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.

Growing Mushrooms - making substrate jars and spore syringes

One thing you should know 'verm' is a technical term for vermiculite, lol. This substrate can be used to grow all kinds of mycaelium. If you want to grow Shitakes just substitute the verm with sawdust, you know the kind of stuff you put in rabbit hutches. I've been told that this technique or 'tek' can be used to grow Psilocybe Cubensis, widely known as magic mushrooms. I wouldnt advise this though as thats illegal in ... well pretty much everywhere but if you want to grow some tastey organic mushrooms to go with your fry up , just follow these instructions.

Oh and one more thing, to do the inoculations you will need a spore syringe, just google spore syringe and you'll prolly get what your looking for. Alternatively, buy the mushroom you want to buy from the supermarket , make sure its not a closed cup. Take your shrooms home and sterilize a glass with boiling water and sodium metabisulphate (available from all brewers shops) then drop the shroom gills down into the glass cover with foil and leave it for 3 days or so. Then you will need to boil some water fill up a cup and cover with foil, then chill this in the fridge. Find a 10ml syringe (available from some printer shops to refill ink cartridges) sterilize this in the same way as the glass, you may want to add a little cool water to the sterilizing solution so as not to damage the plastic syringe. Fill the syringe with the chilled sterile water , then remove the shroom from the covered cup and squirt in the sterile water, you may need to scratch the spores from the base of the cup, when all the spores are floating around draw the solution up into the syringe.

Ta-Da home made spore syringe, it sounds complicate dbut when you do it once you'll be able to do it again no probs. Now on the the cake making method.

PF-Tek “Cakes”

Step 1

· Mix together 2 cups of verm to one cup of water in a bowl until all the verm is hydrated and you get a little water collecting tin the bottom of the bowl

· Now add the rice flour bit by bit to get a nice even covering on the verm

· You want this mix to be as fluffy as possible, this is your substrate

Step 2

· Fill 6 large tumblers loosely with the substrate mixture

· Then you need to wipe round the lip of the tumbler to remove any traces of substrate that could be a springboard for any bacteria attempting to infiltrate your colony

· Once the lip is clean add a layer of dry verm and level off

· Now you need to make the lids, tear off an adequately sized strip of foil ( Bacofoil is strongly recommended due its toughness ) the fold this in two to double its strength and tightly fold it over the top of you tumbler

· The double layer will remain on until birthing, to inoculate the tumbler safely you will need to add another singe ply of foil to each glass

Step 3

· To sterilize the tumblers you will need a large pan with a fairly tight fitting lid and a means of getting the glasses out of the water and away from the direct heat on the bottom of the pan ( use whatever you have to hand, I use round steel vegetable steaming platform )

· Some people fold a towel up and cover it in water and put their glasses on top of it, and its just not a real good method

· Give the tumblers 60-90 minutes on full boil for a real good sterilization

Step 4

· Once the glasses have cooled place them in a makeshift glove box

· Shake up your spore syringe vigorously ( drawing a little air in aids this ), then flame sterilize the tip of the needle

· Inside the glove box remove the single ply layer of foil the tumbler and inoculate the substrate at 4 equidistant points, your aim to squirt a uniform amount of solution down the side of the glass with each inoculation

· After inoculating one tumbler replace the foil lid and flame sterilize your needle to avoid cross contamination

· Repeat step 4 actions 3 ~ 4 until all your glasses have been inoculated

Step 5

· Place your inoculated tumblers into your state of the art incubator · Check on the development every few days

· Upon 100% colonization leave the glasses to consolidate for 1 week, the consolidation period is where the Mycelium digests its food and prepares to flush

Once you have a consolidated cake you will need to construct some sort of fruiting chamber known as a terrarium, I'll get onto that in another post. Have fun