First attempt

[mate0x]

"Hello world!" I have been away from here for a long time and am very excited to be active again. I have been trolling on and off still trying to decide how I want to start the learning process. I settled on using popcorn jars to spawn to coir/castings sub and do monotubs.

I finally have my own place and a shiny new Fagor 8QT PC. Not one store I could find carries a larger size in stock and I was motivated. At this moment 5 pint jars of prepared popcorn w/ polyfil lids are sittin @ 15psi never realized (or thought about) how much constant noise it makes.

Tonight when I get home from work I will hopefully have my usb cable to get some pics up here, and noc up these jars with B+ and GT from one of the sponcers. Also going to have to make an incubation chamber on the fly....thinking tub w/ water and large aquarium heater, just float another tub in it...should do the trick for right now need *some* stealth to it.

Glad to be back, very glad to see the community doing so well and love the new stylesheet hip

[mycowarrier]

Welcome back and good luck with your project. It is hard to find large PC in a general store. You shoiuld set the stove to a temp that allows steam escape only about every 20 seconds or so. Less noise and more effeciant.
Gluck.

[MLBjammer]

I don't know where you are, of course, but the Wal-Mart in my area had a 16-quart Presto on sale for around $50.

Welcome back. It sounds like you are ready for the fall growing season.

[viewer6922]

the wealth of knowledge here is vast!
Tell me though....why did you choose corn?
What TEK did you follow?
I currently do BRF cakes, sometimes spawning to poo/straw.
I Want to try corn !

[mate0x]

Well I chose corn because of cleanliness. This is my first attempt at growing mushrooms and I knew I wanted minimal cleanup mess. This seemed like the laziest way to make spawn jars, and man am I lazy. I want to spawn to coir/castings/verm for again cleanliness/smell and easy handling. I've taken 99% of my procedure and information for this particular project from reading through the threads in http://forums.mycotopia.net/faq-freq...tek-index.html (The Banzai Institute for Higher Education: BuckarooBanzai's Tek Index)
Including the responses after buckaroos initial posts, the other 1% from the search function.

Next step is to grab a good PC'd LC tek, feel free to post what works for you.

PC'd one bag of Walmart pcorn for 60 minutes at 15psi (loose in the pc w/ water). Strain/cold water rinse. This step is to hydrate the popcorn so the mycelium will colonize it.

Then I spun it in a lettuce spinner (dont know another name for it) to dry and allowed to sit in a nice towel for a while. Basically preventing excess moisture held to the popcorn by surface tension from pooling in the jars later. Also used a towel. some fan dry for a while. what ever works here really...consensus on the forum is to also add some vermiculite to the bottom of the jar to help absorb the excess moisture. I was in a rush

then you put the popcorn into widemouth mason jars w/ the polyfil lids. PC that for 60 minutes at 15psi. Allow to cool over night in the pc. some time later used my spores water from ralphsters to noc 3 B+ and 2 GT. shake em up good. leave them somewhere dark and warm. around 82 seems to be the best.

For the first 2 days all 5 were at room temp in a brown paper grocery bag, then relocated and placed in the same bag above a cable box as buckaroo suggested somewhere ( I think). It has now been 120 hours give or take and I am starting to see multiple starting points in all of the jars. All in the lower half of the jar, damn gravity. No sign of contamination but in a few spots there is a piece of corn wedged against the glass with a droplet of water between, dont want to shake them up yet as I have been waiting forever already as it seems. Vermiculite definitely is the smart move.

Jammer the 2 Walmart's within 10 miles of me only carry a small cheap one in stores... The 8qt Fagar I have, which I saw on iron chef last night fyi, fits my 5 pint jars which is exactly enough for 1 bag of pcorn. So for now the 8qt seems functional enough.

myco - thank you I've adjusted after a few runs and found a good temp setting after the pressure is achieved.

Still don't have pics up yet but hopefully will so everyone can see the jars! Thanks for the responses everyone, send me some of those good vibes about to noc up 5 more jars this afternoon.

[mate0x]

Seeing growth present from top to bottom in all the jars but the golden teacher is running through the popcorn very fast, almost ready for it's first shake. So far no contamination, which I am very excited about because I really want to work on cloning and isolating asap.

On my way right now to buy tubs and some tools necessary to modify, sucks not having any tools to do anything have to start from scratch...I don't think I even have a hammer or screw driver in the house. Also plan on buying silicone to make some LC jars, came on to make my grocery list and figured I would check my thread. Have some GT spore water left, going to make up an LC tonight as a backup in case these jars never see fruit. Second chance so to speak.

Probably going to buy a new camera as well, so hopefully post pics when I return and make the tubs and LC jars....Thinking glove box while Im at it.

[mate0x]

Alrighty so. Learned a lot so far. ran out of subsrate when doing the first tub. so some grain is showing...but that was more of a tester anyway. Just wanted to get my hands dirty. Also gonna have to figure out a way to keep the tubs warm early...I've seen people talk about heating blankets...maybe just a reptile warmer will do the trick.

tub 1 is b+ on pcorn spawned to verm/coir/

4 quart jars just shaken, which were made from a GT g2g from 1 pint jar. The other GT pint is about to be transfered to 4 more quarts.

One fresher jar of GT almost ready to go ( so fast ) and 4 more pints of b+ awaiting tub #2.

o yea and my dual incubator.

Got some wiggly worm castings, gonna make a better attempt at tub numero dos...once those first 4 qts of GT are ready

wish me luck!


**LC failed, not enough air left in the jar, will try again when cloning fruits**

[weeeeeee]

Originally Posted by MLBjammer

I don't know where you are, of course, but the Wal-Mart in my area had a 16-quart Presto on sale for around $50.

Welcome back. It sounds like you are ready for the fall growing season.

ya beat me to it i actually own that very pressure cooker and have had zero trouble with

[copelandiaKidd]

lts all lookin good so far. it wont hurt anything, but make sure you either cut that black bag down, ro tape it to the walls of the tub... when doing so, make sure no hair falls onto the substrate, cause hippie3 just posted a thread about trich, showing that a fallen hair is usually the main cause of the green monster!!!!! best of luck and were all anxiously waiting on those PIns pins pins!!!

[mate0x]

roger copeland, taping them up now.