7 replies to this topic

[hour]

Hah, sorry for horrible quality, $1 webcam at radioshack.
These first two strawbags came in to existance at 6pm on the eighth of march.. A guy chopped some straw up at that time and loaded two one-gal ziplocs half way, then took that straight to the sink. While filling with hot tap water he added a cap full of bleach, a few (~10) pellets of lime, and then sealed making sure no straw was not submerged..
soaked for an hour in these bags, flipped them a few times to ensure everything had been covered..then placed the bags on an oven rack over the sink and poked several holes in the bags with knives (down low) but not big enough for straw to come out.
Waited an hour, rung out the straw wiht his hands, took upstairs and spawned the smaller with one halfpint of bht (had been 100% colonized for about 5 days), and the larger one with a full pint of bht that had been finished for just as long.
(spawned with one hp:)



(end)
the fullpint

9 days later they're 99%. He was surprised at the speed for such a sloppy operation but also just how impressive it was to be able to sterilize that much so quickly. Opens up a lot more possibilities. The logs are really heavy.
Here are some pictures of a 100% bag thats been in the 'fruiting area' this guy has set up.. basically a lamp and lower temps than incubation box. Sucks because a long root of grass or something has decided to grow in the bag but its still healthy looking. This was a second flush GT cake he says, the mycelium isnt nearly as dense as the BHTs.. ah well.

Cya

[BuckarooBanzai]

Nice writeup. Good details.

And your "$1 webcam from Radio Shack" pictures are just fine. The beat the crap out of no pics at all.

When you say you wrung the extra water out of the straw, did you remove it from the bag to do this?

[Lazlo]

Yeah, those pictures ain't half bad man! Looking good.

[hour]

Nice writeup. Good details.

And your "$1 webcam from Radio Shack" pictures are just fine. The beat the crap out of no pics at all.

When you say you wrung the extra water out of the straw, did you remove it from the bag to do this?

Well- since the bags had holes poked in them he just grabbed the bag and squeezed as he rolled from the zipper down..he didnt really let them drain at all infact - he waited a minute or two and then started my rolling forcing water out of the holes poked a lot faster..

really took a lot of shortcuts so still surprised at the success.. will keep you all posted.

[hour]

nearly a year later i post a followup:
the bags turned out great..

infact, I left these in the bags for the first flush.
can't say yields, as I don't recall, but i'm never going to hastle with cakes and terrariums again. I guess you could consider what I ended up doing invitro ziploc strawbag growing..

after I saw pins i started opening the bags for a quick second and whishing the bag around hoping some air would go in. I think I had a drunken night or two and forgot about them, didnt fan, but bags had holes poked in them.. everything matured perfectly and the yield made it a total success.

They were later thrown into a TiT FC with geolite (i dont think logs were dunked after first flush) on the bottom and an airstone. Temps were rough (mid 60's or so) and two logs produced only two mush each.. again, slowly. The two booms per log were over 8" long, very dense and meaty. Logs got green right after though :(

In short, i'm back.. reading up, always curious. I was a member here back in the days of nan, I guess it was 2001 that I first joined. Took a lot of time off, but in remembering the bags success and finding a few syringes the other day (i've moved since this threads creation) im interested again.

The method? I need to get some sort of bulk spawn tek down - but until I figure that out im going to test my syringes and a few prints in LC's and PF jars to see what's viable. Pbb use those cakes for spawn this time around, and then start giving other spawn options a try with verified hot LC.

After spawning im just going to wrap the bags up tightly as I did before, and incubate.. then give light. For fruiting, a cardboard box.. room temp (thankfully this house stays warmer than last, ~72*) unroll the bags and zip up a wad of polyfil in the seal. That way I could have dozens of bags self contained doing their thing.. i really was neglectful with the original bags and still was pleased... If I don't go the polyfil route- I plan to get an air pump, run that with an airstone into a jar, have an output on the jar that goes into a gangvalve? Split the output from the jar into say.. 4, and run one tube down in the bag, sealed in the zipper. Maybe do that on a timer..dunno. Figured that way I could provide fresh, non-arid air to the bags..

We shall see.. also thinking some damp past. vermiculite tossed in right after full colonization of the bags could help initiate more pins.

[Hippie3]

notice that all your pix are now gone ?
that's because you hot-linked offsite
instead of uploading them directly here onto our server.
plz upload here next time
so the pix remain with the thread,
makes it much more meaningful long-term.

[hour]

yeah :( was sad to see pics gone - hah was surprised to see the thread though when i was searching "straw" in growlogs.. forgot I had ever posted that project.

would fix pics but have reformatted comp probably 329032 times since then :(
will certainly upload here when time comes though :)