Menu
Assign a 'primary' menu
Home Page › Forums › Forum Area › Cultivation Area › Fruiting & Harvesting › Waiting for fruiting
Adam.
Cornelia KyrerHi all,
I started incubating my first bags on the 27th of October (that’s more than 5 weeks now) and had moved them to the fruiting space I set up in our garage after 4 weeks. Unfortunately it got too cold there (around 5°) and I moved them again on the 2nd of December to our attic where the temperature is a nice and stable 13° now, daylight and plenty of fresh air. I use the greenhouse setup with a pond fogger.
My bags have colonised very rapidly but I kept them in incubation a bit longer to be sure they were ready for fruiting. But, unfortunately, no luck so far. I understand that the low temperatures in the garage during about 1 week may have delayed the pinning and fruiting, but I am also worried about the looks of my bags. There is A LOT of yellow liquid in the bottom and the mycelium seems to be deteriorating even in the lower parts of the bags.
I use Mycosac bags with filter strips running across the upper half of the bag. They are filled a bit less then half.
What can I do about it? Should I perforate the bag to increase the air exchange? Will they fruit still?
My second batch of bags is almost ready to fruit by now but I am quite hesitant due to the lack of success with the first batch.
Oh, and I have another question: what are these brownish, round structures forming at the top of the substrate (see picture)? Are these the first stages of pinning/fruiting? The bags smell nice, no signs of bacterial infection to me.
Thanks a lot for your opinion and advice!
Cornelia
PS: I have to attach the photos through a link since the forum won’t allow me to attach files.
[IMG]https://www.mupload.nl/img/ew1yewzqwi20k.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]https://www.mupload.nl/img/19loy23vgqp0v.jpg[/IMG]
Cornelia KyrerLinks don’t seem to be working so I’ll mail the pictures as well.
AdamHi Cornelia,
I’ll post links to the pics here so others can see as well:
<blockquote class=”imgur-embed-pub” lang=”en” data-id=”a/hAppO”><a href=”//imgur.com/hAppO”></a></blockquote><script async src=”//s.imgur.com/min/embed.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>
The mycelium in your bags looks very healthy so I think a crop will come, although I can totally understand that you’re starting to wonder why they’re taking so long!
I have a couple of questions to try and work out the cause:
The yellow liquid looks mostly like the substrate mix was a little wet and is now pooling at the bottom of the bag. You could poke a tiny hole near theses areas to drain out the excess liquid, then tape it up again afterwards. Sometimes this brown/yellow liquid can occur when a bag has been incubated for too long as well, but it is not normally a problem – it should still fruit.
The brown round structures could be the beginning of pins starting to form without enough fresh air to develop properly, so you could try cutting a small 2-3cm slit over the top of this area to see if they develop out of the hole.
best wishes, Adam
Cornelia KyrerHi all,
A lot of time has passed since the last post…. I was relieved you said the mycelium looks healthy, so the next day I took a really long and close look at my bags and found some signs of pinning. There were already slits in the bags (made on top of bright white parts of the mycelium). None of the pins were anywhere near the incisions so I concluded that the conditions in the fruiting chamber were too dry. I switched the pond fogger on permanently (it had been on 50% of the time before that). Some pins started developing mushrooms then but the stems were too long. So I made the holes in the greenhouse bigger for more air exchange. Then some of the mushrooms dried out, also because the water level got a bit too low just around the holidays. I had a little crop on the 24th of december (150g) but the other clusters did not recover.
A few days later when I made slits in the bags of the 2nd batch I discovered green mould on my first batch. Just a tiny spot under the plastic in one bag but a big patch on the top of the other bag. I removed them both immediately and put them in our garage (where they were waiting for disposal), but the less infected bag seems to have recovered and is pinning all over. The mould has not grown. So I will keep that bag in the garage and see what happens next.
My second batch (incubated about 2w later than the first one) went into the fruiting space around Christmas as well. After a couple of days I cut slits. They are pinning now but again, all pins are under the plastic. The pond fogger is on 24/7 now, so I hope there will be enough humidity. Do you have any tips what I could do better? The tub with the pond fogger is on the lowest shelf of the greenhouse now, humidity on the shelf above seems quite high but not enough on the second shelf. The bags feel very slightly moist to the touch though.
Another problem I have been trying to address is that most pins have appeared (with each bag so far) on top of the mycelium block, near the filter strips. I suppose humidity is high there. But I cannot make incisions there for the mushrooms to grow unless I open the whole bag. So I just watch those pins grow and degenerate. My third batch (started incubation on the 1st of December with the remains of grain spawn from my first 2 batches) I incubated lying flat. Not only have they been the fastest to grow through the substrate (by far), the mycelium also looks healthier. I hope they will start pinning on top (I put them in the fruiting chamber today) so I can cut slits right above the pins then.
The strain is called H1 by the way.
Any input is highly appreciated, I was a bit down when the first bags started to grow mould but my spirit is up again now the other bags are looking good 🙂
Cornelia Kyrer2 weeks later and the bags in the garage are fruiting. The mushrooms look weird though. The stems are long and the caps are pointing in all different directions!
Former mushrooms grown in the greenhouse looked the same but I assumed there was not enough air exchange and that the light from the pond fogger (I could not find one without) caused them to grow in the wrong directions.
There is no doubt that there is enough air exchange in the room, also there is natural daylight.
What could cause these malformations? Is the mycelium/strain not ok?
https://imgur.com/a/FPwTK Here’s the picture!
AdamHi Cornelia,
firstly, my apologies that we missed your previous post – there seems to have been a problem where we haven’t been receiving notifications from the forum for a while.
In response to your first post – the best thing to do in order to prevent the mushrooms growing all under the plastic and at the top of the bag is to fold over the top of the bag and tape it down when you put it in to fruit. This stops the mushrooms being able to develop in the space inside the top of the bag and forces them to grow out of the hole(s) you cut.
Also, it is best to cut the hole(s) as soon a you put the bags in to the fruiting space to encourage pins to form just in the area of the cut. If you wait a couple of days before cutting holes, the mycelium will already be starting to develop pins across the whole substrate in response to the light, which makes it more likely that you’ll have mushrooms trying to grow under the plastic.
Regarding the weird shaped mushrooms developing I think this could be caused by either:
Finally, well done on persevering with it all! I know how disheartening it can be when a batch goes mouldy or doesn’t fruit properly, but if you keep going with it you’ll learn loads along the way and it will lead to good crops in the future 🙂
Best wishes, Adam