From Talking to a lot of new cultivators on various boards, and IRC channels; I have found that the one thing they can't stand the most about cultivation, is the time it takes to colonize a substrate.
Even people that have been cultivating for a long time can remember when they were starting off. The restless nights, and the impatientness they had while waiting for their substrate to finish colonizing.
After hearing this from a lot of new cultivators, I decided to start experimenting with different substrates. I wanted to find a substrate that would colonize quickly, as well as colonizing well at room temperature, without the use of an incubator.
After using Coir in a lot of my casings, I remembered how quickly the mycelium would rip through the stuff, and thought that Coir would be a good thing to use in my experiment.
There is nothing really new here, so I don't really consider this a tek. It is a mix of materials that everyone is already familiar with. For naming purposes, I will refer to this as FANATICUS 60 Substrate.
Below, you will find all the steps you need to try this. I will walk you through creating the substrate, all the way up to the first flush results. You will find that the colonization times for this are really quick, and an all around easy substrate to create.
There are a lot of pictures, so I hope that I have made this as easy as possible.
CREATING THE SUBSTRATE:
1. In a Large bowl, break off a few chunks of coir from a block of coir. (sorry, can't give an actual measurement on how much). 3" x 3" chunk should be fine.
2. Add warm water to the bowl and let the Coir soak until it reaches field capacity. The block of coir should be broken up and in little strands now. Go ahead and break it up with your hands if it hasn't already done so.
3. To this, you want to add a few cups of Vermiculite to absorb the extra moisture. The ratio should be 6 to 4, verm to coir (60% verm, 40% Coir).
4. With a fork or spoon, you want to mix this up well. The mixture should look like this:
(The mixture should look moist, but not with pooling water, if too much water, add more verm)
5. In a separate, clean bowl, add 1 cup of the verm/coir mix:
(this picture shows a half cup, so 2 of those)
6. To this, add 1/4 cup of Brown Rice Flour:
7. Mix this all together (do not add any extra water). The mix should now look like this:
You have now completed making the FANATICUS 60 substrate. Repeat these steps to create more substrate, depending on how many jars you are doing....The initial amount should be enough to fill 2-3 1/2 pint jars.
LOADING THE JARS:
1. With a spoon, gently spoon the Fanaticus 60 substrate into your jar. Fill the jar up to the "screw" line:
2. Fill the remainder of the jar with dry vermiculite:
3. Put the lid on the jar. (inoculation holes on the lid are taped over).
4. Do this until you have all the jars you want to use filled:
STERILIZATION:
1. Load all of your jars into your pressure cooker and pressure cook at 15psi for 45 minutes:
2. Let jars cool over night, or for at least 8 hours.
INOCULATION:
Inoculation info:
Number of Jars inoculated: 8
Strain: Burma (cubensis) <---my fav.
Type of Inoculation: Multispore syringe (spore syringe)
Amount of Spore solution: About 1cc per jar
Substrate: Fanaticus 60
1. Once the jars are cooled, remove them from the pressure cooker, remove the tape from the inoculation holes, and inoculate using sterile techniques:
INCUBATION:
Incubation Info:
Number of jars Incubating: 8
Incubation temps: 71-73F (room temp)
Incubation Humidity: 34%
1. Here are the first signs of mycelium growth in the jars (3 days of incubation):
(nothing really special here, most people see signs in 3 days).
2. Here is the same jar 3 days after that (6 days of incubation):
(Notice a change in growth?)
3. Here are all of the jars 3 days after that (9 days of incubation):
(9 days, full colonization of the jars at room temp. The jars were left for one extra day for good measure, so 10 days total incubation to full colonization)
FRUITING STAGE:
All cakes were dunked at room temp 12 hours prior to fruiting. I decided to use 7 of the cakes to make a casing, and 1 of the cakes as a self fruiting cake. I did this to show that it can be done both ways. First I will show the results of the cake.
CAKE:
Fruiting info:
Fruiting temp: 80F
Fruiting Humidity: 100%
Fruiting Light Cycle: 12/12
Results:
CASING:
The remaining 7 cakes were crumbled to the casing tray. To this 1/4" of a casing layer of, you guessed it, the coir+verm mixture was added to the top. It was incubated for 2 days until mycelium hit the casing surface, and then fruited.
Fruiting info:
Fruiting temp: 75F
Fruiting Humidity: 80%
Fruiting Light Cycle: 12/12
Results:
That's basically it....pretty simple. I have since done this 5 more times to test colonization times. All colonized on average in 9-11 days with 0 contamination problems.
If any part of this was confusing, feel free to let me know so I can fix it.
Thank you for taking your time and reading this....GL to all of you on your mushroom adventures!!!
-SRGTm1A
