When to birth pf jar?

[Evenfall]

I have a few brf jars that were noced via spore syringe at various times over the past three weeks. The Brazilian strain jars are growing like mad and I have several of the early jars fully colonized. I am following a tek I came across several month ago in my search for knowledge that is working well so far. It does leave one important question unanswered though. When is the appropriate time to birth the cake?

The first two Brazilian jars have been fully colonized (sides & bottom) for almost a week. I have continued to let it bake at 80 to 82 degrees in the dark. Upon birthing I plan to dunk & roll these first jars. Attached are a few pictures of these jars.







Are these ready to birth now? If not, do I continue to keep them in the dark at the current temperatures or should I start giving them light and lowing the temperature to initiate pin growth?

In the past couple of days I have noticed patches of white fuzzy growth, like minature cotton swabs. I think some of these are visable on the pics above. I don't think this cobweb since it is pure white. Does this mean anything or just mycellium growth ontop of existing mycellium growth?

I opened one jar up yesterday to take a wiff and it smelled mushroomy. I did however notice the dry verm layer on top was damp. I wasn't expecting the dry verm layer to be wet otherwise I would not have opened the jar. I fearl I may have exposed this wet layer to contams now.

Suggestions? Advise?

[Hippie3]

best to delay birthing until you can see some pins forming on the cakes.
expose them to daily light of course.

as for the dampness-
do you cover lids during pc run ?
i use tinfoil
but gotta remove after as traps moisture.
never remove the lid until fully finished colonizing.

[firerat]

Is that wahit growth on the bottom as well? How long has it been at this point?

I ask because many advise waiting an extra few days to a week after 100% colonization just to be sure it's all the way through.

[Evenfall]

The bottom of the jar is solid white. The bottom was the last to fully colonize and finished about 3 days ago. The sides have been fully covered for at least 5 days.

[Hippie3]

but no pins yet.
preemie birthing just dries out yer cakes
as you must still wait for pins eh...

[Evenfall]

Hip, during pc I had the ligs on the jars and the holes covered with surgical tape. During innoculation the tape was removed from the 4 holes and left off. I do not know if the dry verm layer was wet at this point or not. Hard to think it has been wet for almost 21 days without catching a contam; maybe I have just been that lucky though. I have a total of 11 jars that were all done in this fashion and none have any visible signs of contam.

[firerat]

What Hip said.

Yeah I learned birthing cakes pre-pins gives you dry cakes and you end up with little itty bitty mushies.

[Hippie3]

don't think surgical tape is water-proof
so it's just trapping moisture
right above your lid holes...

[Evenfall]

Scared me for a minute. I have about 20 more brf jars I made up over the weekend that are ready to be innoculated if the LC continues as planned.



I ran and checked the tape. It claims to be waterproof. Although I was mistaken, it doesn't say "surgical" anywhere on it.

[tbonus]

I agree totally,wait for pinns with cakes.Not only will your cakes NOT be as dry,but the yields should be somewhat bigger.GLUK

[Soliver]

Guess it depends on how anxious you are for shrooms... IME, the sooner you birth,
the sooner you see pins. If you wait for pins to birth, it may take days or weeks more,
depending on strain, etc.

If you dunk the cakes at birth, roll 'em in verm or DEC, and mist regularly, I don't see
moisture being a huge issue in a perlite bottomed FC.



soliver

[valleyofmushies]

if u wait till u see pins does it mess them up to dunk it then???????????????
and how long is too long for a dunk....i got really fucked up last night and didn't take out of dunk cause i was tired as hell.....

[MLBjammer]

No, you can dunk very small pins.

Don't go over 24 hours with a dunk: the cake starts drowning after a day or so.

[Evenfall]

I think I will give it a few more days, at least until the end of the week. That will give me two brf jars that have been completely white for at least 7 days. After birthing I am going to dunk and roll in verm so I wouldn't want any good sized pins at this point.

In the meantime I have removed the two jars from the incubator so they are no longer 82 degrees. Should be about room temperature in the mid 70s. They are also getting indirect sunlight now. Lets hope this wakes them up. Either way I think I am going to be too anxious to wait longer than this weekend to birth them.

Since this is my first grow I am looking for sucess rather than quantity/quality. Something I can pat myself on the back for and go into the next adventure with some confidence having done it once.

[Soliver]

Sounds like a solid plan

Be sure to take some good prints from your first grow to ensure
continued success!



soliver

[Hippie3]

Originally Posted by Soliver

Guess it depends on how anxious you are for shrooms... IME, the sooner you birth,
the sooner you see pins. If you wait for pins to birth, it may take days or weeks more,
depending on strain, etc.

If you dunk the cakes at birth, roll 'em in verm or DEC, and mist regularly, I don't see
moisture being a huge issue in a perlite bottomed FC.



soliver

that's one theory i don't buy.
you want elevated co2 levels
as primordia are forming -
and a jar traps co2 nicely.
in a large terrarium cakes,
being uncased,
lose their co2.
pf had it right- imo .
his original tek says
wait for tiny pins to appear.
just like so-

cf. http://archives.mycotopia.net/discus...tml?1130154483

[Soliver]

Everyone's certainly entitled to their own practices, but my PF jars have always
taken weeks after full colonization to show pins... all the threads we see from new
folks trying 'invitro' tek, screaming, "When?! When?!" (I was one of those some eight
years ago, BTW ) support this time-frame. Generally, I see pins a week after
birthing to the terrarium. I currently have cakes on 3rd flush, six from a batch of ten;
the remaining 4 jars, in the FC with a light on 12/12, are still pushing out the first
weak flush.

I (almost) always keep some jars from a batch for invitro growing, as it's foolproof
IME, and a safe bet. My FC holds six cakes comfortably, and for my needs, it's
plenty, so I (almost) always have four jars left. In my experience, the four invitro
jars consistently pin WAY after the cakes do.

The C02 theory isn't really arguable, IME, but a well-packed terrarium that isn't
(s)mothered after birth, pre-pinning, holds C02 pretty darn well. Naturally, not as
well as a full-packed glass jar, but that's not really my point.

Birthing cakes after full colonization, after a dunk, into an appropriately sized
terrarium will, on average, based on my observations and experiences, produce pins
faster than a cake allowed to pin in the jar.

On another note, many growers have noticed stronger second and even third flushes,
all of which happen inside a terrarium and away from the jar, which would suggest
to me that a well-kept terrarium is all a colonized cake needs to be happy and do
what it's meant to do.



soliver

[Hippie3]

the 'problem' invitro growers face
is caused by failure to give fae -
give them a little air now and then
as well as light from day 1 as the tek specifies
and i can almost guaranty pins in 3-4 weeks
from multispore inoculation.
with exceptions for rare genetic variants,
like PE -took forever to pin invitro-
so as always having a good isolate that
performs well invitro is
the first step to fast, reliable invitro growing.

[Soliver]

Originally Posted by Hippie3

the 'problem' invitro growers face
is caused by failure to give fae -
give them a little air now and then
as well as light from day 1 as the tek specifies
and i can almost guaranty pins in 3-4 weeks
from multispore inoculation.
with exceptions for rare genetic variants,
like PE -took forever to pin invitro-
so as always having a good isolate that
performs well invitro is
the first step to fast, reliable invitro growing.

From the archives:

"20. flip the jars over so the cakes rest on the lids.
AIR EXCHANGE & MAKING ROOM:
one can improve invitro performance if,
after colonization is finished and the cake is fully whitened, remove the lid, shake off the excess unattached vermiculite, shake the cake partially out to loosen it, then replace the lid. this gives more headspace for shrooms to grow and more airspace. one can repeat this process of airing the jars every few days to help speed up growth."

Well, there you go - I'm showing my age... that wasn't part of the tek
when I started doing it That would probably help, but to be honest, handling and opening
my cakes that much would 1) give me the contam heebie jeebies and 2) sound
too much like work. I suppose I'll suffer with either slow pins or the pains
of the fruiting chamber.



soliver

[Hippie3]

invitro was always aimed at the guy with a couple dozen, or less, jars.
not a 'production' protocol,
all about stealth .

[BuckarooBanzai]

I just made a post a few moments ago about how I still grow out cakes...

I give a cake at least a week after 100% colonization before truly birthing it. Sometimes 2. I'm not in a hurry...

The day after I see full colonization, I remove the lid and the verm layer, put it back in the jar (upside down) and start exposing it to ambient light. Yep - still use a verm layer even though I use silicone injection ports and Tyvek vents.

My cakes don't come out of the jar completely until I see knots, but they do get fresh air every three or four days.

[Evenfall]

Since I have 13 colonizing jars and this is my first grow I birthed one jar this morning so I can get any unforseen problems with the fc resolved before the main harvest in a week or two. I know everyone said wait for pins but sometimes I have a hard head when it comes to taking advice. I will be taking that advice for the remaining 12 jars though.

I birthed a "Brazilian" strain jar that I had opened last week to take a wiff of. I was afraid I may have contaminated the jar by doing so and therefore I chose it to birth now and test the fc. Here is a timeline of events for this jar:

7/16 - Jar/Substrate sterilized
7/17 - Innoculated with .25cc in 4 locations (1cc total) from spore syringe
7/22 - First growth seen (day 5)
7/23 - Definite growth at all 4 inncoulation points (day 6)
7/29 - Sides and bottom are completely covered with white growth
8/3 - Started exposing jar to 12 hours low intensity light at 6700K
8/7 - Birthed jar, dunked for 3 hours, and placed in fc (no casing)

7/16 thru 8/6 - Temperature 82 plus/minus 2.
8/7 forward - Lower temperature is harder to regulate, it is determined by the house temperature but should always be in the 70s.

FC is half of a 20 gallon aqauarium with an acryllic top. The aquarium is divided in half with a sheet of opaque light blocking plexiglass. The other half is the incubator with the remaining 12 brf jars and 2 LCs. No light passes from one side to the other although I may be challenge regulating different termperatures in each chamber.

For lighting I am using a 6700K florescant light 12 hours a day. I am using an electronic temperature/humidity sensor but am having problems with the display when the humidity is above 90%. I will be replacing this today with a quality, non-electronic, sensor. The cake was not showing pins before birthing but had grown numerous clumps of white fuzz that looked like minature cotton balls. These were on all visible surfaces (side and bottom).

During birthing I noted white fuzz had grown through the dry verm layer all the way to the underside of the lid. There was no foul oder to the cake nor visible contam signs. The odor was mushroomy but not over powering. Very plesant oder I must say. The colinized cake feels as hard as a block of wood. I don't think I could break it if I tried.

The cake is sitting on alluminum foil. Is this OK or should I set it on the jar lid like I see so many others doing?

Here are a few pics today. I just opensed the fc to wipe the condensation off the glass so I could get these pictures. As a result the humidity is a few points lower than normal.

[BuckarooBanzai]

IME, more than 2-3 hours of light a day for the fruting environment is just wasted electricity. They actually grow just fine (though kind of crooked) with only 1/2 hour of light per day. Regular floros are fine, by the way. No need to worry about color intensity.

Humidity sensors which are accurate above 80%-90% RH are extremely expensive (think in the $50+ range). If you have condensation on the walls of the FC, humidity is fine. Just watch out for dripping as it can cause problems.

Fluffy growth through the verm is totally expected and nothing to concern yourself with. Just a healthy cake looking for more substrate.

Fluffy growth on the cake means RH is nice and high - a good thing (and unavoidable while still in the jar). That growth on a cake after it is in the FC is usually a sign that your cakes are getting ready to pin.

Rock hard cakes are a very good sign - means healthy and strong growth.

Aluminum foil is better than lids because aluminum foil won't rust - lids will rust badly over time in FC.

That cake looks very healthy to me.

One suggestion - don't leave the RH sensor in the FC all the time. Eventually, it will corrode internally and fail. Just put it in for two hours to take a reading and then take it back out again.

Everything looks golden to me, man. I think you will be seeing pins pretty soon...

[Hippie3]

looks good -
now apply double end casing

[BuckarooBanzai]

^^^ WHAT HE SAID!!!!

The only cubensis projects I case are cakes. Casing cubensis just slows things down with a bulk project (IMHO).

Casing makes a significant difference with cakes, though.

test: does DEC hit the glossary?

[Hippie3]

yep