Cheap alternative - Rice + Straw cakes - RS Tek

By now you should be familiar with my sterilization techniques so I wont go into them in detail. If you unsure check my other posts for a refresher. This method costs about a quater of the PF tek and gives the spores more energy per pint.

For 9 pint glasses of substrate use 1 kilo of rice and about 10 large handfuls of straw and 2 cups of verm .

Put your rice into a large pan and fill the pan with water, then swill the rice around to wash as much starch of as you can, this will help keep it fluffy. Once the water is cloudy drain it off and repeat until the water stays relativly clear. Drain of the clearish water.

Put enough fresh water into the pan to just cover the rice, boil for 10 minutes then leave the lid on and leave it for 2o minutes with the lid on, this will let the rice absorb all the extra water and make it fluffier.

You will also want to wash cut and wash your straw. Drop it into the sink and chop it up into 1 inch pieces, fill the sink with warm water and squirt on some washing up liquid, give it a good wash then rinse. Stuff this into a pillow case and submerge this in the largest pan you can find, you only need to pasturize this I've found boiling it isn't so great. Keep it between 60-70C for around 2 hrs. This will stink.

Once the rice has stood for 20 mins, take a fork and fluff it all up. I use a large brewers pan for this next part, its a huge metal basin with handles. Put the pasturized straw into your mixing vessel and drop in a couple of cups of verm, this will soak up any excess water and help keep the water content right during sterilization. Mix in the fluffy rice. I continue to mix this until the rice no longer steams, this stops the rice clagging up into lumps.

You will then fill up your pint glasses with the mix, cleaning the lip and topping the top half inch with verm. Put a double folded piece of foil over this, I tie this on with string, then put a slightly looser single ply of foil.

Sterilize in your preferred method for 90 mins. I slpit them between big pans and a veg steamer. If you use a pan remember to keep the glasses off the bottom or it will fuck your substrate.

Mass substrate cultivation - Straw + Cakes

So I've done this now , this is the first time I've used straw in this way but I think I've got the method down. Here's what I did.

Bought one large bag of straw from the garden centre, half filled 2 pillow cases with said straw.

Boiled a half pan of water added 2 tablespoons of gypsum ( available from brewers shops )

Submerge one pillow case in the pan and boil for an hour. Beware unless you wash your straw first it will start to stink like shit after 15 minutes. I mean really fucking stink.

Sit the pillow case on a collander on your back step, draining board or whatever and boil t'other.

Once both bags have been pasturised and cooled empty them both into a large heavy duty clear bin bag.

Crush up afew PF cakes in a bag as described in the casing method, add this spawn to the straw and aggitate to spread spawn around.

Press this bag into a large storage box with a lid and leave it somewhere dark to colonize.

I'm actually keeping it at just under 25C , a temperature less favourable to trichoderma. Colonization will still occur just a little slower, I always have several terrariums going so I'm hardley ever in a rush to fruit.

Personally I prefer to incubate at a slightly cooler temperature, most ppl will prolly disagree but thats how I work and I don't suffer failures.

Lemme know if theres anything imparticular you want to know about want looking into, I'm always trying new methods and teks, and doing my best to improve them.

Mass substrate cultivation

I was just up at my local garden centre and I noticed that they sell big bags of straw as bedding, I'm gonna go up again later this week and pick some up. Then I'm gonna pasturize it and add some spawn then cultivate that, eventually making a huge casing out of it! Once I've done it I'll post up exactly how it's done.