Spawn to bulk question

[bozefonce]

At what point is it no longer recommended to spawn a cake to a bulk substrate? FOAF has gotten 2 flushes from a mycro bag and is looking at his options from here. He could dunk it and try for a flush or two more, or he could grate it up into some poo and coir or something. Which would you do?

[BuckarooBanzai]

Dunk it and try to fruit again.

Myc gets slow with age, especially after fruiting. If you spawn with it, the culture will be slow and weak - much more likely to contaminate.

Better to spawn with fresh myc that is still young and fast growing.

[bozefonce]

Originally Posted by BuckarooBanzai

Dunk it and try to fruit again.

Myc gets slow with age, especially after fruiting. If you spawn with it, the culture will be slow and weak - much more likely to contaminate.

Better to spawn with fresh myc that is still young and fast growing.

Oops, I totally forgot about this thread! Thanks BB, makes sense. So there's a LC stirring away and 8 new jars of WBS just came out of the cooled off PC. Got poo in the garage.... this should be fun!

So, as far as bulk substrate, FOAF has h-poo (gallons of it!) as well as a 7 liter brick of chunky coir, a quart of coir/verm, another quart of straight verm (fine), and a bag of alfalfa hay. What do you recommend? FOAF has read all your teks, just the ingredients vary a tad. Gonna need some gypsum, too, I imagine....

[MLBjammer]

You could mix a bit of coir and vermiculite with your h-poo and have a nice mix. I use 50% poo, 30% coir, 20% vermiculite, but that is just my preference.

I have never used hay in a sub. I have read that it tends to contaminate.

You don't have to use gypsum, but mycelium really likes it, so if you have it, a pinch or two never hurts.

Good luck.

[BuckarooBanzai]

Yah, I would stay away from the hay. It looks a little like straw but it performs very differently.

Poo:coir:verm is a good substrate. I would start with a mix of field capacity hydrated 50:50 poo:coir. Get 2 cups of each to field capacity and them mix them in a large bowl. Adjust with a little more poo or a little more coir until you have the most poo possible while the substrate remains fluffy and light from the coir.

60:40 or even 70:30 (poo:coir) might be what looks best - poo can vary in consistency a lot, it is hard to say. With worm castings, 50:50 poo:coir always seems to be perfect.

Anyway, after you figure what ratio you want for the poo:coir and you mix it up, add about 1/4-1/5 the total volume of sub in vermiculite.

Hydrate the vermiculite to field capacity before mixing it in.

I always hydrate substrate ingredients separately and then mix them. It is much harder to balance moisture effectively once everything is mixed up.

And remember the golden rule - if you squeeze a fistful of substrate real tight and more than 3 drops of water comes out, that substrate is too moist. Add dry material (coir or verm) until you can only squeeze out 1 drop.

Too dry is always better than too moist with bulk substrate.