Let's Grow Mushrooms - A Beginners Gigantic Bulk Attempt with PF Tek

Kitty, im glad your open to suggestions and not taking any offense from my input! It shows you are willing to learn and not "stuck in your ways" like many cultivators are... I think you will be pleased with the results!

Remember... The shotgun terrarium NEEDS to be elevated so air can travel around EVERY side to work properly...
It is NECESSARY...

Im guessing your tubs up higher are doing better because its warmer up high and warmer air holds moisture better, also they are getting more light which is very underrated for good growth. They may even be getting more air by not having so much weight pushing down on the lid and restricting airflow... Bright light in the 6500k spectrum is good! Also, if you can, get them on a 12/12 light scedule like you would be flowering cannabis... 24 hrs is overkill, they will do better with a dark cycle for sure.

About misting... misting is to replace the small bit of moisture that naturally evaps from the SURFACE of the cakes... With 95%RH and LOTS of fresh air this evaporation is natural and crutial for the best pinsets... If your caps are lookin wet when you check them then they are not getting enough fresh air.

Im glad your gonna try another shotgun, just drill on ALL sides exactly like the tek states, make sure your cakes and perlite are hydrated and elevate the chamber! GOOD LUCK!

If your harvested fruits are molding thats a sure sign of not enough fresh air in your fruiting chamber! They get waterlogged from not having enough fresh air to evaporate the excess moisture... I have always just put them on a screen like yours with a fan nearby and have never had one mold... If your current fruits are taking a long time to dry aim a fan at them and put them someplace warm! Ive never heard of using dessicants to dry... im sure they would keep your dried stash for longer though...

You get shrooms at the peak of their potency if you harvest just before the cap breaks free of the stem - plus with some strains if you let the big shrooms throw spores all over your cakes it can inhibit future flushes. Still jealous though!

dankillerbs said:

If your harvested fruits are molding thats a sure sign of not enough fresh air in your fruiting chamber! They get waterlogged from not having enough fresh air to evaporate the excess moisture... I have always just put them on a screen like yours with a fan nearby and have never had one mold... If your current fruits are taking a long time to dry aim a fan at them and put them someplace warm! Ive never heard of using dessicants to dry... im sure they would keep your dried stash for longer though...

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They molded because I kept them on the kitchen counter in open air, drying for a few weeks. They werent water logged, although some were in the current tubs because I used that fat sprayer instead of the fine for those few days. That's permanantly resolved, though.

I'm surprised you never heard of dessicant, its been in most of the pf tek guides I've read. It drys them in about 3 days, and allows me to keep a fairly nice but not air tight lid on them. The dessicant packets suck up that moisture so fast!

Maulstrom said:

You get shrooms at the peak of their potency if you harvest just before the cap breaks free of the stem - plus with some strains if you let the big shrooms throw spores all over your cakes it can inhibit future flushes. Still jealous though!

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This is very correct!! Thanks for pointing that out. The reason that I wait for the caps to open and get a little bigger is because I want a heavy weight to them too. It doesnt make them any more potent whatsoever unfortunately.

Why don't you use a food dehydrator, a model that can go below 100F? I read that it doesn't affect potency.

Well I have heard of dessicants but never used them... I just now realized thats probably because I live in a desert! Haha, everything dries so quickly here, I dry in the open air to craker dry with no problems... Either way it is recomended to first air dry fruits with a fan on them for the first 3 days, rotating the fruits, and it will make your dessicant more effective.

Im stoked you are gonna try the UNMODIFIED shotgun side by side! This will be awesome to see! Just follow the tek exactly and elevate it! DO NOT use your air pump at all on this tub! That is a modification. Just mist then fan it 4 times daily when you do your other tubs.

Glad you got a better spray bottle too!

Cant wait to see results! Keep them pics coming!!!

dankillerbs said:

Well, sorry for being the only one critiquing your grow... I really am quite surprised you have gotten this far on a second attempt! Keep it up! As with any hobby like cultivation, home brewing, and mycology, it is possible to get results and have something to show at the end even if you didnt provide the perfect conditions... Im know you dont claim to be a pro yet after only a second attempt so im just offering advise that you may aknowledge eventually...

Fresh Air Exchange is the #1 pinning trigger... If you dont have enough and your spraying your cakes after you fan them, you are leaving them sitting in a wet environment with stale air... this WILL lead to contamination quicker than it should under proper conditions...

Fan your tubs AFTER misting with a FINE spray from above... some of your caps are looking wet.

Weather you believe me or not, the shotgun tek was developed over MANY years of trial and error... it REQUIRES holes on EVERY side to maintain the proper RH% in the ENTIRE tub for all the cakes... Its science... doesnt mean you wont pull off some fruits, just means your not pulling as much as you could... If you modify the tek you get modified results... and chances are you wont get as many flushes as you could... some of your cakes are not up to speed with others in the same tote and that is because conditions are not the same throughout your tub... its the same mycellium getting different conditions...

Dont believe me? try taking one of the extra tubs you have around... drill holes on EVERY side with the drill size recomended in the shotgun tek... TOP, BOTTOM, and ALL four sides... keep it elevated with block on all 4 corners so air can travel beneath it and fill it with 4-5 inches of wet, drained perlite. After a good dunk and roll toss em in that terrarium and treat em like the rest...see the results... cant hurt to try right?

What are your dry yeilds so far per flush? and how many cakes picked to get that flush?

Also, many people think mushrooms require very little light... that is quite outdated and you will get better preformance with a bright floro in the 6500k(daylight) spectrum.

your doing fine, but im sure you know you can do even better!

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im sorry sir but I have to disagree, im not trying to start an argument with you or any thing, but just because the shrooms look wet doesn't nessacarily mean she is not getting enough air. could be but in my opinion it is more likely she is spraying to often and directly on the shrooms, which more air flow would help to dry that some... but the damage done to the shooms is done due to water damaging the mycelium if she is fanning often then she doesn't have to have the holes it just means that her tubs are not true shotgun terrariums but thats not the only kind of succesful terraium, another thing is the perlite should be layed down lightly not packed it allows more surface area blah blah blah no one said any thing about that thought i would throw that tid bit out there, the light thing i have found to be true though..... floresent lights in the day light spectrum deffinitly have made a difference in my grows i would say suffencient lighting is important


oh and kittly you dont wanna spray them with the h202/water just use that to rehydrate your perlite and not to much h202 i dont have and exact amount but i use about a shot per cup to two cups something like that

how often do you spray them and how often do you fan them? they do appear to be wet thats why I think there deformed and and the caps are splitting

im not a pro just pointing out my veiws i've only been growing shrooms for about a year and a half and im not saying this is fact just that i've been the oversprayer before and it was creating simular shrooms, more air flow and less spraying but i wouldn't say that you have to drill more holes i would think that just simply fanning a little more often and only spraying half as often as you are and everything should be fine.. but since your Gonna make a shotgun terrarium any ways it will be fun to see how it compare's

dankillerbs said:

If your harvested fruits are molding thats a sure sign of not enough fresh air in your fruiting chamber! They get waterlogged from not having enough fresh air to evaporate the excess moisture... I have always just put them on a screen like yours with a fan nearby and have never had one mold... If your current fruits are taking a long time to dry aim a fan at them and put them someplace warm! Ive never heard of using dessicants to dry... im sure they would keep your dried stash for longer though...

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its obviously from drying them two slow you have 2 days approx to dry them any longer and they can go bad, dessacants are a very common method for drying will all your knowlegde of shrooms im very suprised you haven't seen that lol a cheap food dehydrater might have been faster though


now about misting its really not that nessacary only a few times a day fanning is way more important, now with a true shot gun terrarium its kinda the opposit fanning less often cause the holes and misting more because of the water loss

420God said:

Why don't you use a food dehydrator, a model that can go below 100F? I read that it doesn't affect potency.

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Because I'd need 20 of them.

Don't put your terrarium in a closed up closet. I also don't recommend running a fan in the room as others often suggest. It screws with the natural circulation which the shotgun design is engineered to operate on.
RR

also in your true shotguns your making make sure the perlite is 4-5 inches you will not get desired humidity with anything less

best of luck with both or your teks

I just read through all 12 pages and I must say I am impressed. I am starting on my first shroom grow pretty soon here and looking at this as you're second I feel like I need to step my shit up. I'm doing 24 jars, 2 tubs, 12 jars in casings, 12 jars dunked and rolled.

Have all your cakes flushed at least once? I'm confused on how far you are into fruiting/harvesting.

What exactly are you doing to dry them, as I am embarking on my grow I am quickly realizing that I have no idea how I'm going to dry my fruits. Is there a store where you can buy dessicant or is it a product you can only find online, I ask because although my marijuana growing is public in my household and I am a medical patient, shroom's remain illegal and shipping products to my house is a no-no. I'm not down to get caught.

Also, one more thing. How many jars total, and what is your expected dry yield and how many flushes are you gonna keep these around for. They normally stop after 3-4 flushes, right?

I'm 19 embarking on my first shroom grow, you are 21 on your second and I feel like in 2 years there is no way I could catch up to where you are. Your grow is showing skill that I wouldn't expect out of a second time grow, its certainly not what I expect my second grow to look like. You have clearly done your research.

DarthD3vl said:

how often do you spray them and how often do you fan them? they do appear to be wet thats why I think there deformed and and the caps are splitting

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4 to 6 times daily. I was fanning then misting, now its opposite. The new shrooms that are in the last set of pics that are still not fully grown look perfect, and thats probably because they started growing after I replaced the fat spray with the original small mister.

If fanning is more important than misting, should I hook up that air pump to a timer? If so, how long should it be on for? It's only hooked up to the left 6 drawers not the right two so far. One minute every ten minutes? five minutes every fifteen? I've got no clue where to start on that one!

asdf1 said:

I just read through all 12 pages and I must say I am impressed. I am starting on my first shroom grow pretty soon here and looking at this as you're second I feel like I need to step my shit up. I'm doing 24 jars, 2 tubs, 12 jars in casings, 12 jars dunked and rolled.

Have all your cakes flushed at least once? I'm confused on how far you are into fruiting/harvesting.

What exactly are you doing to dry them, as I am embarking on my grow I am quickly realizing that I have no idea how I'm going to dry my fruits. Is there a store where you can buy dessicant or is it a product you can only find online, I ask because although my marijuana growing is public in my household and I am a medical patient, shroom's remain illegal and shipping products to my house is a no-no. I'm not down to get caught.

Also, one more thing. How many jars total, and what is your expected dry yield and how many flushes are you gonna keep these around for. They normally stop after 3-4 flushes, right?

I'm 19 embarking on my first shroom grow, you are 21 on your second and I feel like in 2 years there is no way I could catch up to where you are. Your grow is showing skill that I wouldn't expect out of a second time grow, its certainly not what I expect my second grow to look like. You have clearly done your research.

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Thanks for the compliments....... My grow just looks impressive because there's a lot of cakes. If I had just a dozen cakes or even one it'd still be the same mushrooms. Its just multiplied by a few hundred instead.

All of my cakes are still on their 'first flush' (aka never been fruited before). When each drawers cakes finish making shrooms, I'll dunk the entire drawer full at once and get them back in the same drawer the next day. The number of flushes varies widely from grower to grower, some like Darth can get like 8 or 10 flushes and then re-use his mycellium in a big cake later too, where as me I'd be happy with 3 to 5 flushes. After the mushrooms grow the first time, they've used up all the water in the cakes and only some of the nutrients (brown rice flour). Re-hydrating them just lets them restart and finish up what nutrients are left. When the BRF is gone, you just wont get shrooms anymore and by that point your cakes probably get a little green mold on them and your ready to replace them with fresh new cakes instead.

I dont know what the dry yield will be. Check back in about a week and we'll know how the yield is on the first flush from all the drawers.

Cheers

i would say since your not in true shotgun with lots and lots of holes, keep fanning them that often or more, but spray every other time its more important for fresh air than constant spraying infact sparying to often can inhibit your pinning as was said before. and its really a good thing you switched to a finer mist the finer the better but you still dont want to soak them and if you can avoid spraying them directly as much as possible

DarthD3vl said:

i would say since your not in true shotgun with lots and lots of holes, keep fanning them that often or more, but spray every other time its more important for fresh air than constant spraying infact sparying to often can inhibit your pinning as was said before. and its really a good thing you switched to a finer mist the finer the better but you still dont want to soak them and if you can avoid spraying them directly as much as possible

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Would an occilating fan just pointed at the drawers work out? After reading all the fanning conversation it seems like a simple solution....

We need a mushrooms sub-forum. Enough said.

Well she mentioned she was misting and fanning four times daily, thats about as much as you should be misting an unmodified shotgun... without holes on the bottom and top you are not getting enough fresh air exchange and would need to fan much more than 4 times daily to get the best growth, not to mention mist less because its unable to evaporate correctly.

And yes I know of dessicant, just never needed them in the desert Forgot not everyone live here, my bad.

Im just saying with modified versions you will have a harder time mainting the correct RH% and enough FAE throughout the tub, the environment will be different from cake to cake, which will result in uneven growth... like cakes that dont pin or pin poorly. They started off as the same healthy mycellium that went into the tub. Coincidence? I think not. They just werent given the chance for full potential due to uneven conditions throughout the tub.

Side by side will be cool to see!

researchkitty said:

Thanks for the compliments....... My grow just looks impressive because there's a lot of cakes. If I had just a dozen cakes or even one it'd still be the same mushrooms. Its just multiplied by a few hundred instead.

All of my cakes are still on their 'first flush' (aka never been fruited before). When each drawers cakes finish making shrooms, I'll dunk the entire drawer full at once and get them back in the same drawer the next day. The number of flushes varies widely from grower to grower, some like Darth can get like 8 or 10 flushes and then re-use his mycellium in a big cake later too, where as me I'd be happy with 3 to 5 flushes. After the mushrooms grow the first time, they've used up all the water in the cakes and only some of the nutrients (brown rice flour). Re-hydrating them just lets them restart and finish up what nutrients are left. When the BRF is gone, you just wont get shrooms anymore and by that point your cakes probably get a little green mold on them and your ready to replace them with fresh new cakes instead.

I dont know what the dry yield will be. Check back in about a week and we'll know how the yield is on the first flush from all the drawers.

Cheers

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How are you drying the fruits?

dankillerbs said:

Well she mentioned she was misting and fanning four times daily, thats about as much as you should be misting an unmodified shotgun... without holes on the bottom and top you are not getting enough fresh air exchange and would need to fan much more than 4 times daily to get the best growth, not to mention mist less because its unable to evaporate correctly.

And yes I know of dessicant, just never needed them in the desert Forgot not everyone live here, my bad.

Im just saying with modified versions you will have a harder time mainting the correct RH% and enough FAE throughout the tub, the environment will be different from cake to cake, which will result in uneven growth... like cakes that dont pin or pin poorly. They started off as the same healthy mycellium that went into the tub. Coincidence? I think not. They just werent given the chance for full potential due to uneven conditions throughout the tub.

Side by side will be cool to see!

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haha yea desert is alot diff from were I am, pretty close to the beach less than an hour. and our humidity outside can reach 90 on its own haha
but i think were gettin at the same idea just differnt solutions lol

Two good points Darth made here to consider for your TRUE shotgun terrarium....
"also in your true shotguns your making, make sure the perlite is 4-5 inches, you will not get desired humidity with anything less"
"the perlite should be layed down lightly not packed, it allows more surface area "