tex quintuplets

[destroy_erase_improve]

i was on ebay and won some pictures. they said they would send me new pics and some info about them every few days/weeks.

they sent me a pamphlet about this picture. let me read it to you guys. it says that they had some tex wbs in a few jars. so they took some straw and mulched it in a mulcher/blower. it then goes on to say that they put the straw in 14 gallons of hot tap water. they added 1 1/2 cups of bleach and a heaping 1/2 cup of lime to the water. it continues as follows: they went to sleep and then woke up and took the straw out of the water. they spawned one qt of wbs per log. they say each log is about 12"ish inches long, and 5 inches in width. give or take a few inches either way.

an odd tidbit of info they included was that when draining they did it with a gallon milk jug. so they lost count but KIND OF remember that they dumped out about 13 gallons of water. so the straw absorbed a good gallon of watahhhhh.

five qts-five nuggets.
ill let you know when they send me more info.

[sinthetic]

very very nice, tex wbs on multitudes of logs. do u know if it was multispore? liquid to wbs? clone?

[destroy_erase_improve]

in the feedback it said one multispore syringe worth of spores.

sounds like your gonna
have alot of fruit on your
hands.....good luck with
them..can't wait to see updates...

pcsillypj

[nomoreusmc]

gonaa build a log cabin?

[destroy_erase_improve]

the guy emailed me asking ME, me of all people for advice.
he told me some plans he had
lets see if maybe you guys can help me answer him.

he wants to impale the logs like shishkabobs the long way. shove something right through them AND the actual tubs. that way the logs are suspended in mid air, like a pig on a pole. this way the whole surface area is exposed.

i like the idea, but his question was. what can he use to impale the logs? he was thinking some sort of metal but is afraid it will rust. then he thought about plastic of some sort, but has no idea what plastic would be shaped like that.

i like the metal idea, a nice thin 1/4 inch solid rod would be great, but what type of metal should i tell him to use?

he can just harvest the logs by spinning them around. then slide the rod right out and dunk, then re-impale again for the second flush.
:P

[shobimono]

You might try an arrow from an sporting goods store.

[destroy_erase_improve]

what are they made of? the shaft that is. hes thinking some sort of metal rod. maybe copper? dont they use copper pipes for plumbing? he just needs something that wont get moist like wooden dowl rods, and something that wont rust.
but there is a sporting good store near the Home depot, he can check it out. dont think itll be very cost effecient though.

[frank_black]

use aluminun rod or stainless steel (very pricy). Buy at Ace Hardware.

Or maybe just some fishing/clothes line fed thru via coat hanger?

Looks good, man. Does the guy plan on birthing into a grow chamber or will he leave the plastic draped around them? I can't wait to see em fruit!

[destroy_erase_improve]

ok he just sent me a few new pictures
its been a day and a half since stuffing them logs
here is some white snowflakes showing

and of course he has a question or two
he wants to know if the mositure is because there arent enough air slits (small ones are all over the log, every few inches), orrrrr if its because the ambient room temp is leveling out around 70 degrees and its hotter inside the logs because of the myc network working. therefore creating condensation?

hes going to look into the rods today he said, and stay away from clothing line if its rope material becuase it can get moist and harbor contams iho. he plans on keeping them in smaller tubs, like a pig impaled over a fire he said, maybe some plastic draped over them.

soon as you guys give some opinions ill let him know about the moisture.
*well i told him to poke some more holes where it seemed a little too moist, he will let me know how it works out, and i will pass it on to you guys.*

[1dumbmyco]

Looking good and some condensation hasn't hurt my projects Destroy. I imagine it is indeed the temperature differential.

[destroy_erase_improve]

got another email
its been about a week and the guy has informed me that the logs are looking about 70% colonized. some are a lil quicker than others. he has decided that he will try to impale a few of the logs on the second flush after a dunk. hes figuring by the end of week two all the logs should be nice and fully white.
he said hell keep me posted.

attatched are two pictures he sent me.

[nomoreusmc]

you are building a log cabin!!

My logs always have some condensation on the inside of the plastic. It has never hurt anything. I'm sure it is due to metabolic activity which creates heat in the bag making the internal temps greater than the outside temps. Be careful about the number of holes you poke. You don;t want to o much air exchange and drying. If ya have holes every couple of inches it is probably alright.

Originally Posted by destroy_erase_improve

ok he just sent me a few new pictures
its been a day and a half since stuffing them logs
here is some white snowflakes showing

and of course he has a question or two
he wants to know if the mositure is because there arent enough air slits (small ones are all over the log, every few inches), orrrrr if its because the ambient room temp is leveling out around 70 degrees and its hotter inside the logs because of the myc network working. therefore creating condensation?

hes going to look into the rods today he said, and stay away from clothing line if its rope material becuase it can get moist and harbor contams iho. he plans on keeping them in smaller tubs, like a pig impaled over a fire he said, maybe some plastic draped over them.

soon as you guys give some opinions ill let him know about the moisture.
*well i told him to poke some more holes where it seemed a little too moist, he will let me know how it works out, and i will pass it on to you guys.*

Can I live in it? Man what a party we could have!

Originally Posted by nomoreusmc

you are building a log cabin!!

[destroy_erase_improve]

ok i recieved another email
he says he had small pins two days ago, that would be 13 days after making those logs.
he took a few pics of the pins, and apologized that one is blurry. he also said that he never really believed that digital camera batteries died midway through a picture taking session, but indeed they do , and did

he said he will be keeping the plastic on a little while longer, as he is one of the believers that keeping the plastic on till the last minute helps pinset. (he overheard it in a thread once, and now there is a buzz about it also, so he figures why not try it out)

he said hell keep me posted
and i will do the same

[dgtlcraze]

Beautiful! Absolutely B-E-A-UTIFUL

[cutty]

Very nice keep us posted bro.

[sandman]

wow man, howd i miss this project?

Looks wonderful dude! Cant wait to see pics of em with that icky plastic off!

[Beast]

are there no holes in the plastic? I'm unfamiliar with the bag em and tag em teks... back to the archives for me...

[destroy_erase_improve]

there are holes beast, i was told in the email that a regular knife tip was used to poke holes about every 2 inches. (to compensate) because the slits werent very big compared to slits that would be made from an arrowhead. the slits were just that, one way slits, as opposed to x slits from an arrowhead also.

she said that she would be taking pics soon, probably of two of the five logs. because they are pinning faster .
ill keep you posted as soon as she send em.

[destroy_erase_improve]

i recieved another email
its pretty depressing
here goes:

two of the five logs were ready to be birthed according to the ebay member.
she took the two logs and dunked them with pins on , as it was suggested it would really help the flush , for an hour. she let them drain excess and cut away the plastic and put them on a rack.
the rack is actually on top of a container, with another container on top of it flipped upside down so light could shine through(the lids are opaque white). a new piece of plastic was draped over the logs to help maintain moisture.
the fllipped TUB is turned on an angle so air can circulate through the openings left at each corner.

each morning, and night the tub is lifted, the plastic peeled back, and the logs are quickly fanned. then a mist of water is spritzed into the container and over the logs. there are paper towels that are moistened with water also under the tray that the logs are sitting on. to help fight off the VERY LOW rh of the room the logs are in.

so far the pinset is pathetic : !!!! there is so much bald area on the log, it makes her sad.
and what makes it worse is that this is a tex strain which is NORMALLY known for being bigguns. so her expectations on yield is very very very low.

this is ok as not all grows are GREAT, but what she wants more than a great pinset at this point , is to know where she went wrong.

the logs are given light for about 12 hours each day she says.

as you can see in the last few pics, the other three logs are pretty ready for birthing. there are a few pins on the first one, and one of the logs has a nice lil cluster that is maturing fast. she thinks she will skip the dunk on these three and see if there is any difference. may as well try she says.

ill keep you posted as to what happens, and here are some pics for you guys and gals

have a great day

*****seems that i cant post her pics right now, so i will try again later for her*******

[destroy_erase_improve]

got it, sorry i was trying to upload the pics before the resize save.

[destroy_erase_improve]

she just emailed me
and said she planned on birthing two of the logs as is
and smooshing up one into a basket type thing
to see if the extra edges and breaks help pinsets

any suggestions?

[destroy_erase_improve]

last email for the day im told
she birthed two of the three last unbirthed logs
and broke one up and put it into a cool mesh thingy. she knows that meshy will take a few days to recover.
the logs feel nice and moist, none of these three were predunked, and the RH in the chamber is climbing. she will check back on it in an hour when it levels out.

here are the pics she sent me.
as you can see
there were a few casualties of war when birthing.

Tell your friend nice job.

[destroy_erase_improve]

i was talking to another member in chat and evidentally tex and logs arent the best recipe. that is just his opinion, and my buddy seems to feel the same way too. maybe a casing type deal like trout did is better for the tex strain.

or just good old cakes for the lil guys.

she is sad not only from the miserable pinset, but from the fact that she is used to seeing pins this size. and unfortunately it appears that these "pins" are almost fully mature. she is used to seeing the mushies triple in size from this point on.

but hey what can she do, she is happy to be here, to have learned a lot, and is striving to keep on learning.

does anyone see any fatal flaws in her procedure that can account for the pinset?

I'd guess it's just that particular substrain, cloning or agar work could help change that problem, I'm sure... I noticed that mine grew smaller shrooms the more they dried out, do you have the rooms humidified? That could also help. Also, I noticed that when the CO2 level is high, like in a tote casing covered with a little plastic, the same strains seem to grow longer and have smaller caps.. More oxygen seems to make them shorter stemmed, with bigger caps, I don't know if this is just coincidence or based in actual fact, but it has been my experience, maybe Rodger or Hippie knows...

[destroy_erase_improve]

i was told the room itself has a very low RH but the birthed logs are in tubs that are controlled, either by misting or damp paper towels. they also have plastic draped over them. so to the best of her knowledge her humidity isnt a problem.

the first two logs had mushies that were about 60% matured when she birthed them. ihe she would have had more time to wait but since this is the TEX strain they seem to grow small and short (in most cases).

usually she would have anothter few days of growing of the mushrooms maturing, but the tex seem to mature much faster. so by the time they start to take off, they are already done maturing.

shes at a loss also, she doesnt really know what to make of it

[destroy_erase_improve]

my friend is still going through the steps in her mind and to this point everything seemed pretty textbook

but then she thought about the strain. she doesnt have any prior exp with it, so she started to think about the strains characteristics. then it hit her, Tex are fast pinners.
WHAT IF she birthed the logs before they were totally colonized? they APPEAR to be colonized to her. and she had pins. but what if those pins were just like the ones that everyone gets in their BRF jars before the cake is fully colonized.

maybe that would explain the low/almost nill pin rate. because the log is immature and was birthed prematurely, even though it had pins.
any other log that pins from her experience has done just fine. but maybe this miscalculation is the cause of all her grief.

just trying to brainstorm here.
rambling on

[doobydoobydoo]

Tex pins early...

[doobydoobydoo]

Oh, and when I did up tex on some compost I got crap results... They seem to love cakes though multispore and dunking is a must as they suck the cakes dry!

[destroy_erase_improve]

ok so i got another email
and its pretty nuts

all the logs were harvested, if you can call it that. a dry weight will follow in a day or so. it was a very low low harvest, but enough to get this lady and her girlfriend nice and high this weekend. so its not a TOTAL loss.

evidentally she lost it last night after harvesting the logs. and decided to dunk them. ok thats not uncommon.
but, after a one hour dunk, she then proceeded to beat the hell out of one of the logs
lol
crushed it to bits and put it in another tray
she crushed another log and then put that on top of the first crushed one and mixed them up a little. then cased with verm on top. misted to field capacity, and that was that.

but she saw two things she wanted me to mention to you guys/girls
one
it is very easy to make a tray from a log with little trauma to the myc
first rule is dont go all jackie chan on the log like she did on the first one

but the second rule is much much nicer
logs seem to tear away very easily. in slices, like if you cut up a pickle.
grab a nice 1/2"-1 1/2" and simply peel away
you can layer the bottom of a tray with slices in no time.
this will leave spaces between the circular slices where they meet
simply use the last 1/4 of the log to fill it in
this part of the log just rip up, and smoosh into those areas.
this way most of the logs myc hasnt been touched or traumatized too severely


the second thing she noticed was during the dunk
this was actually pretty cool.
the way she dunked was by taking one of the white trays she was laying her logs on
(scroll up to see)
its a tray for drying your dishes. well she put the logs in a small tub
layed the tray down over them (grill looking part touching the logs)
filled with water almost to the top
then put the lid on, the lid pushed the tray down which pushed the logs down into the water and submerged them.

now when she went to take the logs out of the water to drain
she noticed that the tray itself left ridges/marks across the whole log
like it had been grilled
now this tray was only on them for an hour
MAYBE if someone put a tray under the logs and on top of them like a sandwich during colonization
and then weighed it down from the top to press into the log
it would leave nice grooves and dents.

anyway, these are just things she saw and thought of last night.
all of the logs are now smooshed into trays, and recovering in a tub.
the trays themself keep the RH of the tub up very very high.
so she leaves the lid on loosely, with the corners slightly agar.

here are some pics:

[destroy_erase_improve]

anyone know how to tell if the straw is too damp?
the trays are recovering very slowly from the transfer
and she has misted the verm heavily each morning

the rh in the tub is 80% but the rh in the room is very low, around 25%
so she was misting to try to offset this
she keeps the lid of the tub on an angle so the corners are open for air exchange.


but since straw holds moisture so well
maybe it is too wet for the likings of the myc

any suggestions on how to tell?

[kikashi]

sorry I know nothing about straw or hay teks yet. But the log/ casing idea sounds like your yields will probably increase nicely. thanks for posting your friends ideas.

[cutty]

Im not really sure sbout your damp q bro,But as far as I know logs like to be at 85-90 RH,or thats what I was told.

Originally Posted by destroy_erase_improve

anyone know how to tell if the straw is too damp?
the trays are recovering very slowly from the transfer
and she has misted the verm heavily each morning

the rh in the tub is 80% but the rh in the room is very low, around 25%
so she was misting to try to offset this
she keeps the lid of the tub on an angle so the corners are open for air exchange.


but since straw holds moisture so well
maybe it is too wet for the likings of the myc

any suggestions on how to tell?

[destroy_erase_improve]

yup the RH of the tub hovers around 80ish. sometimes after a misting it jumps up to 99 and then levels out at 90, then weens back down to 80. she has stopped misting in the mornings now, and still leaves the tub lid agar. maybe they are waterlogged. and the extra evaporation will help them colonize easier.

[destroy_erase_improve]

how do you know if myc is dead ?
i just got an email saying how the broken up logs dont seem to be recovering at all. no new growth and the old growth looks like its getting older and tired if thats even possible.

she doesnt know whats wrong
and is about to just bury them and call it a day
just wondering how she could tell if the myc was unsavable
shell send me pics in the morning she said

[destroy_erase_improve]

here are some pics
you can see where the old myc was, but it doesnt seem to be recovering from being handled and made into trays

she doesnt know what to think, and is thinking about just putting them all in a bin, mixing some peat in with them, and wait for them to contam.

[destroy_erase_improve]

so i got ANOTHER email
evidentally the trays were all just crushed into a bin with some peat and verm mixed in it. it was wet to field capacity and then a nice layer of verm was put on top.

as the trays were being broken up, guess what was found. a few stray pins. nothing major, just one here and there.
something was learned though. the ripping of the log in salami slices is not the best idea. the litttlleee area between slices, even when stuffed with straw, is enough for a pin to grow out of. if that pin wasnt found, it would have died, rotted and eventually could have ruined the whole tray.

this tub has already been written off as a loss, and if anything comes of it it will be a big surprise. live and learn.

[destroy_erase_improve]

btw, she wants to know how to care for a tub tek lol
she never did one
shes assuming you spray with water when needed. keep the lid on and fan 3-5 times a day. or keep the lid agar and fan and mist regularly

[destroy_erase_improve]

here are some pics of her tub. the myc seems to be much healthier now and colonizing it slowly but surely. you can see the condensation in the tub from the temp difference between the rooms RH and the activity inside it. the tub is literally just a mix of handfuls of peat, handfuls of verm and the strawlogs crushed up. water was poured in and mixed around till it felt right. then verm was put on top and misted like hell. she keeps the lid on with the corners open so it gets fresh air all day. the top layer of verm dries out by the end of the day and it is just misted when needed. the moisture inside the tub under the dry verm stays the same just fine it seems.
the pics make it hard to see the rhizzo growth. but there is some. and when lifted up ,almost the whole bottom of the bin is colonized. she said its impossible for her to lift and take a pic at the same time. she apologizes for the poor lighting, she took the pic at night in her area.

[kikashi]

Good luck with the tub. should be big if it works.