One thing i've had laying around are these long plastic ziplock bags used to hold bulk incense sticks. I decided to try my luck at building straw/poo logs in the bags. Here's what i've done so far.
I cut the straw with scissors into small pieces (hard labour) and soaked the straw in a bucket with a small amount of bleach and covered with water. I let that soak for about 3 hours or more. At the same time I took a bin of well composted goat poo and baked it at 155 for 1 1/2 hour (flipping halfway) in a large cookie sheet covered with tinfoil (the g/f is'nt too fond of goat poo on the bake-ware...:rasta: It just so happens that this goat poo was very well composted for a couple years. For that reason I did'nt feel the need to add any lime to it. If the poo was fresher or not as composted I would have likely used lime to balance the acidity.
Next I drained the straw through a colander and rinsed the bleach water off. I removed the goat poo from the oven and wearing rubber gloves I combined the straw, goat poo and some vermiculite in a clean bin and mixed thoroughly. Next I stuffed a pillowcase with the mixture, tied it off and submerged it in a large canner pot full of water that was showing to be 155 degrees on my candy thermometer.
I let the pillow case pasturize at no more than 155 F for 70 minutes in the canner. Also I made sure that the pillowcase was weighed down to fully submerge it. After an hour and so I removed the pillowcase onto a colander placed over a bucket. I immeaditely placed a clean trashbag over over that to hedge against contamination. Wearing rubber gloves (very hot) I massaged, squeezed, rolled, pressed the pillowcase to help it drain. I could have left it hanging overnight, but poo juice running down the shower wall all night is a little much for the mrs. After squeezing and twisting the sack a bunch I let it cool completely, again with a clean trash bag over the pillowcase/ colander /bucket.
When the pillowcase is completely cool to the touch I took a freshly cleaned bin and dumped the contents of the sack into it. I mixed thoughly and broke up clumps of straw. The ratio of Goat Poo to Straw was 50 / 50, and like i said I added some vermiculite to taste. This mix was field capacity, so when I squeezed a handful tightly, only a couple or 3 drops of moisture ran out.
Next I got quite cheerfully stoned and grimaced at the mess I had already made. I took my incense bags and loaded them into the glove box which I had just cleaned/sprayed thoroughly. I took 3 fully colonized PF cakes and one by one I put them up inside a fresh new clear grabage bag (later to be used to house my messes!) I scoot the jar up inside the garbage bag and use it as a super-ghetto glovebox. I undue the jar lid inside the garbage bag and slide it off and down on to the trap i've placed on the floor. The g/f does'nt appreciate stepping on verm the way I do :pirate:
Next step was to use my finger through the garbage bag to remove the 1/2 inch dry verm layer at the top of the PF jar. Again it fell out of the garbage bag and down onto the tarp. I birthed each PF cake out into the garbage bag in the same way. Now I have 3 PF cakes in a clean garbage bag. I then crumble the B+ PF cakes well and then add that to the bin of goat poo / straw / verm that is sitting beside me with a lid on. Everything is mixed as well as can be with clean gloves on, a clear garbage bag over top of the bin. I do this becuase i've had trich problems and my place is cluttered with stuff.
The last steps were to fill each incense bag stuff-full with the poo/straw/cake mix. I really jammed it in there tight and squeezed it down well. I stuffed all the bags with the B+ strain and then repeated the steps for other PF cakes , with other strains (different garbage bags, clean bins for each). When I was done I put even rows of holes with a clean skapel. I evenly spread the holes all around the logs and placed them in an inncubator @ 82 degrees. I placed each log on 2 jar lid rings and rotate them everytime I check them out.
Here's the first pics of this process. I'll ,make some updates soon. My plan is to fruit the logs on rack in a greenhouse with good humidity.
The first 2 pics are of the logs when they had been freshly loaded into the incense bags. The next picture is of the same bags 24 hours later.
The last pic is humbly my first mushroom that i've ever fruited ! :headbang:
Haha i'm not sure what happened there. That PF jar would'nt finish colonizing after 3 weeks , but it did offer up those aborts that you see. I have since mixed that jar, minus the uncolonized part into the log mix.
Any comments or help is greatly appreciated.
P.S: In case you were wondering the incense bags are about 4 inches across X 14 inches long.
