Mushrooms’ Paradise #13. Moving the colonized mushrooms' cakes to the enclosure. Turn on the Farm.

4 Jan 2021

Introduction

To grow mushrooms I used the “PF Tek” method. Full description on how to do it can be found here:

Start To Finish “PF Tek” For Growing Mushrooms At Home (Part 1)

Start To Finish "PF Tek" For Growing Mushrooms At Home (Part 2)

I already did the initial part of it - inoculated cakes with mycelium. Now, several weeks later, cakes are supposed to be fully colonized. So I can take them from my chamber and move them to the growth area.

Step 1. Rehydrating the mushroom cakes

Photo of the chamber, you can see all the cakes in the jars look white.

I take cake jars from the chamber one by one, and check if they are fully colonized.

As I mentioned in Mushrooms' Paradise #3. Inoculation of mushroom... | element14 | 1 Meter of Pi I used 3 strains of mushrooms: King, King Blue and Pearl. I inoculated the King and King Blue jars, distributing 10ml of liquid mycelium between 6 jars. Pearl cakes were inoculated with 10ml of mycelium between 12 jars.

So it was not surprising to see all the King and King Blue mushroom cakes fully colonized. However, Pearl mushrooms cakes were not colonized to the same level. I took the 7 most colonized Pearl mushroom cakes and moved them to the grow area as an experiment anyway.

After checking if the cake is fully colonized, I take it out of the jar. I cut it from the jar with a knife.

Cake should be completely white - if there is green, red, etc. colors or bad smell - it means the cake is contaminated by mold and should be thrown away! On the photo above there is a bit of yellow color - it is not mold but rust from the mason jar cap.

Photo of fully colonized mushroom cake. Perfect!

Then I shake not-colonized vermiculite from the cake and put the cake in a container of cold water to rehydrate. They should stay there for 24 hours before they are moved to the growth area. Rehydration helps mushrooms to sprout. It is better if mushrooms cakes are fully submerged in the water, so I put another container filled with water on the top of the container with water and cakes.

Photo of mushrooms cakes in containers with water.

Step 2. Preparation of Vermiculite and Perlite

To proceed with cakes preparation I will need Perlite and Vermiculite. NOTE: Never handle dry perlite or vermiculite without a dust mask! When moved from container to container or poured out, they create a lot of dust that goes into your lungs. I didn’t put on a mask, and I was coughing for hours.

Perlite will be used as an additional layer that keeps moisture in the enclosure. For now it is stored in a pot, mixed with water just enough to be damp.

Vermiculite will be used to cover mushroom cakes before putting them into the growth area. As a precaution from mold contamination I baked it for 2 hours. Usually you don’t need to do it, but

my Pearl mushrooms cakes were not fully colonized
I store vermiculite in a damp basement where I am sure more than enough mold spores are flying around.

Photo of baked vermiculite.

Step 3. Putting mushrooms on the trays

24 hours passed from the end of Step 1, and cakes are ready to go on the trays. In my enclosure mushrooms will be stored on the cookie baking trays. I sterilized the trays and filled them with damp perlite mixture.

Then I cut tin foil pieces, one for each mushroom cake and put them on the top on perlite on the trays, 6 per tray. It is needed to have a protection level between wet perlite and the bottom of the cake. If mushrooms will grow from the bottom of the cake, tin foil will keep the cake clean.

Then I took each cake out of water, scraped it a little bit with a fork, to expose more younger mycelium to the air. It will help for mushrooms pins to form faster.

Photo of scraping the cake.

Then I rolled each cake in vermiculite and put them on the top of the tin foil pieces.

Photo of the tray of the cakes. This tray will go into the enclosure.

I sprayed the cakes from a spray bottle and moved the trays to the enclosure. For my last tray I wanted to use the last 6 cakes of Pearl mushrooms, but because they were not colonized, I used scraps of all the other cakes. I am just interested if anything will sprout from these.

And I moved all the trays to the enclosure and started the farm.

The photo of enclosure with the mushrooms cakes.