this is a slight variation of 9er tek . to get you acquainted with 9er tek . read this thread below. has links to 9er tek liquid culture . this is also a slight variation of tv casualty's Slurry Tek. hence the name. just using the liquid inoculant for spawn instead of inoculating grain spawn. the part you want to look at is the 9er tek cloning part. thats it. you use an oster blender blade assembly to attach to any small mouth jar. this works for blending tissues and storing in vacutainers and syringes. or you can do this tek and instead of cutting tissue. blend up a pf cake.
https://mycotopia.ne...n-of-additions/
Reasoning:
so recent failed grain battles with trich have lead me to test this out. here is the idea. if you have master pf jars from clones or plain multispore pf jars. hoping to transfer them to grain jars via grain to grain transfer using a fork or a slurry. why take the extra step of prepping grain spawn? yes it will add nutrients. your right.
but if your bulk substrate has enough nutrients to yield good flushes without the extra nutes from the grain spawn. then you are in luck my friend. here is the idea.
roughly one pf jar can be blended up using tv casualty's slurry in a hurry tek. and you can make about 150 jars of grain quarts per 1 pf jar for spawn. this will colonize in around 3 days.
https://mycotopia.ne...-in-three-days/
so the idea here is to skip the grain spawn all together. and go straight from pf cake blended into liquid and use anywhere from 2 pints to 2 quarts of liquid spawn to mix into your substrate. 2 pints is quite a bit of liquid spawn. and you don't want to overdo it. so it might be ideal to do this with pints. if you have a few tubs to spawn. maybe quarts are not a bad idea for multiple tubs.
Moisture Addition and not overdoing your moisture content
you will have to prep your substrate as you normally do prior to this liquid spawning. however, there is one catch here. you will have to account for moisture addition from the slurry.
so you will want to make your substrate mix slightly drier than normal. you can do this by adding some dry verm at the end after you have mixed your substrate to field capacity. or some dry horse poo can soak up more of that moisture. so right now this is just an experiment. the ratios may change. but im going to mix my normal 2 turkey tins volume of substrate per tub. im going to try 1pf cake to spawn one tub of substrate. one tub is 2 turkey tins by volume of substrate.
Recipe by volume for:1 66 quart tub or similar size tub
2 turkey tins volume of pasteurized substrate per 66 quart tub
The Slurry Per Tub is
1 colonized pf cake
1 small mouth quart jar filled with 1 pint full of distilled water (pced for 20 mins at 15psi prior)
(if you don't have a small mouth quart jar. and you only have 2 pint jars you can use these as well. you will have to cut the pf cake in half then blend it in each separate pint jar. this will be the same ratio just split in half. this will require 2 blade assemblies. im finding that less water equals more sludge consistency of the cake. so lowering your water will make it a thicker mixture. the substrate catches this better.)
illustration of small mouth pint jars and quart jars with blade assembly ready for pressure cooker. 20 mins at 15psi.
picture of a turkey tin below
Ratio by volume per tub:
1 small brick coir
6 cups of strawnet that is boiled to release the binding agent.
(it is boiled in coffee and water to add nitrogen. this isn't necessary just a trial for now. it is then strained out. no extra water is added just the water present in the strawnet)
2 quarts dry horse nugs
2 quarts dry vermiculite
this trial has supercake formula in it 1/4 cup.
this should fill two turkey tins by volume. if you don't oven pasteurize then figure out a way to squeeze out the excess moisture from your substrate or add more dry vermiculite prior to spawning to account for adding the slurry liquid. or in the end after spawning you can just squeeze out the excess moisture once you mix in the slurry.
but you have to take into account. i mix my sub to over field capacity then oven pasteurize. this loses moisture due to evaporation. so being pasteurized over field capacity allows the subs to be at field capacity once pasteurization is complete. this becomes a science at times. its easy to misjudge. if you liquid or steam pasteurize and add water after or use water to pasteurize. you have to take into account the moisture content you need has to be a little dry to account for additional liquid.
also any substrate should work using this method. im just using the ratios i prefer. just to demonstrate here.
Discussion
this is a trial experiment now. so the ratios are going to change. i will be using 2 pints of slurry liquid to my substrate for this trial run. the muddier the slurry mixture the easier the chunks catch to the substrate.
the question is. will the lack of nutrients from the grain spawn decrease yield?
Procedure:
1. setup your clean area. i use just a plain and simple trash bag. the top is taped to a lamp with tape. and everything clean is placed in it. you then use disinfectant spray to clean everything. close the bag. i then cut holes for my hands to do clean work. no airflow. this is just an example. you can see below all the pf jars and prepped sterile water in each small mouth pint and quart respectively. this also illustrates the plastic bag for semi clean work. since this is essentially like open air spawning. just be clean. not sterile.
2. loosen up your pf cake in your pf jar by lightly shaking the jar or tapping the sides of the jar. this will make it easy when you open up the pf cake and plop it into your quart. it should slide right out.
very simply open up your PF jar and scrape off the dry verm with a sterile fork or you can leave it on with no problems . then just open up your small mouth quart jar of water and plop the cake right in. try to align the tops of the jars so that the cake falls smoothly into the quart jar.
here is what it looks like after the pf cake has been flipped and dropped into the quart jar. the black blender assembly is placed over the blade assembly.
remember im using small mouth half pints and small mouth quarts so the blade assembly attaches. and you never touch anything on the outside of the jar. close the lid with the blade assembly. then place the black fitting for your oster and blend this jar up.
3. i have two blade assemblies. so its easy to do this with two jars. you may have to get another blade assembly from oster. or if you have some old blenders that happen to be oster that broke. detach the black part and the blade assembly. you blend the jars until the cake is liquefied. it may look slightly gooey. but this is ok. it will be a mycelia sludge. the sludgier the better. because when spawned it sticks to the substrate. it should look like this when your done. see where im heading with this. liquid inoculate, but ghetto version!
more illustrations of how a less water slurry will look
4. once your substrate is ready. place the plastic bag in your tub. then dump your pasteurized and cooled substrate into your bin and close the lid.
5. unscrew the black assembly from your jars. then just pour the jar or jars into your substrate evenly all around.
6. thoroughly mix your slurry into your substrate. just like spawning you want to let the material touch every part of the substrate you can. and remember the substrate is actually drier than normal so the addition of this extra moisture should factor in perfect to your moisture content. if its slightly too moist. just squeeze it out in your clean area. you may have to mix up the substrate a bit to get the moisture to distribute more evenly but it shouldn't be that bad.
the idea is speed. if it works like it does in quart jars. then the substrate should colonize in a few days. this is perfect for if your having spawn issues from contamination. it skips the grain step all together.
and this is all done open air. just clean. you can blend and prep your slurry in a shmuvbox or trashbag, or flowhood. up to you. just have your clean area setup prior to doing all of this. i skipped details about clean work thats on you.
Notes
Spawning Day: 7-10-09ok i found a bit of trouble upon doing the spawning. the 1 quart total of liquid i used i felt was far too little to the amount of substrate. i mixed it in as thoroughly as possible but i guess thats what the experiment is for. id say double it. 2 quarts of liquid would be perfect. and you will have to make your sub even drier. but i found my sub absorbed the moisture easily and was still adequete for field capacity.
basically the pf jar was cut in half inside a plastic trash bag. then placed in each pint. the pints were blended. then the box was opened and the slurry was dumped in and spread evenly. then mixed together with gloves on.
and tv. yeah spraying it would probably work better. i think its better to even have less water and more sludge if that makes sense. more of a muddier consistency. so maybe even adding less water may work. but for large subs like this it might be ideal to try 2 pf cakes worth of mycelia to get this right. i just feel it deep down that the slurry wasn't touching the entire sub and im gonna have a half fuzzy white sub with a half uncolonized sub lol. only experimentation will tell.
Let me get this straight, you take colonized jars, mix them with water into a slurry and just pour it over sub in the tub?
I wanna make a tub for the first time and I was a bit concerned about colonization times and risk of getting contams with it, but I may try this method .
yes it was done in normal spawning conditions. but at first i was wary of doing this about contams. but the substrate is not sterile it is pasteurized. so i don't see why this is any different than using clean spawn as long as your distilled water in your slurry jars are sterile. i tried to minimize air time. but the mixing took a bit longer than spawn. for now. i still like spawn better. im just waiting on some slow jars till these slurry jars i did take off. half a day in and they are showing growth!
this is just an experiment to tide over my boredom between waiting on slow spawn.
So if this tub does well and colonizes evenly in a decent amount of time. 2 more trials will be tested.
1. lower amount of water per pf cake with less substrate material
2. higher amount of water content per pf cake with less substrate material.
Day 2: 7-12-09
well growth is showing. it began the next day after spawning. now its looking like it was spawned with grain spawn with small spots. ill get some pics up once it gets colonized more.
id say lowering your water content and making the slurry like mud with about 2 PF cakes would work better. im going to attempt this next go round.. may try it with less substrate as well. this last batch was probably about 3 turkey tins full just stuffed and compacted into 2 turkey tins. pics up soon...
but imagine the potential this has if one pf cake can slurry your substrate per tub. that would mean. no more quart mason jars necessary.
also remember this is one pf cake
Day 4: 7-14-09
update. 4 days in. looking like a normal speed 4 to 5 quart sub spawning. interesting! it was looking a little fuzzy yesterday and i was worried it was cobweb . but apparently the mycelia was growing from underneath the surface. i may merge some of these posts to let you see the progression side by side.
one observation. not nearly as much condensation on the sides of the chamber during spawn run.
not to fear. the green color is strawnet.
Day 5: 7-15-09
from day 4 til day 5 there is a dramatic difference in growth.
Day 6: 7-16-09
the substrate is almost done. will be birthed on day 7. one pf cake of spawn used. took a little longer than expected. but for 1 pf cake not bad. ideally we want 3 day spawn runs using this tek. so a few more experiments will have to be done to figure out what the perfect ratio is as far as the volume of slurry goes.
Day 7: 7-17-09
Birthday! The substrate was completely done about mid way through day 6. it was then birthed at 3am on 17th. the mycelia fluffed up really nice after growth in only one day. seems like everyrhing done this trial worked out perfectly. the rhizos are everywhere. for this trial run. not bad. however, we want a 3 day spawn run like the jars. so since there was about 1 pf 1/2 pint cake worth of mycelia to about 3 turkey tins of substrate. this in turn ended up taking a bit longer. i think if it is truly 2 turkey tins volume of substrate the spawn run should be half the time it took for this trial run
here is what the tub looks like later in the day from a side view. looks stout to me.
only been 13 hours since the day 7 pic was taken above. it has definitely fluffed up nicely.
Day 11: 7-21-09
Pins! if you can't tell look near the top mid right. there were some other spots for better pics but having issues with the cam focusing.
Day 12: 7-22-09
Pins are coming along nicely. you can see in the pictures the substrate is broken from moving the tub. the amazon tub is doing nicely. i think the ape tub has cobweb. smells cobwebish. its not really colonizing. think it was a lost cause to begin with.
Day 13: 7-23-09
Pins!
Day 18 Notes: 7-28-09
harvest! fruits got a bit stringy probably due to higher co2 levels. bins had to be taken out of ideal conditions when visitors arrived. last 3 days were in the dark with little to no airflow.
Conclusion and Notes:
so far in two tests the average colonization time for 1 pf jar of slurry is 6 days. the 2nd tub is on schedule to be colonized and birthed by day 7.
from spawn till harvest was 18 days. pinning took 4 days with a strain that was well over a year old. off 3rd generation clone material 2nd flush.
the fruits were not as thick as usual. the yield so far appears to be a little less than normal. seems to be about 4z dry from eye judgement. but for 1 pf cake of spawn material. thats nice!
the fruits were just as dense as the regular fruits of this strain comparatively. more experiments will be done. life interrupted this experiment a bit and the chamber had to be taken out of ideal conditions for the last 3 days of fruiting.
dry yield was 72 grams. 2.5z. not too bad for 1 pf cake.
Side By Side
Attached Thumbnails
Edited by hyphaenation, 14 February 2014 - 08:05 PM.
