything ready, clean, calibrated & tested (FH, incubator, PC, recipes - water retention, pH, PC time, volume ratios, etc.) and finalising systematic sterile procedures for inoculation, culture, spawning etc.

Following that, I'm going to devote a few weeks to substrain selection via agar culture and cloning before starting on bulk.

My first bulk efforts however will indeed be in the interests of experimenting to get everything absolutely right before loading up all 8 shelves (each shelf is approximately 70cm by 50 cm with about a foot of overhead clearance).

I have no doubt that this extra time spent will be rewarding, and
I'm really excited to study these strains in such a systematic way. I'm going to find controlling myself and NOT diving straight into bulk very difficult, i suspect!

Many thanks again for your advice BB, and hopefully this project will contribute in some small way to the vast amount of understanding already here.
If it works and I get even half the results I'm hoping for it'll at least make for some good mycoporn, and at best show that even a relative noob can go bulk and succeed if they approach it in an ordered and well thought out way with the input of more experienced growers.

F

[fulcanelli]

Hi Vinz,

Thanks for the welcome.

No, I'm only really interested in the sclerotia with P. mexicana A. I've heard they can be difficult to grow, but what with everything else I've been reading into I've not had a huge amount of time left to look into exactly what those difficulties are or whether they relate to growing the sclerotia or the mushrooms. Nearer the time I'll look further into that, but the little nuggets of teonanacatl are my aim with that variety!

Incidentally, and I know I'm asking a whole lot of questions here so forgive me for my noobness, but if anyone has any info or links to info on growing truffles in vitro with that strain please share it. Any insight is appreciated.

Thanks

Mr banzai is an awesome dude.. you should check out his institute..
Dont worry about your questions.. thats what we are here for
i started a thread (that is still on going!!!)
on those sclerotia strains.. Mex A and Atl#7
http://forums.mycotopia.net/mushroom...a-strains.html

[fulcanelli]

Thanks again Vinz, that's helped clarify a lot about Mex. A and has made me think of ATL no. 7 also.

However, could you scale that grass seed substrate up to a bulk grow with proportionately greater results? Or is there another substrate that would be better suited to large bulk bags like the ones I have in mind?

[Jake420]

Man, sounds like you have a pretty good setup. One thing you might want to keep in mind is that H2O2 (hydrogen peroxide) breaks down into harmless substances (water and oxygen for the most part) and could be included in your experiment. You could use small amounts in your substrate itself, maybe some in your incubation chamber to help keep that humid environment sterile, etc. Don't overkill though. Good luck man!

[BuckarooBanzai]

Poly will hold about 400 times its own weight in water without getting wet. You can push around 500 times its weight, but then the poly is “wet.” You want it kind of dry, because it can balance a little extra moisture in something else.

So, 10gm of poly will easily hold 400mL of water. A heaping tablespoon could suck up a liter, no problem. Just get some and play with it a little – you’ll be amazed. Also, poly survives autoclaving with no problem.

Measure your sub, after hydrating, by parts. I like 4/4/2 poo/coir/poly.

I can’t offer ya too much advice on pasteurizing. One of the reasons I like worm castings and coir is that I can fully sterilize everything and not worry about it. My experiments with straw logs and manure were pretty dismal failures.

Don’t worry about a ghetto hood. Just make sure there is a few cubic feet of space for the air to expand and swirl around before it hits the filter. Don’t have the blower’s output aimed directly at the filter – it needs a little space to mix around.

And don’t make the mistake of thinking hoods are good for everything. You’ll still need a trusty glove box for cleaning up dirty plates (even clean air blowing around is bad when you are isolating from a nasty sporulator on a plate).

[fulcanelli]

Yep, being from the medical side of academia I've got some practical knowledge, but thanks for pointing out that h2o2 can be used as a mild sterilant in the substrate - something I hadn't considered. Thanks Jake.

BB, you also brought up something I'd not come across; that bulk substrates based on worm castings can be sterilized rather than pasteurized before spawning. Pasteurizing would be an additional job for me to have to do, but if the bulk substrate can simply be sterilized before spawning with colonized grain then that would once more simplify my already overcomplicated life! Your bulk nugget tek's worm castings based substrate seems like a good option to explore in those big sandbags I have in mind, and your yields are certainly nothing to sniff at!

I'll be making a simple glovebox shortly before I get to work, as I suspect you're right about needing one.

My flowhood is a very simple 24@ x 24" x 24" approx. box with the fan on top blowing downwards through the top of the box (located towards the back) and the filter taking up the front face of the box.

There is a baffle blocking 50% of the filter's inner face, so that the effective filtered air output along the face is 24" x 12" (width x height); this should allow me to increase my effective working area along the face of the filter to 24" x 24" (should I need more vertical space in future) by buying and mounting either an additional identical 500cfm fan or replacing the existing one with one 1000cfm blower.

Either way, I think there is a total volume within the box sufficient to allow turbulent flow within and a laminar flow through the filter at the desired volumetric rate. I just had to make the best use of my funds (which were woefully limited to under 200 GBP) to buy parts for the FH, and I made a compromise between the parts I could get hold of, prices and futureproofness (if there is such a word!)

I appreciate all the advice and welcoming vibes, guys. Keep it comin'

[fulcanelli]

I've just been rereading your bulk nugget tek in more detail BB and I was wondering, does your choice of 'Earth Juice' to hydrate your substrates derive from a general observation that you get higher yields/potency/etc. when using it, or is it that some of the contents are known to be generally nutritious to mycelia?

I've found a hydroponics vendor in the UK who stocks it, but it seems to come in three different flavours; Earth Juice 'grow', 'bloom' and 'catalyst'. Should I use a cocktail of all three (as in hydroponic plant cultivation) or are you referring to one of them in particular for mushroom cultivation?

I'm all for giving our little friends more that they need to flourish, and if that means Earth Juice instead of plain spring/distilled water I'll give it a try - as long as the potential benefits outweigh the risk.
If, as I suspect, I end up trying EJ I'll certainly run some controls without it just to see for myself what the advantages are, but some input from others with greater experience can't hurt before beginning.

Thanks for all your input so far everyone, it's all coming together fast with all your help.

Originally Posted by fulcanelli

Thanks again Vinz, that's helped clarify a lot about Mex. A and has made me think of ATL no. 7 also.

However, could you scale that grass seed substrate up to a bulk grow with proportionately greater results? Or is there another substrate that would be better suited to large bulk bags like the ones I have in mind?

I think grass seed would be your best bet.. it would work on large big spawn bags as long as you get to PC it coz its grain..

[BuckarooBanzai]

EarthJuice (hereafter, EJ) comes in lots more “flavors” than just grow, bloom and catalyst. You also have catalyst, microblast and meta-K in their product line.

The recipe I use:
http://forums.mycotopia.net/misc-mag...tml#post292131 (BB Tek - A complete walk through; spores to LC to jars to bulk substrate)

That is step 9 from the “full process” BB-Tek:
http://forums.mycotopia.net/misc-mag...tml#post292131 (BB Tek - A complete walk through; spores to LC to jars to bulk substrate)

Lots of interesting reading to be found at the Banzai Institute (that is a link in my sig, by the way).

I like EJ because I’m a city dweller and don’t have access to a stream/pond/lake. The idea behind using it is two fold. One is that it makes certain all the trace/micro nutrients are provided for our little friend’s metabolic needs. Two is that I’ve noticed a markedly lower rate of contamination using EJ for hydration.

Tap water works just fine. Spring works a little better. Lake/pond works best. Hippie3 actually first clued me in to using “natural” water (he hydrates all his Mycrotopia products with pond water).

EJ is by no means mandatory, by the way. I mix up fertilizer “teas” (based on EJ, primarily) for a certain friend who grows certain other green plants and wants organic nutrients for his hydro systems. As a result, I tend to have lots of EJ “laying around” just waiting for my little fungi friends – waste not, want not, eh?

[fulcanelli]

Vinz - thanks for that. I've always had a soft spot for truffles, and hopefully after I get it all straight and hone my substrate mix down to a T I'l be doing a bulk grow of either Mex. A or ATL 7.

BB - thanks for directing me to the appropriate sections of your institute's corpus of knowledge; I'll be spending lots of time there I'm sure! After reading in more depth about Earth Juice, I'm quite eager to see what the results are.

I'll be using filtered water - I've got a decent electrostatic portable water filter/purifier which was rather expensive; it'll be good to find another use for it other than for when I brew the Good Medicine... And the water that comes out is near as dammit as pure as it can get.

Unfortunately, I'm also a (largely unwilling) city dweller, so stream/river water is impractical for me.

Great info, many thanks guys

cool, man
good luck! keep us posted!

[bear]

Flowhood pictures?


Best of luck.

[myconoob]

Are you still around Fulcanelli? It looks like you have planned your grow very carefully; I am interested to see what progress you have made?