Mishaps in Mushroom Growing
This site is called “logs” for a reason and that included documenting failures so that I can learn from them in future. My baby bucket recipe did not do well with the bran included. I was able to flash a light on the buckets and spotted trich in them (green). This was an unexpected advantage to using this particular brand of “clear” bucket! I buried them in hopes they are able to resurrect themselves. In the meantime, 2 lions mane, 1 turkey tail and 1 white enoki are still going strong!
I noticed a drop in humidity despite not having changed anything in my setup. I ran into this one before, last summer. After running a bit, the hose running to the tent will become weighted down and collect water, clogging the humidity stream to the tent. If I lift up the hose, water drips out. The solution for now is I made the hose as tight and straight to the tent as I could, if that don’t work, I used to prop up the hose with metal hanger into a rainbow arc. We’ll see how it goes.
Fighting with heat this past week I realized my smart plugs “circulate” function had stopped working on two of the timers, namely the fresh air exchange and humidifier. Finally got some new ones from Amazon and got it circulating. Fresh air 1 min every four hours and humidity 1 min every 20 min for now and it’s staying around 76F and 80% humidity.
Still an ongoing battle to see what I can do to lower the tent down a few degrees. I’m poking up to 81-82F and I’d like to keep it under 80F. I stopped the tent from leaking by taking down the “passive” exhaust hole I have from full 4″ opening to about 2″. I also improved the incoming fresh air by taking the thin filter I use on front end and moving it to back end, for some reason this fan performs better that way. I tried a make shift Styrofoam swamp cooler but the easiest solution right now is I put one of the ice packs I had on hand on the bottom shelf in the tent. I put the inside $ Walmart fan underneath that shelf and circulate air 5 min every 30 min. I usually put a fresh pack at 11am and that is enough to drop it from 80f to 74f-76f during the hottest part of the day. Will adjust as I go along.
It’s been a few days since I put the buckets in and I’m feeling the hit with degree change. I had the tent all dialed in prior to adding the buckets, but it’s a different ballgame with them in. I touched one bucket and can feel the warmth coming off of it, nuts!! I’m trying to increase the AFE but then, of course, the humidity drops. I also seem to be leaking too much humidity.. argh!