

Hey everybody! So i wanted to make a post where I share all the things that have been working for me.



My first few months was full of failures and successes. I guess the failures were a good thing, because it forced me to improve my technique. It has also made me a lot more zen and patient. Now I want to share everything that has allowed me to have success thus far.



I first started getting into growing shrooms with the intention of growing "Penis Envy" cubensis mushrooms in bulk because of what a profound trip I had due to ingesting them. I figured it would be great to grow some of my own and that's how I got into this rabbit hole.







Major Mistakes



Well, first major mistake: I didn't order spores from a reputable vendor from shroomery. I found a sub on reddit called r/sporetraders where people sell spore syringes and stuff. I received what seemed to be a legit syringe of PE, but I never had it make mushrooms in the end, and I realized all my problems stemmed from the fact that my source for the fungi was not verified to be good from a reputable vendor.





I found a sub on reddit called r/sporetraders where people sell spore syringes and stuff. I received what seemed to be a legit syringe of PE, but I never had it make mushrooms in the end, and I realized all my problems stemmed from the fact that my source for the fungi was not verified to be good from a reputable vendor. Second major mistake: Using large spawn bags. I really liked the idea of colonizing rye berries and that was fine but then I started reading about spawn bags as a way to make massive amounts of spawn. What I didn't realize was that it would take forever for it to be full colonized and they get damn hot, too hot, in the summertime from their own internal heat.





I really liked the idea of colonizing rye berries and that was fine but then I started reading about spawn bags as a way to make massive amounts of spawn. What I didn't realize was that it would take forever for it to be full colonized and they get damn hot, too hot, in the summertime from their own internal heat.







Third major mistake: Not using agar. When I first started, I simply injected the multispore syringe into a jar of grain (rye berries). It grew. But my jars or bags oftentimes grew other organisms, or what seemed like bacteria was infused with the fungi. (It's kind of cool though that because of my bad experience, I can immediately tell if a bottle is contaminated within a few seconds.)



Example of contaminated shit:





When I first started, I simply injected the multispore syringe into a jar of grain (rye berries). It grew. But my jars or bags oftentimes grew other organisms, or what seemed like bacteria was infused with the fungi. (It's kind of cool though that because of my bad experience, I can immediately tell if a bottle is contaminated within a few seconds.) Example of contaminated shit: Fourth major mistake: Making damionteks verm/coir tek for a monotub with questionable spawn. After I had 5 quarts of spawn, I created my first monotub using damionteks coir/verm tek, which everyone and their mother said was great and contam resistant. I got the green trich mold almost immediately. Everyone on this forum said it was due to my spawn being bad in the first place. I didn't believe them cause the spawn looked white. But oh boy, everyone was right. My spawn was not clean.





After I had 5 quarts of spawn, I created my first monotub using damionteks coir/verm tek, which everyone and their mother said was great and contam resistant. I got the green trich mold almost immediately. Everyone on this forum said it was due to my spawn being bad in the first place. I didn't believe them cause the spawn looked white. But oh boy, everyone was right. My spawn was not clean. Fifth major mistake: Not using agar. In hindsight, this might be the most important mistake of all. Even just the thought of agar was intimidating to me. I had no idea what it was and I didn't wanna convolute my work, but IMO agar should be mandatory to learn when starting with this hobby.





In hindsight, this might be the most important mistake of all. Even just the thought of agar was intimidating to me. I had no idea what it was and I didn't wanna convolute my work, but IMO when starting with this hobby. Sixth major mistake: Constantly isolating agar sectors without knowing if it will produce fruits. When I was first getting into agar, I read stro's tutorial on isolating on agar. Well, turns out, just because you're isolating the fastest growing mycelium, isn't very useful because it doesn't mean it will produce fruits. So I ended up having clean mycelium that colonized fast but turns out it was a non-fruiting strain.





If I could start all over again, what advice would I give myself?









1. Get a spore syringe or spore print from a reputable/trusted vendor and DON'T get penis envy for your first grow!!!!!!! As tempting as it may sound because their potency is good, just stick to something like B+ or Golden Teachers which are very forgiving and not as finicky when it comes to pinning.



2. Get a pressure cooker. The All American brand ones are some of the best.



3. Make a Still Air Box (SAB). This is crucial and hella cheap and cannot be skipped. From Target go get a 100qt+ clear tote and just two giant holes in it for your hands to go through. There's a good tek for making a SAB by Spitball Jedi.



Basic Tips for SAB SUCCESS:





I lay a towel soaked with soapy water for the floor and spray the inside walls of the tote with soapy water.





Wear a long-sleeved clean sweater with long dishwashing gloves and a simple face/air mask.





Work toward the back of the SAB the best you can.





Never let your hand hover over an open plate.



4. Start working with agar by making some agar plates (aka "pasty" plates). It's super fucking easy to make some using Pastywhyte's easy agar tek which just uses "glad minirounds" you could get from any supermarket and agar which you could find at any asian store. This is not an optional step. If you are not convinced you need agar, you are setting yourself up for a world of hurt. Read this post by Spitball Jedi on why you should really start with agar.





ProTip: Make like 20-30 of these so you don't have to do the process over again and you always have some agar plates ready to go. Save the foil and papertowels as well so you could reuse them for future pasty plates.









ProTip #2: Use the agar recipe by Munchauzen because he gives you the measurements in grams which is super easy to measure if you have a scale and makes for a slightly less stiff agar recipe so that if you make blenderless liquid inoculant, it will break apart into more smaller pieces more easily. (More on the blenderless LI below.)





5. Put a single drop from the spore syringe on a "pasty" plate in your SAB. Do this for a few plates so you have many to choose from in case one gets contaminated for whatever reason. Also, it's hard to squeeze out only a drop sometimes, but practice makes perfect.





6. It will take at least 1 week for the spores to germinate and for the growth to be apparent when starting from a spore syringe. When you see your first signs of growth, get your scalpel and transfer a clean edge of mycelial growth onto a new plate. Wait a few days or a week for this to grow and transfer that growth onto a new plate one more time. It's nice to do 2-3 transfers like this to ensure that you have ONE organism growing.







7. Wait for an agar pin. Once you have an agar plate that's fully colonized, you could transfer it to some spawn, BUT...the smarter thing to do, which requires more patience, but it's really worth it, is to just leave the agar plates alone until a pin forms in the agar. (You guys gave me this advice here.) There's nothing you could do to initiate pinning on an agar plate. It just requires a ton of patience and waiting. But, when a pin forms, you know you got yourself a fruiting strain.



Here are a bunch of pins (and one giant mushroom) that have grown in a single pasty plate just sitting around:



(Note, the crazy thing about this plate is that I picked those pins in the photo and it produced 6 more pins in the meantime, and I've cloned them all.)



8. When you see the pin growing in your agar, you want to "clone" that by transferring that to a new agar/pasty plate. I used tweezers for this rather than a scalpel.



ProTip: I flame the tweezers until red hot, but then before I pick the pin, I cool down the tweezers by dipping them straight into the agar (of the new plate) and then when I grab the agar pin, it won't be black and burned when I transfer it back onto that new plate.





When you put a pin on agar, it will revert back to the vegetative state of growth and become fuzzy with mycelium and grow out. The cool thing is that now you have cloned something that you KNOW is going to produce mushrooms. Proof:



The earlier you get the pin, the more aggressively it will grow, so get a pin while it's really tiny:





9. Now that you have your agar plate that's fully colonized from a pin, you know you got yourself some badass genetics. It's now time to grow some mushrooms on a larger scale, finally! By now 8 or more weeks might have passed, depending on how long it took for the spores to germinate and how many transfers you've had to make and how long it took for an agar pin to appear. Rather than going with growing them in a big tub, which is a valid method, I think it's better for beginners to start with the Bottle Tek. The reason for this is because each "bottle" is a single instance of the complete growing process and if one gets contaminated, it doesn't affect the other bottles. I first learned about this idea from Violets Pods Tek, (which is a great read) but the Bottle Tek seems to be the better way to go, for whatever reason. (Probably because it makes you mix coir/verm within the substrate.)



10. To make the coir-based recipe for the Bottle Tek, I got the whole oats, whole wheat and wheat bran from a local ANIMAL FEED STORE (thanks to peoples suggestion). I never been to a "feed store" in my life, but it's pretty great because I literally got 125lbs of this shit for only $46. (Fucking grass seed alone was like $10 for just a few pounds, never again will I get grass seed!) I got the verm and coco-coir and gypsum from amazon. (I also got the ziploc twist n lock bottles from amazon as well, although walmart might be the better deal.)



11. When you pressure cook the bottles, put one bottle in there that only has some water so that you could have sterilized water so that you could make blenderless liquid inoculant. This is SO FUCKING EASY, you don't need a scalpel or anything. All of you do is put the sterilized water bottle and your agar plate in the SAB and drop the puck of colonized agar in the water and shake the shit out of the bottle until the agar becomes a bunch of little pieces. If you used Munchauzens recipe for the agar, then your agar should not be too stiff and it will break ,up even easier.



Update: I have found MUCH, MUCH MORE CONSISTENT results making liquid inoculant (LI) using an actual blender rather than the blenderless route (shaking it up by breaking it up). I highlyyyy recommend going the blender route. My next write up will have more info on that which I will link here.





12. Pour a splash of this liquid inoculant into each bottle that you pressure cooked. Just a splash is enough! You will notice growth within 2-3 days with a splash.



13. Also, for the Bottle Tek, in the original write up, Mudafuka fills the bottles up to 90% capacity. But later in the thread he says how he does it only to around only 70% these days. I can confirm that it's much better to just fill it to 70% because when you put the liquid inoculant and shake it, it will distribute all over the place rather than only being stuck at the top and it will colonize much faster that way.



Proof:



(Note how the 1 week bottle looks like it would be done in just another week.)



14. When it is colonized completely, you could put some verm on the top and open the lids and place them in a tub to act as a fruiting chamber. Choose a tub that's not too large. You want every inch of that tub to be filled with bottles so the humidity can stay high. A 60qt tub can fit 14 of those ziplock twist n lock 32oz (1 quart) bottles.



The end result will be something like this:















That's all I got for now. I will update this post with more knowledge as I get it, or just make another post.



Edited by AK1000 (02/03/17 10:50 AM)



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Nice



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Todo Cambia















DMT said: Everyone know's me, they just don't know it yet



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i like how you focused on what NOT to do. ive learned a lot by

sharing my mistakes. good write up!!



with tip number 5, 1 drop of spores.. by accident i dented a syringe needle

and it 'bottle necks' the solution. makes 1 dropping spores really really easy.

no more lookin at the cc's to see how much you are using only to apply to much

pressure and shoot 1 full cc into a jar.



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Making Liquid Culture : Go insane with LC

Mushboy likes these teks : Making shroom tea



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Awesome write up man. Definitely bookmarked. I'm about to start agar work and will be referencing this as I go.



5 shroomies for you



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Panarchist









Registered: 04/02/16

Posts: 429

Loc: Copeland

Last seen: 1 year, 2 months CyanescendantRegistered: 04/02/16Loc: CopelandLast seen: 1 year, 2 months Re: What I've Learned My First FOUR Months. Full write up of my mistakes and what to do instead [Re: egobrain]

#23913415 - 12/10/16 04:03 PM (3 years, 9 months ago) Edit Reply Quote Quick Reply



great write-up. i've been meaning to do something like this as well. i think you may be violating the rules with your first point though.



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Quote:

Panarchist said:

great write-up. i've been meaning to do something like this as well. i think you may be violating the rules with your first point though.







I think he's alright since he didn't actually name the vendor he ordered from.



Quote:

RogerRabbit said:

3. Spores are sold for microscopy use only so mycologists can ID mushrooms. If you're going to misuse them to grow a controlled substance, keep it to yourself. Any post which mentions 'such and such' vendor, will be deleted and you'll receive an official warning. Do not plug non sponsors.



Edited by egobrain (12/10/16 04:29 PM)



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keifnnugs





Posts: 333

Last seen: 2 months, 12 days Master fuckerLast seen: 2 months, 12 days Re: What I've Learned My First FOUR Months. Full write up of my mistakes and what to do instead [Re: egobrain]

#23913709 - 12/10/16 05:23 PM (3 years, 9 months ago) Edit Reply Quote Quick Reply



This is a great write up..



I make a bunch of pastys and store them as well. I also save the foil and paper towels..



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Quote:

keifnnugs said:

This is a great write up..



I make a bunch of pastys and store them as well. I also save the foil and paper towels..







Ah yes, I forgot to mention. When I run out of paper towels and the old ones are too weak to reuse, I will be using those ROUND COTTON makeup applicators instead as pastywhyte says they will last a long time!







I'm glad you guys liked the write up. I know I have more tips in my head. I'll try to share more of them.



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-AK



I'm a noob and this forum. Here's What I've Learned My First FOUR Months.



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Great write-up! Lots of very good tricks that I've been learning the hard way like you.



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My Grow Logs: Psychoactives Edibles & Medicinals



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Great thread idea man.



It's always good to study others mistakes so you don't make the same mistakes as someone else.



Don't just learn from your mistakes, learn from others mistakes as well.



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Approved puppet.



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I feel like this post should be required reading for new members. It's a perfect example of the trials a noob will go through if they don't feel like taking forum advice.



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One goes into an experiment knowing one might fail.

But one does not undertake an experiment knowing one HAS failed.



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Quote:

r.lutece said:

I feel like this post should be required reading for new members. It's a perfect example of the trials a noob will go through if they don't feel like taking forum advice.







Thanks man!



Another Mistake I forgot to mention: Initially I bought a spray bottle to mix bleach and vinegar and some other nasty chemicals. DON'T DO THAT! I was using them to bleach bomb the whole room/closet and in the Still Air Box. Bleach bombing is NOT necessary and it's HORRIBLE because it's HELLA irritating to the lungs and skin and eyes!

If your place is hella dirty, then maybe you could get some clorox spray to wipe everything down, but it's probably not necessary to do that often.





And honestly, a spray bottle filled with SOAP AND WATER is enough for the SAB. The SAB doesn't need to be STERILE. It needs to use the concept of STILL air and by spraying the inside with soapy water you effectively minimize the amount of stuff floating inside.





The other thing that you will use are 91% Rubbing Alcohol and papertowels, which you could get from any pharmacy, is the other product that's useful for wiping the lids before handling them and your own gloves.





And if you've cleaned your grow-area and it has ZERO clutter and you've wiped the floors and all the surfaces clean and you think the AIR in your room is full of spores and nasty shit, get this fogger. It will kill mold/fungi in the room. You turn it on and get out of the room until it finishes emptying all its contents and it will sterilize the air in your room.





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-AK



I'm a noob and this forum. Here's What I've Learned My First FOUR Months.



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The other thing I would like to add is that when you start making agar plates with the pasty-plates... one of the benefits is that it's super easy to "plop out" the entire piece of agar cause the plastic is bendable. If you want to colonize some grain, you could use a wedge of agar OR you could use the entire thing. But instead of just putting one giant piece in there, you could do what's known as the TIGER DROP 2.0:



You simply cut your agar up as if you're about to play tic tac toe, like this:







Then, when you want to inoculate some grain, you simply put the pasty plate over the jar of grain and squeeze it and it will plop out in 9 pieces with just one single motion. Then you shake your jar and it will have 9 inoculation points.



I've stopped doing this because I'm making blenderless liquid inoculant instead, but the few times I did the tiger drop, I had extremely vigorous/fast growth and I highly recommend it.



--------------------

-AK



I'm a noob and this forum. Here's What I've Learned My First FOUR Months.



Edited by AK1000 (12/11/16 10:36 AM)



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One tip I have heard as far as using agar wedges (or the TD2.0) as inoculant is to allow it to colonize the top of the grains for a day or two and then shake; the myc leaps off a little stronger and the agar is less likely to get stuck to the sides of the jar.



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One goes into an experiment knowing one might fail.

But one does not undertake an experiment knowing one HAS failed.



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mrmazdarx9







Registered: 05/15/16

Posts: 9,791

Loc: behind you

Last seen: 1 month, 4 days PfffftttRegistered: 05/15/16Loc: behind youLast seen: 1 month, 4 days Re: What I've Learned My First FOUR Months. Full write up of my mistakes and what to do instead [Re: r.lutece]

#23916011 - 12/11/16 12:12 PM (3 years, 9 months ago) Edit Reply Quote Quick Reply



Quote:

AK1000 said:

Quote:

r.lutece said:

I feel like this post should be required reading for new members. It's a perfect example of the trials a noob will go through if they don't feel like taking forum advice.







Thanks man!



Another Mistake I forgot to mention: Initially I bought a spray bottle to mix bleach and vinegar and some other nasty chemicals. DON'T DO THAT! I was using them to bleach bomb the whole room/closet and in the Still Air Box. Bleach bombing is NOT necessary and it's HORRIBLE because it's HELLA irritating to the lungs and skin and eyes!

If your place is hella dirty, then maybe you could get some clorox spray to wipe everything down, but it's probably not necessary to do that often.





And honestly, a spray bottle filled with SOAP AND WATER is enough for the SAB. The SAB doesn't need to be STERILE. It needs to use the concept of STILL air and by spraying the inside with soapy water you effectively minimize the amount of stuff floating inside.





The other thing that you will use are 91% Rubbing Alcohol and papertowels, which you could get from any pharmacy, is the other product that's useful for wiping the lids before handling them and your own gloves.





And if you've cleaned your grow-area and it has ZERO clutter and you've wiped the floors and all the surfaces clean and you think the AIR in your room is full of spores and nasty shit, get this fogger. It will kill mold/fungi in the room. You turn it on and get out of the room until it finishes emptying all its contents and it will sterilize the air in your room.









Chlorine gas..



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wtfcrazymofo









Registered: 07/26/15

Posts: 1,135

Loc: City Vanity

Last seen: 30 days, 20 hours Zym.zymo-foRegistered: 07/26/15Loc: City VanityLast seen: 30 days, 20 hours Re: What I've Learned My First FOUR Months. Full write up of my mistakes and what to do instead [Re: Kenetic] 1

#23916730 - 12/11/16 04:47 PM (3 years, 9 months ago) Edit Reply Quote Quick Reply



The less potent iso alcohol is better because it does not dry out as fast.



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No it works because of the higher water content.



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