Hey AFN Fam. Here is another tek I will be adding pictures back to and working on to share here. Again, for some reason my pics disappeared from my original thread on another forum so I will be adding them as soon as I can.
This is a proven bulk growing method for growing many types of mushrooms. There are many bulk grow methods using many different combinations of sub straights, and techniques. For this Tek, we will be using Wild Bird Seed as our spawn. Working with grains is a bit more difficult than brown rice flour cakes. Much more work goes into preping the grains. They must be hydrated properly, and you CANNOT do this without a pressure cooker. It WILL NOT work. If you follow this Tek step by step you will have awesome results.
Lets start with things we will need.
-Spore syringe
-10lb bag of Wild Bird Seed. (The less sunflour seed, and cracked corn the better)
-vermiculite
-Bucket to soak the bird seed in.
-15psi pressure cooker.
-Quart canning jars.
-5 bricks of coco coir. (Found at pet stores as reptile bedding)
-Large strainer.
-RTV silicone.
-Micropore tape.(medical tape)
-Tyvek envelopes, or a Tyvek suit. (from a paint supply store)
-10 8 x 10 inch aluminum cake pans with plastic lids.
-Rubbing Alcohol, and Cotton Balls.
-Oust Air Sanitizer.
-Strong Garbage Bag.
Preparing the Wild Bird Seed
The first thing I do is dump my bird seed into the bucket.
Next fill the bird seed bucket with water.
Scoop out any of the seeds that float to the top, and throw them away. Stir the seeds around, and again throw away any floaters. Do this about three times, or until there are no floaters.(mostly only the sunflour seeds will float, but any seed that floats is no good.)
Now dump the seeds into a large strainer(a bucket with a bunch of holes in it works fine) and rinse them very well.
When you feel your grain is pretty clean put them back into the bucket, fill with hot water, and leave the grain soak for a Full 24 hours in a warm dark place.
Making The Lids
Now what we have to do is make our lids. Take the metal disk lid, and punch three holes in it using a nail, or screwdriver, and hammer having one of the holes in the middle of the lid.
Now take out your high temperature silicon, and put a dab on both sides of the hole in the middle of the lid. Cover the other two holes with micro-pore tape.Set the lid on top of the ring to dry for a FULL 24 hours. These will serve as self healing inoculation points.
Cut your Tyvek material into squares large enough to cover the mouth of your quart jar.
Back To Preparing The Grains
Once your seed has soaked for 24 hours it will most likely smell, and look yellowish. What we have done is germinated any contams, or endospores that would have otherwise made it through the pressure cooking process. Dump the grains back into the strainer, and rinse again. Now put the seeds in a large pot(your pressure coocker will work well if it is big enouph)and fill with water.
We are going to simmer the grains for 20 minutes. (DO NOT BOIL) If you let the water get to hot the grains will begin to burst, and we don't want that. The point is to hydrate the grain, and simmering them in water does this well. A few bursted grains are ok, but any more, and you may as well start over.
I stir this pretty much continuously, or the grains on the bottom will burst.
When the 20 minutes are up the water should look pretty bad again. Dump the seed back into the strainer, and rinse VERY WELL. Leave this to sit for at least an hour.
After the hour is up spread the seeds out on a towel, or a table to dry. You can point a fan on them to speed up the process. The seeds should be dry enough on the outside so that if you run your hand through them only a few, or none will stick. Then they are ready.
Loading The Jars
Now fill each of your quart jars 3/4 of the way full with your grain/wild bird seed.
Take the Tyvek squares you cut earlier, and lay them over the mouth of the jar.
Pit the lids you made earlier over the Tyvek.
Push down on the lid, and screw the ring on over the lid.
*(The tyvek makes it difficult sometimes, but it will go)
GOOD JOB- Now your jars are ready to be sterilized in the Pressure Cooker.
Sterilization
Your pressure cooker should have come with an insert to keep the glass jars up off of the bottom of the vessel. If not, lay down some some extra lid rings to keep your jars up off of the bottom otherwise you will burn your seeds, and likely crack your glass jars.
Load as many jars as you can into the pressure cooker, and then fill the Pressure Cooker with 3 inches of water.
Lock the lid on the pressure cooker, and place it on the stove. Turn the stove on high, until the weight on top begins to rock, and release steam. Set your timer now for 75 minutes, and turn the heat down a little, but keep it high enough to keep the weight rocking.
When 75 minutes us up turn off the stove, and let the pressure cooker cool on its own for 24 hours. If you pull the weight off all of the water that is under pressure inside of your jars will expand, turn to steam and escape your jars ruining your moisture content. Also as the jars cool, and the gasses contract they will create a vacum, and pull in air as they cool, so it is best to let this happen inside the Pressure Cooker where it is sterile.
After 24 hours remove your jars from the pressure cooker, and shake each one for 30 seconds to evenly distribute the moisture, and break up any large clumps of grain that may be sticking together.
Now inoculate your jars with 1cc of Liquid Culture each( I use a 1/2 a cc in two holes on separate sides of the jar), place them in your incubator and wait for them to colonize to about 30%.
When they colonize about 30 percent you will want to shake them to break up the colonized grains. This will redistribute the colonized grains, spread the fungus to the uncolonised grains speeding up colonization. This also helps to keep the grains loose which will make it easier later.
Put them back into incubation, and wait for them to be 100% colonized.
In the picture the first jar looks like that on both sides where it has been colonated and is ready to be shook. The second jar is 4 days after shaking, and the third jar is about a week after that and about 95% colonized.
Spawning To Bulk(Making It All Happen
)
This is where the magic is at. Many people pasteurize their substraight. I do not. Pasteurization leaves some "Benificial" bacteria in the substraight, and if it is not done exact can go VERY wrong. I've pasteurized my subs many times, and it works well if you do it right. I sterilize my sub straight meaning I use much higher heat to kill of ALL germs in my sub straight. We will use our pressure cooker to do this.
We'll start out by cleaning out our pressure cooker with soap, and water. When that is done add a half brick, or a brick of coco coir(Keep in mind this will expand 10 times its size in water) to your Pressure Cooker. Slowly add water to the coir giving it time to expand until it is totally expanded, fill the pc up to about 4 inches from the top with water. Add a cup of spent coffee grounds for every half brick of coir you used, and stir it in very well. Put the lid on the pressure cooker, and sterilize this the same way you did your jars.
Let the pressure cooker cool for 24 hours.
NOW STERILE TECHNIQUE IS VERY IMPORTANT.
YOU HAVE TO TAKE EVERY PRECAUTION POSSIBLE AT THIS POINT.
Take a shower, and put on freshly laundered clothing. Use a dust mask if you have one.
Turn off any fans, Air-conditioning, or forced air heat that will cause the air in your house to move.
Spray the entire room of your work area with oust, and wait ten minutes. Spray with oust again, and wait twenty more minutes. Make sure to wear latex gloves, and rub your hands with rubbing alcohol. DO NOT BREATHE on any of the substraight when you take it out of the pressure cooker
Now bring your colonized spawn jars, Your pressure cooker full of sub straight, and all other materials into your work area. Lay out your aluminum cake pans, and loosen the lids. Wipe the insides with rubbing alcohol, and lay out your strong garbage bag next to your Pressure cooker.
Lay a 1/4 inch layer of vermiculite in the bottom of each of the cake pans.
Take out your Colonized spawn jars, and bang then against a shoe to break up the grain.
(Put on latex gloves, and wipe with alcohol.) THIS ALL MUST BE DONE FAST
Now open up your pressure cooker, grab a large handful of sub straight, and squeeze it until only a few drops of water come out(this is known as field capacity) and put it in the garbage bag. Do this until you have about 2 quarts of sub straight. Now take one of your spawn jars, open it, and dump out all of the colonized grain into the sub straight, and break up any clumps with your latex gloved hands. twist the top of the bag closed, and massage the colonized grain into the sub straight. Mix it in very well.
Now put the contents of the bag into one of the cake pans, and quickly put the plastic lid on
Repeat this for every cake pan until you run out of sub straight.
Spawn Run
When all the cake pans are full of the sub straight, and spawn you will want to put them into an icubator, or somewhere warm, and dark. (between 78-82 degrees)( Room temp will work also, but the spawn run will take longer.)
The spawn run is the time it takes for the spawn to completely spread to, and colonize the sub-straight. You will know the spawn run is done when the entire sub straight turns white. This usually takes anywhere from 4 to 10 days. If you followed these steps exactly it shouldn't take any more than 10 days.
Casing
When the spawn run is complete, it will be time to case. Casing is when you put a non-nutritions layer (usually a 50/50 mixture of vermiculite, and peat moss)on your colonized sub-straight to serve as a barrier to air-born contams, act as a water reservoir for the mushrooms to pull water from, and to create a good micro-climate close to the surface of your sub-straight to support the formation of pins(baby mushrooms). This also helps to prevent overlay which can result from over misting an uncased substraight. Overlay is when your mycelium turns hard, and will not fruit. It's a pain to deal with, but can be fixed. This can happen on a cased sub-straight as well if you over mist.
For this casing we will be keeping it simple, and using straight vermiculite.
Put a good amount of dry vermiculite in a bowl add water, and stir it in.
Now take large handfuls, squeeze them until only a few drops come out just like you did with your sub-straight, and put it in a microwavable bowl. Microwave it for 2 minutes, and let it cool for two minutes. Do this three times in a row as an added precaution against contamination then allow the vermiculite to FULLY cool down to room temp, or you will hurt your sub-straight.
Fluff the vermiculite up with a clean fork, and apply a 1/4inch layer on top of each one of your sub-straights. They are now "cased". Pretty simple huh? This simple little step will increase your yield by 50% at least in my experience.
FRUITING
Now we will begin the fruiting stage of our bulk grow. There are a few main triggers that tell mushrooms it's time to get growing. Fresh air Exchange, Light, Drop in Temperature and Running Out Of Food. They have already run out of food since they have colonized the sub straight. We must now create the other conditions as best we can. You will want to fruit in temperatures between 68-74 degrees. A little warmer won't hurt. We will also begin lightly misting the substraights, and fanning them 3 times a day. To do this just take off the lid, and spray with a spray bottle from about 16 inches away until the casing layer glistens. You do not want to soak it, or see any pools of water. After you have misted them fan them with the lid for a good 30 seconds to get the fresh air through the casing layer to the substraight. You'll want to do this about every 8 hours. No big deal to miss it once here or there, but you MUST keep up on it. DO NOT let your casing layer dry out!!! It should always be moist. You must remember to fan also as a lack of fresh air exchange will give way to contamination(especially CobWeb mold).
Harvest
You will want to harvest your mushrooms when most of them, or all of them are JUST STARTING to open up, and tear away from the veil. If you have a few that grow fast, go ahead and pick them before the others. If you have a bunch of stragelers after you have harvested most of them you can give them time, but chances are they won't grow much and your better off picking them.
This is a proven bulk growing method for growing many types of mushrooms. There are many bulk grow methods using many different combinations of sub straights, and techniques. For this Tek, we will be using Wild Bird Seed as our spawn. Working with grains is a bit more difficult than brown rice flour cakes. Much more work goes into preping the grains. They must be hydrated properly, and you CANNOT do this without a pressure cooker. It WILL NOT work. If you follow this Tek step by step you will have awesome results.
Lets start with things we will need.
-Spore syringe
-10lb bag of Wild Bird Seed. (The less sunflour seed, and cracked corn the better)
-vermiculite
-Bucket to soak the bird seed in.
-15psi pressure cooker.
-Quart canning jars.
-5 bricks of coco coir. (Found at pet stores as reptile bedding)
-Large strainer.
-RTV silicone.
-Micropore tape.(medical tape)
-Tyvek envelopes, or a Tyvek suit. (from a paint supply store)
-10 8 x 10 inch aluminum cake pans with plastic lids.
-Rubbing Alcohol, and Cotton Balls.
-Oust Air Sanitizer.
-Strong Garbage Bag.
Preparing the Wild Bird Seed
The first thing I do is dump my bird seed into the bucket.
Next fill the bird seed bucket with water.
Scoop out any of the seeds that float to the top, and throw them away. Stir the seeds around, and again throw away any floaters. Do this about three times, or until there are no floaters.(mostly only the sunflour seeds will float, but any seed that floats is no good.)
Now dump the seeds into a large strainer(a bucket with a bunch of holes in it works fine) and rinse them very well.
When you feel your grain is pretty clean put them back into the bucket, fill with hot water, and leave the grain soak for a Full 24 hours in a warm dark place.
Making The Lids
Now what we have to do is make our lids. Take the metal disk lid, and punch three holes in it using a nail, or screwdriver, and hammer having one of the holes in the middle of the lid.
Now take out your high temperature silicon, and put a dab on both sides of the hole in the middle of the lid. Cover the other two holes with micro-pore tape.Set the lid on top of the ring to dry for a FULL 24 hours. These will serve as self healing inoculation points.
Cut your Tyvek material into squares large enough to cover the mouth of your quart jar.
Back To Preparing The Grains
Once your seed has soaked for 24 hours it will most likely smell, and look yellowish. What we have done is germinated any contams, or endospores that would have otherwise made it through the pressure cooking process. Dump the grains back into the strainer, and rinse again. Now put the seeds in a large pot(your pressure coocker will work well if it is big enouph)and fill with water.
We are going to simmer the grains for 20 minutes. (DO NOT BOIL) If you let the water get to hot the grains will begin to burst, and we don't want that. The point is to hydrate the grain, and simmering them in water does this well. A few bursted grains are ok, but any more, and you may as well start over.
I stir this pretty much continuously, or the grains on the bottom will burst.
When the 20 minutes are up the water should look pretty bad again. Dump the seed back into the strainer, and rinse VERY WELL. Leave this to sit for at least an hour.
After the hour is up spread the seeds out on a towel, or a table to dry. You can point a fan on them to speed up the process. The seeds should be dry enough on the outside so that if you run your hand through them only a few, or none will stick. Then they are ready.
Loading The Jars
Now fill each of your quart jars 3/4 of the way full with your grain/wild bird seed.
Take the Tyvek squares you cut earlier, and lay them over the mouth of the jar.
Pit the lids you made earlier over the Tyvek.
Push down on the lid, and screw the ring on over the lid.
*(The tyvek makes it difficult sometimes, but it will go)
GOOD JOB- Now your jars are ready to be sterilized in the Pressure Cooker.
Sterilization
Your pressure cooker should have come with an insert to keep the glass jars up off of the bottom of the vessel. If not, lay down some some extra lid rings to keep your jars up off of the bottom otherwise you will burn your seeds, and likely crack your glass jars.
Load as many jars as you can into the pressure cooker, and then fill the Pressure Cooker with 3 inches of water.
Lock the lid on the pressure cooker, and place it on the stove. Turn the stove on high, until the weight on top begins to rock, and release steam. Set your timer now for 75 minutes, and turn the heat down a little, but keep it high enough to keep the weight rocking.
When 75 minutes us up turn off the stove, and let the pressure cooker cool on its own for 24 hours. If you pull the weight off all of the water that is under pressure inside of your jars will expand, turn to steam and escape your jars ruining your moisture content. Also as the jars cool, and the gasses contract they will create a vacum, and pull in air as they cool, so it is best to let this happen inside the Pressure Cooker where it is sterile.
After 24 hours remove your jars from the pressure cooker, and shake each one for 30 seconds to evenly distribute the moisture, and break up any large clumps of grain that may be sticking together.
Now inoculate your jars with 1cc of Liquid Culture each( I use a 1/2 a cc in two holes on separate sides of the jar), place them in your incubator and wait for them to colonize to about 30%.
When they colonize about 30 percent you will want to shake them to break up the colonized grains. This will redistribute the colonized grains, spread the fungus to the uncolonised grains speeding up colonization. This also helps to keep the grains loose which will make it easier later.
Put them back into incubation, and wait for them to be 100% colonized.
In the picture the first jar looks like that on both sides where it has been colonated and is ready to be shook. The second jar is 4 days after shaking, and the third jar is about a week after that and about 95% colonized.
Spawning To Bulk(Making It All Happen
)This is where the magic is at. Many people pasteurize their substraight. I do not. Pasteurization leaves some "Benificial" bacteria in the substraight, and if it is not done exact can go VERY wrong. I've pasteurized my subs many times, and it works well if you do it right. I sterilize my sub straight meaning I use much higher heat to kill of ALL germs in my sub straight. We will use our pressure cooker to do this.
We'll start out by cleaning out our pressure cooker with soap, and water. When that is done add a half brick, or a brick of coco coir(Keep in mind this will expand 10 times its size in water) to your Pressure Cooker. Slowly add water to the coir giving it time to expand until it is totally expanded, fill the pc up to about 4 inches from the top with water. Add a cup of spent coffee grounds for every half brick of coir you used, and stir it in very well. Put the lid on the pressure cooker, and sterilize this the same way you did your jars.
Let the pressure cooker cool for 24 hours.
NOW STERILE TECHNIQUE IS VERY IMPORTANT.
YOU HAVE TO TAKE EVERY PRECAUTION POSSIBLE AT THIS POINT.
Take a shower, and put on freshly laundered clothing. Use a dust mask if you have one.
Turn off any fans, Air-conditioning, or forced air heat that will cause the air in your house to move.
Spray the entire room of your work area with oust, and wait ten minutes. Spray with oust again, and wait twenty more minutes. Make sure to wear latex gloves, and rub your hands with rubbing alcohol. DO NOT BREATHE on any of the substraight when you take it out of the pressure cooker
Now bring your colonized spawn jars, Your pressure cooker full of sub straight, and all other materials into your work area. Lay out your aluminum cake pans, and loosen the lids. Wipe the insides with rubbing alcohol, and lay out your strong garbage bag next to your Pressure cooker.
Lay a 1/4 inch layer of vermiculite in the bottom of each of the cake pans.
Take out your Colonized spawn jars, and bang then against a shoe to break up the grain.
(Put on latex gloves, and wipe with alcohol.) THIS ALL MUST BE DONE FAST
Now open up your pressure cooker, grab a large handful of sub straight, and squeeze it until only a few drops of water come out(this is known as field capacity) and put it in the garbage bag. Do this until you have about 2 quarts of sub straight. Now take one of your spawn jars, open it, and dump out all of the colonized grain into the sub straight, and break up any clumps with your latex gloved hands. twist the top of the bag closed, and massage the colonized grain into the sub straight. Mix it in very well.
Now put the contents of the bag into one of the cake pans, and quickly put the plastic lid on
Repeat this for every cake pan until you run out of sub straight.
Spawn Run
When all the cake pans are full of the sub straight, and spawn you will want to put them into an icubator, or somewhere warm, and dark. (between 78-82 degrees)( Room temp will work also, but the spawn run will take longer.)
The spawn run is the time it takes for the spawn to completely spread to, and colonize the sub-straight. You will know the spawn run is done when the entire sub straight turns white. This usually takes anywhere from 4 to 10 days. If you followed these steps exactly it shouldn't take any more than 10 days.
Casing
When the spawn run is complete, it will be time to case. Casing is when you put a non-nutritions layer (usually a 50/50 mixture of vermiculite, and peat moss)on your colonized sub-straight to serve as a barrier to air-born contams, act as a water reservoir for the mushrooms to pull water from, and to create a good micro-climate close to the surface of your sub-straight to support the formation of pins(baby mushrooms). This also helps to prevent overlay which can result from over misting an uncased substraight. Overlay is when your mycelium turns hard, and will not fruit. It's a pain to deal with, but can be fixed. This can happen on a cased sub-straight as well if you over mist.
For this casing we will be keeping it simple, and using straight vermiculite.
Put a good amount of dry vermiculite in a bowl add water, and stir it in.
Now take large handfuls, squeeze them until only a few drops come out just like you did with your sub-straight, and put it in a microwavable bowl. Microwave it for 2 minutes, and let it cool for two minutes. Do this three times in a row as an added precaution against contamination then allow the vermiculite to FULLY cool down to room temp, or you will hurt your sub-straight.
Fluff the vermiculite up with a clean fork, and apply a 1/4inch layer on top of each one of your sub-straights. They are now "cased". Pretty simple huh? This simple little step will increase your yield by 50% at least in my experience.
FRUITING
Now we will begin the fruiting stage of our bulk grow. There are a few main triggers that tell mushrooms it's time to get growing. Fresh air Exchange, Light, Drop in Temperature and Running Out Of Food. They have already run out of food since they have colonized the sub straight. We must now create the other conditions as best we can. You will want to fruit in temperatures between 68-74 degrees. A little warmer won't hurt. We will also begin lightly misting the substraights, and fanning them 3 times a day. To do this just take off the lid, and spray with a spray bottle from about 16 inches away until the casing layer glistens. You do not want to soak it, or see any pools of water. After you have misted them fan them with the lid for a good 30 seconds to get the fresh air through the casing layer to the substraight. You'll want to do this about every 8 hours. No big deal to miss it once here or there, but you MUST keep up on it. DO NOT let your casing layer dry out!!! It should always be moist. You must remember to fan also as a lack of fresh air exchange will give way to contamination(especially CobWeb mold).
Harvest
You will want to harvest your mushrooms when most of them, or all of them are JUST STARTING to open up, and tear away from the veil. If you have a few that grow fast, go ahead and pick them before the others. If you have a bunch of stragelers after you have harvested most of them you can give them time, but chances are they won't grow much and your better off picking them.
sj
