p cubensis, p ostreatus, t versicolor grow log

[hummus]

Here's my diary of cultivation of three different medicinal mushrooms, I'll add bits and pieces as it goes along.
Psilocybe cubensis
One 'grow kit' consisting of 6 small brf pots, one liquid culture jar and 3 rye grain jars
Psilocybe cyanescens
Two grain jars, one bag and one liquid culture jar inoculated with liquid culture 31/01/14.
Pleurotus ostreatus
One 'grow kit' consisting of a bag of straw and spawn, after fruiting used to inoculate logs using the 'wedge' method.
One rye grain jar, one liquid culture jar and one bag of rye.
Trametes versicolor
Collected wild and propagated via stem butts in wet cardboard.
Starting dates:
cubensis grow kit - approx 30/11/13
cubensis rye jars + liquid culture inoculated on 13/01/14
oysters - original kit some time in October 2013, inoculated logs on 05/01/14
oysters - rye grains inoculated on 13/01/14
t. versicolor - collected wild on 02/01/14, layered up in cardboard on 04/01/14, transferred to new cardboard 25/01/14
More to follow soon!

 

[hummus]

Pictures

 

[hummus]

Pictures ..
1)
Simple incubator setup, comprising of a small (60w) greenhouse heater and a room thermostat set to 24C (any opinions on temperature?). At the moment it's inside a small cabinet and a towel chucked over the top to keep the heat in but I now have an old fridge to convert into a bigger incubator with more stable temperature where I can keep my homebrew as well to keep it humid and at high co2 levels.
2, 3) Liquid culture jars, it's a bit difficult at this stage to tell whether they are growing much due to the proteins that settled out during pressure cooking. The liquid was two teaspoons of malt extract to a jar full but it boiled over a bit during pressure cooking so I was left with a lot less!
4, 5)Oyster rye grain jar, colonising very rapidly and healthy mycelium! When is a good point to give it a good shake?
6) This was the pot from the 'grow kit' with cubensis mycelium, it's really disappointing me a bit really, there's only one pot colonised and very slowly at that. I think the lack of fresh air exchange in these little sealed pots makes it not work very well.
It was good to get started with though and I got a free oyster spore syringe with it!
7) Cubensis rye grain jars, all showing some colonisation but the middle one only a few spots at the tops. Opinions on when to shake them?
8) T. versicolor stem butts with visible mycelium growing onto the cardboard.
9) Some beer! This was linden flower and mugwort, I think it might be a bit too sweet and not quite bitter enough but it'll make a nice sweet sleepy ale.
10) After harvesting the stem butts all the t. versicolor was dried out for tea. I tried collecting spores off them but they were too mature to get any decent prints of.

 

[hummus]

So my rough plan with all of these is:
With the cubensis colonise the barley grain fully, maybe do a grain to grain transfer to expand it more, either way spawning onto a coir bulk substrate in a nice big tub.
When the liquid culture is growing well I'll try and colonise some more barley grain too.
With the oysters I want to try making a big bag of dowel spawn to inoculate logs with, although some grain will also be kept for use as grain spawn onto straw.
With the turkey tail I'll also make some dowel spawn but I could also try propagating it onto woodchip directly.

Barley grain jar details:
Just big pickle jars, two holes were made in the top. One was cut with a hole punch and self-sealing injection ports inserted and crimped around. The other was a bigger hole for air exchange.
Under each lid there's a filter disc and just to ensure sterility some micropore was taped over the large hole.
The bag was an 'oven bag' with a round hole cut in it with a filter taped over and for injection just a layer of micropore on each side of the plastic, taped over after use.
The barley was cooked until 'al dente' and drained very well and packed into jars.
All of the above sterilised for 60 minutes @ 10 psi in a large 15L (3 gallon) pressure cooker.
Inoculation with spore syringes, approx 1ml into each jar. I didn't inoculate in sterile conditions just in a clean kitchen and swabbing injection points and needle between each use, seems to have worked fine.

Any questions please ask!

 

[hummus]

Fridge gutted and heating installed ...
And fully stocked!
Need to mess around a bit with the shelves so I can put more stuff in without blocking the heat flow too much ..
Next: get a thermometer and measure what the heat gradient from top to bottom is, the thermostat is set at 24C so shouldn't be too much, but means I can put more cold-loving things at the bottom. Top shelf for breeding sourdough yeasts etc.

 

[Archmage]

Generally, for incubation of the substrates 75-85 degrees Fahrenheit is recommended.

Full colonization could take 3-4 weeks....and ideally you wait out the 4th week even if you think they're done colonizing at the end of week 3.

 

[hummus]

Growing fast! It's a bit unclear what's happening really with the liquid culture jars because the malt is so dark and the protein hazes but there seems to be some growth there too.
There is now some growth on the second brf pot so maybe they'll do ok after all, but certainly nowhere near as vigorous as the growth in the grain jars.

 

[Archmage]

Hummus,

I actually read some conflicting information in another thread here this morning and it turns out 75-80degrees is the temperature you want to keep your incubation chamber at.

Turns out, mycelium is "thermodynamic" and produces its own heat. If the temperature is too "high" the mycelium will begin to expel waste thus upping the chances for contaminations.

I have my room running at 78-80 now.

Will post pics soon!

 

[hummus]

Yes, bumped up the thermostat to 25C and everything seems to be fine, as far as I know about 26 is about as high as you want to go but the thermostat has about 1C hysteresis so playing it a little safe (77-79).
Some point soon I want to try growing cyanescens/azurescens but having difficulty finding spores, if I can at least find a spore print then some agar work could be fun - I've never tried it with fungi before only micropropagation of plants.
Is there much need for supplementing humidity at this stage or is the limited amount of air exchange not too much to dry the substrate out?

 

[Archmage]

Hope it's okay etiquette wise for me to post a link.... Trav, if I'm screwing up - I'm sorry!

Check this place out.....

http://sporeworks.com/Panaeolus-Copelandia-Spore-Syringes/?mega=y

 

[hummus]

Yes but I meant psilocybe cyanescens and I don't feel like ordering spores across international boundaries to GB! For spore prints it'd go through customs in a little envelope without noticing but even if they do let it through syringes seem a bit more suspect.

 

[Archmage]

I'll keep my eyes open and shoot over anything I find.

 

[infinitynlove]

Hummus,

I actually read some conflicting information in another thread here this morning and it turns out 75-80degrees is the temperature you want to keep your incubation chamber at.

Turns out, mycelium is "thermodynamic" and produces its own heat.

thats very true, 86f is the ideal, according the paul statements but as you say mycelium is "thermodynamic" so if the room is close to 80f the internal temperature of the mycelium will be close to 86f

peace

 

[hummus]

Everything's colonising pretty well, next up:
T. versicolor - some of the cardboard is getting a bit of black mould but plenty of it is still clean, tomorrow will find some clean cardboard and transfer the clean mycelium.
Ordering a big sack of hardwood dowels to propagate oyster/ t.v on to.
Sourcing some more jars to expand out all the spawn.
The grain bag doesn't seem to have any growth on it yet but it wasn't kept in the incubator for a few days so could just be lagging around.
The oyster spawn was shaken up to distribute the grains yesterday and it's already recolonised the whole area overnight! Very vigorous culture.
Definite growth seen on the liquid cultures too.

 

[hummus]

hmm last photos don't seem to be showing but are definitely uploaded?..

 

[Archmage]

I don't see the pics for sure Hummus.

 

[hummus]

try again

 

[Archmage]

Same bud. Nothing.

 

[hummus]

'pparently nexus likes pngs!
Bad quality photos I know .. the one on the left is pleurotus and the two on the right are cubensis in the fridge..
And the one being held up is pleurotus already recolonised after shaking 1 day ago.

 

[Archmage]

Damn bro!!! That's looking awesome.....

You should check out my thread and the pics there!

SWIM's PF Tek Progression - Cultivation - Welcome to the DMT-Nexus