Hillbilly clone project

[GordianHyphae]

Hey ya'll. This is a project I started a few months ago, just after fruiting this multispore hillbilly straw log: http://forums.mycotopia.net/photo-ga...straw-log.html (Hillbilly Straw Log)

I took clones of the three fattest specimens on agar plates. One contamed, and the other two were transfered to new plates. A plate of each was stuck in the fridge for later use, and another plate was blended with karo water to produce a super thick LC. This was used to inoc tall 1/2 pint PF jars. One of these jars was then blended with 200 ml sterile water (see this thread) inside a wide mouth quart jar. A pint of dry verm was then dumped into the resulting slurry to bring the mix to field capacity. This "dry slurry" was then split between two WBS spawn bags, prep'd using sandman's WBS bag tek ("Quick Soak" WBS Filter Patch Bags Tek) (thank you so much for that tek sandman! I was getting ready to pull my hair out getting the moisture content right; then i found that thread and it's all good!) Each bag had 6 qts of WBS. Both were fully colonized in three days! Slurry is the coolest thing ever! Here's a pic of one of the bags, taken on day four:


So, on to the bulk! Over the past couple months, I've been building my "Pasteurator" - just an old broken fridge with a wallpaper steamer piped in. Here's the outside:

The freezer chamber, where the steamer lives, plus a valve that I can use to control how much steam escapes (the room where the fridge lives is supposed to house a clothes dryer, so the steam exits through the dryer exhaust):

And the steam box, loaded with one of my modified sterlite tubs for holding substrate:

I use a wireless remote probe oven thermometer to keep an eye on temps. It sends the temp to a reciever unit, so I can watch TV or PC bags or whatever and keep an eye on things. BTW, the probes need to be sealed with silicone where the wire goes into them, or the moisture will fuck them up. This is the transmitter:

So anyway, after soaking the straw in bleach water for a while:

I loaded it up into some steam tubs and let it drain:

Then loaded those into the pasteurator:


It takes about an hour to get to pasteurization temps, and runs for about another two hours before running out of water. I'm considering adding another wallpaper steamer for more heat, but this seems to get the job done.

I let it cool in the pasteurator over night, then made up two straw logs, each spawned with one of the slurry-inocced WBS bags:

The logs are about nine inches in diameter (it's the 14" poly tubing from uline). One is 18 inches long, the other is 20".

The logs were made at about noon yesterday (it's about 8:30 am now) and placed in a mini greenhouse at about 80% RH. Today they're showing really strong colonization. I was kind of shocked when I checked on them this morning, The pics are not the best; glare from the flash sucks. but you can see the white taking over.


Anyway, I'm very pleased with how things are coming. Special thanks go to TVCasualty for the slurry tek, sandman for the WBS prep, Hillbilly for the spores, Hippie3 for helping me with ideas for the pasteurator, and all of mycotopia for the love and knowledge. Hopefully you'll all be looking at some pin porn in a little while. Love you guys.

[Hippie3]

[Forager]

Neat idea with the fridge/steamer.

You gonna be swimmin' in magic!

[eatyualive]

looking good! keep us updated!

[livewire420]

[GordianHyphae]

Thanks guys! well, here they are a day later. I managed to cut down on the flash glare a bit this time, and i took one without the flash (last pic). looks like it won't be long now before full colonization. There's a lot of condensation on the inside of the plastic, but it doesn't seem to be affecting growth any, so I'm happy. don't want that straw drying out.

[Hippie3]

you did poke plenty of holes in the plastic , right ?

[GordianHyphae]

yeah, i made 1/2" slits with a utility knife every 2-3 inches all around the log. I didn't use an X pattern this time, cause last time the plastic peeled away and dried out the straw.

[GordianHyphae]

Well, it's time for a quick progress report. Night before last I made another two logs, this time using the other surviving clone (HB #3; the first logs were HB #1. HB #2 was claimed by the black pin mold) So here they are, starting to colonize:


These were made with WBS bags spawned with LC, 60ml per bag. The bags took about nine days to fully colonize, or about three times as long as the slurry bags. I spawned the logs a little heaver this time, using three bags split between two logs, just to see what effect if any this would have on colonization times. About slurry; I also made another round of slurry bags, same procedure as before, but this time I split the slurry between four bags. This added less than a day to colonization times; they were at 90% on day three and done when I woke up on day four. I imagine that the slurry could be stretched much further than this, but seriously, how many bags can one guy make? I haven't used this new round of slurry bags yet; I'm thinking of doing some rez-effect trays, just for simplicity's sake.

Also, here's the first set of logs, now at day six and going strong:


They are white all over, though still not fully there. Another few days should do it. No sign of contamination, and they grow visibly stronger each day.

On a side note, a buddy of mine has access to 99.99% vacuum distilled ethanol, so I'm gonna try an extraction on some of my earlier multispore fruits. Anybody have tips? I've read through the everclear teks in the vaults; seems like the key is patience and daily shaking.

So that's what's up with me lately, shroom wise. Today is also the day I plant new clones in my herb setup. No rest for the wicked.

[GordianHyphae]

Well, it's been a minute since the last update, so here we are. It's been 14 days since making the first set of logs. Still no pins, but they're looking solid and are getting nice and rhizo.

The second set of logs contaminated. Not sure exactly what went wrong, but I have a few theories. Here's what I did differently for the second batch:
1) Soaked in cold bleach water to hydrate instead of hot.
2) Didn't pay close attention to pasteurization temps. So it could have gotten too hot while steaming
3) Used more spawn (doubt this was the cause)

also, the temps reached the mid nineties during colonization, which may have favored contaminant growth. The first set was already about fully colonized at this point, while the second set was about 40-50%. So that could be it.

Anyway, while these logs were growing, I've been busy building a huge PVC and plastic walk-in growroom. It's 10'x7.5' and not yet finished. I'm waiting on my pond fogger to be delivered. I'm basically just following eatyualive's advice in the ultimate growroom thread (The Ultimate Growroom). I moved the logs in there, since the temps are much better for fruiting (mid seventies versus mid-high eighties in my weed room, where they were incubating)

Also, I made a few WBS and verm rez-effect trays, which I'll be casing today. I'll get some pics up in a little bit. A question: should I incubate these until the pond fogger gets here (a couple days), or move them to the FC and mist? It's a 60-40 coir/verm casing; I've read that coir tends to overlay if incubated after casing.

Lastly, I made that ethanol extract I was talking about earlier. 14 grams dried Hillbillies, ground in a coffee grinder and covered with about 300ml pure ethanol (99.5%). This was magnetically stirred for about 36 hours, then poured through a coffee filter. I haven't evaporated the alcohol down yet, though I tried just leaving the top off the jar for a few hours with no noticeable evaporation. Should I just put it near a fan? anyway, here's a pic:

I think it's purty! The color seems to have deepened in the past couple of days, even though the solids have all been filtered out. BTW, that white spot at the bottom is the stir-bar. I thought that stirring it with the top off the jar would speed evaporation, but nope.

so, that's all the news that's fit to type. peace everyone!

[Hippie3]

i'd take a shotglass to that extract jar

[GordianHyphae]

man of action, eh? i'm mighty tempted, even though my alcohol tolerance is embarrassingly low. we'll see... btw, i think i'm gonna try making some psychojelly with the next crop. too neat an idea not to try.

[GordianHyphae]

Woo hoo!

day 22, and here we go:


they're mostly on the ends, but a bunch small ones are developing along the body of the logs.

time for a

Also, those rez effect trays are coming along nicely:



and, patience proved to be the key with evaporating that extract. should have known. now it's down to about 150ml, might go a little lower before dosing.

[Lookyhere]

[MycoChondria]

That's purty!

[GordianHyphae]

had to update, 'cause I love watching these little guys fatten up. here's some pics i just snapped:


The first three are all from the bigger log, which is producing way better so far. The smaller one has lots of pins on the ends though, and i can see a fair number of little "micro pins" dotting the surface. Also, I saw the first pins on the rez-effect trays today:


just a couple so far, but we'll see what happens. I'm diggin the rez effect so far. Super easy to make and much faster than logs. I'm very curious to see how they do.

guess that's it for today. i'll keep ya posted...

[Hippie3]

http://forums.mycotopia.net/attachme...ject-00002.jpg
damn nice pinset for a log .

[GordianHyphae]

thanks hip! never could have happened without this place

[omentheduck]

omg becky look at those logs!

[GordianHyphae]

Hey guys. I went out of town for a few days, and this is what I came home to:

That was the bigger log. The other one, as you can see, was attacked by green goblins, but heroically came through on the edges with some nice meaty fruits:

And finally, the rez-effect trays put out some nice ones, though two of them fruited almost exclusively at the edges. We'll see what happens after a dunk.


They spored all over the place while I was gone, but one of the rez trays (the middle pic) is a little bit behind, and the veils haven't torn yet. So I figure I'll take a bunch of prints when they open up. Now it's time to go picking; I just couldn't wait to show you guys! Thanks so much for all the help, I feel an incredible sense of accomplishment and gratitude. I'll check back in with some post-harvest pics and weight and so on.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to

[BillyJack]

Awesome!!

[GordianHyphae]

well, it's been a minute, as I've been caught up in some real life stuff. That harvest dried out to just over 10 ounces - both logs, plus the first flushes off the 3 trays. Here they are in my drying basket:

And some of the bigger fruits:

Well then, I tossed the logs, dunked the trays, and bleached hell out of my growroom to banish the trich. The trays put out another flush, still mostly around the edges, but damn there were some bigguns! The biggest was about a foot long and weighed 45.6 grams wet. Here's some pics:




Was hoping for another flush, but I checked today and they're all fugly with contamination. Trich and some kind of seeping yellow goo... ugh. anyway, it's been a fun run, and the WBS is cooking for another round right now. All in all, I'm pretty damn happy with this clone! This grow was a real learning experience. I did a lot of new stuff, had a couple failures, and had some sweet, sweet success. Hope you had fun reading it.

[Lookyhere]

Wow! Great job!!!!!!!!

[Mermaidia]

Excellent!

[eatyualive]

damn, you just made me smile real big. thats the way its done!