Well after three failed tries I finally got pins forming on my cakes and I'm certain that I'll get a nice crop of mushies. It's been a long three months. I thought I'd share what I learned from my screwups.

The single greatest tip I have to offer is mix your vermiculite with water and then evenly coat the wet vermiculite with the BRF.

Get course vermiculite. Grind it, up as fine as you can in a coffee grinder, put in a baking dish. Put your BRF in a second baking dish and place in the oven at 300F for 30 mins. This presterilization has really helped me cut down on contams.

Use B+ spores until you get your first crop. They're much more hardy than any other strain I've tried. They colonize at a decent rate of speed, too.

Innoculate then cover the jars back up with aluminum but don't put tape over the holes. After ~50% colonization loosen the lids and tip the jars upside-down.

Wait an extra week before birthing your cakes. The mycelium network must be strong in order to provide good pinning. My most whitest cakes are pinning like champs. Some of the other barely fully-colonized cakes are not showing too much in the way of pinning thusfar.

Don't put too much water in your terrarium if you're using the perlite tek. Your mushies will sink. That happened to me once when I was high and added water.

Play lovely music to your mushrooms. Bach Cantatas are perfect. I often put BWV 147 mov 5 on repeat and play it quietly on a CD player next to the terrarium.

Go bulk with the PF tek. Get a good 400 jars going!

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Better loving through chemistry.

trenchcoat, did you say grind down your vermiculite? thats really not a good idea. the object of using verm is to create a porous environment with air inside so that the mycelium has a chance to grow.
i have extensive knowledge on this subject, if you have any questions feel free to ask, although swif hasnt grown for some time, he might be a little rusty.
good move with the presterilization, a pressure cooker is very useful also(although i have gotten it to work using pasturization in a pot).
b+ ay? i like the faster ones like thai and cambodians to some extent. b+ is good though, just a little slow. it makes up for it in hardyness though.


one trick to add to this is to get brown rice and grind it down into chunks and powder, this makes for very healthy fungus.

I disagree, Peurto Riccans and Equadorians are reaaly easy and forgiving to grow, and are much more potent than B+ (esp Peurto Riccans).  SWIM has grown both.

well they are all cubes, so theres variation, but discussion of strains is pretty pointless.
oh and trenchcoat, use very little water on your perlite...if they are sinkin, youve got major problems.

Some added suggestions:

1.) Try an autoclave, it will improve yeilds dramatically, medical supply and laboratory suppply stores often have used ones for reasonable prices.

2.) Try using rye grain (whole kernel) for the growth media it provides alot of air space, and works well.

3.) Try liquid innoculation rather then using a syringe or spores, you'll get a better result, faster grow times, and as an added advantage you will have a bunch or mush rooms that all look exactly the same. 

4.) If you are going bulk then i have swim has found that liquid innoculation of more media is better then trying to bulk propigate.

5.)A company that sells poisinous non-consumables just happens to sell preautoclaved growth media already in jars. . . ever wonder what no contamination would be like. . . it's a good way to get started at least.

Cyril
Now for the azures. . .

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So you need a precursor, to a precursor, just to make a precursor?

azures cyril? a daunting task indeed... seems like you really know what youre talking about though.
for azures youd need temperature control, like an old fridge..its probably the toughest shroom to grow.

Trenchcoat,

Considering that you failed at the PF TEK 3 times, and now only have pins, I hardly think that you are in a position to be offering advice.

lol

SWIM has had good results using microwave sterilisation - high power for 8mins.

haha, trenchcoat, that is pretty pathetic. what happened? conatminants?
i luckily live in a dry climate..seems to help cut down on the bacteria levels.

Try this: powderize 30g of dried PCs, wash with ether and acetone (you can use ether out of engine starter if you wash with acetone afterwards because the crap from the can will dissolve in acetone). Now extract the powder with methanol, evaporate, dissolve the extract in water and drink it. That should be interesting!

What would the final yield of psychoactive alkaloids be if one did this, Ghost?

there is info on the 'net about these extractions, try the shroomery, their forums...even if they aren't professional there still is alot of worthy information...what have I learned from growing 'shrooms?           , sterilize, sterilize sterilize, wish we could all have autoclaves but some aren't as fortunate...and always case the cakes, if done right, you have much higher yields during fruiting and much quicker. Has anyone actually extracted psilocybin, psilocin from shrooms? I have lab access now, maybe its time to try an extraction...

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GROW OVER THE GOV'T

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the shroomery used to be my old stomping grounds.
the general concensus there seems to be that its not worth extracting...mostly a bunch of hippies there.
youd have much better luck lurking around here for psi. extraction information.
try these

Post 227955 (not existing)

Yep, I agree on the shroomery...anybody here tried azures? what about mexicana...I would rather have some mexicana then azure, just because of Wasson, and to pay homage to the Aztecs...

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"The highest happiness of man is to have probed what is knowable, and to quietly revere what is unknowable."
- Goethe

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The Pirate Myco-Chemist

Perhaps you're right. I have shrooms now, though. I think one or two of those tips could be useful. They got my cakes fruiting after several failures. Next time I'm going to grow on cow shit, though.

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Better loving through chemistry.

hey trench, theres some foolproof techniqes...ryche hawk and company have all but perfected shroom cultivation: outdoor and indoor.
you should see this guys grow room...it makes my eyes tear up everytime i see it.

yep, hawk is where I have been getting my spores for awhile now. Once I got a single non-active syringe, but every other one has always been superb. I wish we all had a grow room like theirs...

So, after a few successful b+ batches, what would be the next type to try?? Peurto Riccans or Equadorians maybe?? 

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"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." - Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)

SWIM has cultivated P. azurescens on agar, but has not yet got round to actually sorting out the necessary substrate... any tips would bee much appreciated.

Sweet dreamz,
IudexK

iudex, not sure on the substrate, but youve got temperature and environmental worries to go along with that...not an easy thing to do. 
in fact some of the more reputed growers still brag on their ability to grow azures.