All plants are growing nicely. No signs of deficiencies or toxicities. Big ol’ fan leaves, now under the Cree cob lights (about 500w draw) in 16ltr smart pots.
Still feeding with the regular schedule at around 5.5-5.8pH and 2.0-2.3 EC. I have dropped the Rhizotonic as i’m almost out and I dont think they need it now they are pretty thicc
I topped them 2 days ago in an attempt to manage their height. As I’m looking for the best performer to create a mother from, I will want to keep them from getting too big (and they are Satvias!). I took these tops (one from each) and made an attempt to clone them. Checking them today they’ve all completely wilted which is annoying, this pretty much always happens when I try to clone and I think, to be fair, its because the stalk is too thick. So I decided to have another go with a few from the lowest node (to also make a bit more space under the plant). I took both stems from plant A and D (currently the best performers) and put them into pots with a bag over them, under my Mars Hydro 300w blurple - The first cuts were put under the Bridgelux so could also just be too powerful and they wilted?
Hopefully these ones do much better, but these are just technique tests for when the mothers are a bit older and I can start taking multiple clones (once the nodes start alternating)
Last night vs this morning. Getting there! Tubs need more FAE, don’t think the holes ive added is enough so i’ve cracked the lid and rotated it to allow for more air exchange. Not sure if I need a small fan or something to circulate the air more.
If you look closely at the bottom you’ll see some fuzzyness. If that grows bigger than just a small point where the mushroom grows out, it needs more FAE. They’re not too bad, a few of them are (look middle right - fuzz is over 50% of the stem)
Thought i’d post my process here copied from a comment I made on reddit that might help someone
For my agar I use water I had used to simmer the rye grain I was prepping for my jars. I filtered that through a coffee filter and then took 900ml of it and 20g of agar agar powder and mixed together. Boiled for about 15 minutes whilst stirring which reduced it to about 800ml. I poured 200ml into 4 glass bottles and pressure cooked for an hour at 13psi.
So these were transfers from other plates I had growing. My process for making transfers is to set everything inside my SAB that i’ve wiped down with disinfectant. Wipe down my table, my scalpel handle, the dishes im transferring from with iso alcohol.
First i put a clean blade on my scalpel and flame sterilise until red hot, then open the receiving dish and press the blade into the edge to cool it, put the lid back on. Open the first plate and cut a small section. I find it easier to just press the blade in and then rotate rather than cut. Poke the wedge and lift out, put on the receiving dish and then set aside. Wipe down the scalpel with alc and then repeat.
Then I wrap in parafilm and store facing up for a day or so, then flip upside down.
For spore syringes its pretty much the same process except you squirt a few drops onto the agar. You sterilise the needle until red hot then squirt a few drops across the plate. Then isolate using transfer process.
You can also just scrape spores from a print directly onto the agar and it will grow out.
The pictures labelled S are originally from spore syringes where the ones labelled T are from a mushroom tissue sample.
I haven’t tried liquid cultures, but i’m loving agar at the moment, plus I have like 400 dishes left from my bulk purchase! I much preferred doing tissue samples over spore syringe inoculation of the agar, though
I never got growth on my spore syringe but the clones did well. I bought 10 premade dishes and it seems sufficient when doing G2G transfers. That’s a lot of Petri dishes to go through. Just picking your brain. I like to see how others operate to help improve my own skills.
I ended up having to buy bulk from a supplier because amazon “middlemen” kept sending me broken and perforated “sterile” bags. Might end up giving some pre-mades away along with spore syringes I end up making.
I wanted to do g2g when I had my GT spores but those jars ended up all with contam, but my agar jars are colonising pretty quick anyway - about a couple weeks
Yeah Android only I’m afraid. I do development by trade so it’s all I know, plus I don’t own an iPhone. I actually got into Android development despite wanting to do iOS because of the (at the time) requirement of purchasing a developer license just to create apps for your own phone (and I knew Java at the time so that helped)
Girls are getting big! Apparently for mother plants designated for cloning, they have lower power light source and lower EC solution to keep them growing slower, so will be reducing everything. This might also give me an excuse to finally fix the potentiometer in my control panel.
Took 4 clones from plant C today. Other clones looking OK, no signs of roots yet. First set of clones just look dead which is pretty much how it always goes. Ordered some clonex and rapid rooters to try instead of my jiffy pods. I will get a successful clone even if that means I have to hack all 5 of these plants to pieces to achieve it
Ground up 20g and put em into capsules for microdosing. These ones came out at about 150mg each but i usually try aim for 200-250mg. I only blended the mushrooms so they were still quite big chunks rather than a fine powder. Will need to blend, then oven on low for 30 mins or so, then use the pestle & mortar in the future to get a finer poweder
Gave the girls a big trim to keep them back a bit, along with feeding without any A&B, and a lil bit of pk13/14 in prep for cuttings I plan to be doing soon with a better kitted out cloning area.
New clone bay setup. The earlier tests I were doing were all failures so I decided to splash out and just get a bunch of stuff to help with cloning. I bought 4x 20w led tube lights to use to mount on my shelf rack, clonex gel, clonex spray, and rapid rooters. Took 6 cuttings off plant A and 4 off the rest. took a range of different cuttings to see which are more successful. I’m hoping I can get some this time, I just have to be patient and not mess with them
