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I need help..I suck at growing mushrooms.

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Coffee filters don't do much (Roger Rabbit has some funny rants on the mat shroomery) but...

Polyfill above your tyvek would mean that when your tyvek got wet from shaking the jar, the polyfil would have stayed dry, keeping sterile contaminant barrier between the inside and outside of the jar. As I had no polyfil, with the tyvek inside, shaking the jar got it wet, thus ending my contaminant-barrier's effectiveness.

As already mentioned, I find self-sealing RTV-silicone on the innoculation ports is awesome and works great in conjunction with tyvek barriers (as long as they're assembled properly ;)).
 
Hey brother, After innoculating your jars, after 5-7 days if they are in correct temperatures, you should see growth starting. You mentioned you saw growth but it was dense slow and in 1 isolated patch. Makes me think maybe there is no air exchange in your jars?? some say while incubating, they need no air, but i find they colonize very slow with dense growth, if there is not somewhere to push the CO2 out. I just poke holes in the top of the jar with a nail, and leave the hole open, it rarely contaminates. Bacterial contamination is another possibility. Are your jars to wet? Growth is very slow and dense if the jars are too wet....

Your other problem i think is your using the PF tech. IMO the pf tech is a poor way to grow mushrooms, even for a first timer, and often yields very little and colonizes slow. For me it is EASIER and more rewarding to inooculate BIRD SEED. This way once you get a solid patch of growth, you can shake your jars to spread the myc evenly and it WILL colonize alot faster.
You can also do grain to grain transfers with WBS, allowing to EXPONENTIALLY increase your available amount of spawn.

You can then innoculate horse or cow manure, or you can lay your colonized wbs out on trays, case with verm and fruit!

Download "the mushroom cultivator" if you dont already have it, great source of info.

Feel free to pm me if you have any questions at all about growing the little helpers, I have grown a great many piles in my day, even though my first 2 grows failed, its a matter of getting the parameters correct then its easy. The main paramaters to watch are air exchange (or lack of) and moisture content. Id say 99% of stalls are because it is too wet, or there is too much co2 and not enuf fresh air.

Good luck brother, growing mushrooms is the most rewarding hobby there is.
 
I am sorry your first attempt failed, but don't be disheartened, all will be OK. I have had great success with BRF cakes without a pressure cooker. You just have to be careful with sterilisation. Another thing that could help is using a glove box to cut down on the amount of contams in the air when you inoculate. My greatest advice though is to sterilise your needle between inoculations. Get a lighter and flame it until it's red. Do this first, before you inoculate, and every time after. It will eliminate 'dirty needle' contamination.

Good luck!
 
If you are not able to work completely sterile (like enoon attempts to do), then it is a numbers game. You can increase your chances though. The pressure cooker will help greatly, i am sure. Get a ton of jars and innoculate them with different spore syringes you made. Flame sterilisation and alcohol wiping after every third jar is recommended. Spray the air with lysol before performing delicate operations such as making syringes, or innoculating jars. Something god WILL grow.

Use a lot of jars! PF tek is quite some work, i know. But limiting yourself to 4 jars is just ...well, time wasted. Do not expect to get more than 2-3g dried from each jar.
 
Sorry I don't have time to read through the thread, so I'll just respond to OP:

fractal enchantment said:
I dont know what it is..I can grow salvia..I got caapi going from seed..my mimosa I started from seed and got it thriving..Ive grown all kinds of entheogenic plants but I cant grow cubensis.

I read everything I could find..I bought 2 types of spores..golden teachers and equadorians. I got the jars and sterilized them..I used vermiculite and organic brown rice flour..I dont have a pressure cooker so I used a big pot with a glass lid, and did multiple sterilizations like I read baout for fractal sterilization. I did as many as required and then like 2 more just to be sure. I got a big clear grow chamber and sterilized the whole thing..I made sure my hands and everything were sterile when I innoculated..I did 6 jar with the equadorian spores..and then stuck them in the chamber and closed the lid and left it.

One jar started to colonize after about a week..one big spot..but then a few days later I noticed green contamination-threw that one out. Then anther colonized and got some contam as well so I took that one out and another one had some green so I took that one out as well..

Now the other 3 jars have sat in there for like 6 weeks..with no cubensis mycelium showing up and also no contam at all..just nothing. It cant be the spores can it? I used only one syringe and some others did start to colonize so the spores were not all bunk. I dont know what to do. I really want to get this to work. I still have the golden teacher spores here.

Should I just get rid of the other 3 jars and start again?..or should I try to raise the temps and see if they colonize?

I have stamets book here and read everything I could find..I just dont know what else to do. I dont want to waste my other spores until I know what is going on here.
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Did you put it in the fruiting chamber? or the innoculation chamber? Difference is: innoc- 78-82F, fruiting- 69-76F. If you put the jars directly into the growing chamber, nothing will happen. Also, you only need to do 1 cook at 1:30 with those 8oz BRFs. Any more cooking could dry up the substrate. Also, make sure you only add 1-2cc PER JAR of spores, as to much will offset the balance of humidity. Do you have pets in your house? Just keeping your hands clean isn't enough. Try not to breathe on open jars. After you cook, remove the foil to give it fresh air exchange. Did you leave a layer of verm on the top? If you could give me your exact steps I could help you pin point where it went wrong.
 
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