First Grow - Progress Log

[niemandgeist]

I wanted to announce some success in my endeavours.

Any future success or failure will come as responses to this thread.

I inoculated 10 1/2 pint BRF substrate jars via PF Tek this past Saturday. Upon inspection today there is healthy mycelium growth in most of my jars around the inoculation points, less than 5 days in. I'll have to wait one more week to see what's going on and if there may be any jars lost to contamination. So far so good, though! It could take anywhere from just one more week to many more. One cannot rush nature. The growth so far is not significant enough to warrant photos or video. So far so good, though! I hope to update in the near future with photographs.

The strain used is B+:

http://www.fanaticus.com/b+-race.htm

http://www.thehawkseye.com/b+/b+.html



Will be preparing more containers to inoculate with P. huautla (cubensis) in the next day or so. It's also a cubensis. Apparently any cubensis can be reared with minimal investment in the same manner.

Send me good vibrations, my peoples. Success or failure I will be certain to update.

Some history of Huautla: This is the village in Mexico where Maria Sabina:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mar%C3%ADa_Sabina

The famed shaman who performed sacred mushroom rituals for the Beatles, Watson, Timothy Leary, etc. lived.  These are THE SAME MUSHROOMS.

Hopefully they will grow for me and allow me to experience something interesting.

Only time can tell. It's out of my hands, at this point.

Your good vibes are much appreciated. So nifty to be helping these proud little soldiers grow thanks to my own efforts. 

[Ozone]

"Because I can swim in the immense
Because I can swim in all forms
Because I am the launch woman
Because I am the sacred opposum
Because I am the Lord opposum

I am the woman Book that is beneath the water, says
I am the woman of the populous town, says
I am the shepherdess who is beneath the water, says
I am the woman who shepherds the immense, says
I am a shepherdess and I come with my shepherd, says

Because everything has its origin
And I come going from place to place from the origin..."

    from  "Estrada, María Sabina: her Life and Chants"

[Galaxy Admin]

good start!

[Uruk-High]

Cool, thanks for the update, Niemand. May the cube gods continue to smile upon you!

[niemandgeist]

I finally got around to inoculating 10 brown rice flour (BRF) PF tek style 1/2 pint wide-mouth canning jars last Saturday night (6th of September). All but 2 jars are showing signs of healthy mycelium growth. 2 jars are dead in the water it seems... They were too close to a spot in the bottom of the pot where water splashed up. The rice in those jars looks cooked, but I'm letting them be to see if anything happens at all, so we're down to 8 with steady growth now. The growth shown here is 6 days since inoculation.

These 3 jars are the only ones right now with growth obvious enough to be photogenic:









Growth should speed up within the next week, but colonization times can vary so it's going to happen however fast it's going to happen. There still also could be contaminations down the line, so we'll see what we'll see.

The strain used for these jars was B+ (cubensis).

I have one more spore syringe of Huautla (cubensis). This cubensis is the same famous strain that Maria Sabina, the shaman from Mexico, used in her mushroom rituals that the Beatles, Timothy Leary, etc. participated in. I'm going to prepare/sterilize more containers this weekend and inoculate them so I have  two attempts going side-by-side.

[1954]

I finally got around to inoculating 10 brown rice flour (BRF) PF tek style 1/2 pint wide-mouth canning jars last Saturday night (6th of September). All but 2 jars are showing signs of healthy mycelium growth. 2 jars are dead in the water it seems... They were too close to a spot in the bottom of the pot where water splashed up. The rice in those jars looks cooked, but I'm letting them be to see if anything happens at all, so we're down to 8 with steady growth now. The growth shown here is 6 days since inoculation.

These 3 jars are the only ones right now with growth obvious enough to be photogenic:









Growth should speed up within the next week, but colonization times can vary so it's going to happen however fast it's going to happen. There still also could be contaminations down the line, so we'll see what we'll see.

The strain used for these jars was B+ (cubensis).

I have one more spore syringe of Huautla (cubensis). This cubensis is the same famous strain that Maria Sabina, the shaman from Mexico, used in her mushroom rituals that the Beatles, Timothy Leary, etc. participated in. I'm going to prepare/sterilize more containers this weekend and inoculate them so I have  two attempts going side-by-side.

sweet

[D3Dman]

shit. I've been growing stuff that looks like that every time I leave my bread or fruit out too long. ;P

[Taz]

Great post and good info. I was always interested in growing but heck in the day I lived around cattle farms.....

Thanks!

[niemandgeist]

1 of the 2 trouble/suspect jars is showing healthy mycellium growth today! Only 1 jar doesn't seem to be doing anything at all. The other 8 jars are now all showing significant signs of healthy colonization. All the jars look like the first 3 I took photos of yesterday. I'm going to wait a while longer before I do another photoshoot so there's more eye candy to see. If there are any contaminations I will also post photos of those.

If I have some success and get a first flush (first harvest of mushrooms) I will for sure post photos and then explain everything I did, step-by-step, to find some success.

Keep sending those positive vibrations, my good fellow aliens of Planet X.  :quag:

shit. I've been growing stuff that looks like that every time I leave my bread or fruit out too long. ;P

That's the hardest part about this hobby: Being clean enough. There are bacteria everywhere, all over everything: They're on you, they're expelled when you breathe. Endospores are floating around in the air as well as mold and other fungal spores. Because you create an ideal, perfect environment for the cubensis spores to grow in your jars, you also create a perfect environment for all other nasties to grow as well. The sterilization and inoculation procedures are the time when things usually go wrong by accidentally introducing contaminants into the jar along with the spores.

Oh, and thanks for merging my threads, Acid (or other mods/admins?)

[KratomToke]

Very cool post! A friend and I had thought about doing this one time, we never did, but now looking back I think we should have!

 

[niemandgeist]

Very cool post! A friend and I had thought about doing this one time, we never did, but now looking back I think we should have!

 

The overall process is fairly simple, but there are so many nuances about it that take time to understand. The more research a person does and the more questions he asks, after having done a lot of research, the better he will understand the process and the better-equipped he will be to give it a go. This is a fun hobby to get into and if you aren't afraid of doing  lots of reading and preparation you can easily get started. There are only a few states in the USA in which possession or ordering of spores is illegal: California, Idaho, and Georgia. The spores contain no illegal substances. It is only when one chooses to cultivate that things become forbidden.

I researched for just over one full month non-stop in my free time until I felt confident about what I was getting into.

Also: Lots of people and places online love to needlessly overcomplicate the process. Everyone recommends Shroomery, but after doing more reading I found that this is not necessarily the best place to go to. They have their ways of doing things, and if you follow things to the letter you should see some success. However, I've since learned that you can cut a lot of corners and make things even easier if you want to.

I'm using a very, very simple process. Time will tell if things work out, so if you're interested definitely read information at the Shroomery, but don't use them as your only source. Keep an open mind. There are so many ways of doing this and people have found success doing all sorts of things. I am going to wait a good while before I feel comfortable saying "Yeah, this this and that? You don't necessarily need to do that." So until I have success or total failure, keep an open mind and take in everything you can that's available online and just soak it up.

I'm just surprised at how inexpensive and how easy it is to get everything you need to start out in this.