So I thought I'd share a bit about my first grow, which was (in my eyes at least) a success!

​

I followed /u/shroomscout's guide pretty closely at first. He jumped in a few times to answer questions and I'm super grateful. I couldn't have done it without him. I have wanted to grow mushrooms for years but never felt like I could wrap my head around the process.

​

I just finished my first 9 tubs, and I have about 120 grams dry. That may not seem like a lot, but I'm pretty proud of it. Between having to buy almost everything I spent about $150. Not a bad ROI, and I had a LOT of fun (although I made my wife nervous). I'm now in the process of colonizing agar plates of some gourmet varieties with one of my kids (all of whom do NOT know about this grow).

​

Here's what I did NOT do the way I was supposed to/what went wrong:

​

• I used name brand Uncle Ben's. It was all I could find locally, but didn't seem to be an issue.
• I made my own SAB out of a Costco box and some plastic wrap
• Some of my bags got way too much spore solution. My syringe got clogged up with the flame sterilization process.
• Out of 12 bags I did, 8 had no contam, 2 never colonized and were pure contam, and one mostly colonized but had a big spot of contam on one end. I used the 8, each in its own tub and then cut off the contam from the one mostly good bag, along with a pretty wide margin and used that bag in its own tub. All 9 tubs produced well - the contam tub had no issues.
• I didn't label anything. Partly laziness, partly because I didn't want any tough to answer questions from my kids if they found the tubs. This resulted in me mixing up the two (apparently very similar looking) strains I was growing.
• I over misted. My tubs kept drying out and then they'd be bone dry when I'd check them again in a few hours. I tried to compensate for this by getting them very wet, but the mycelium didn't appreciate this. I got a flush with very fuzzy feet.
• I didn't use much light. I set up LED's in my closet, but it was pretty damn obvious that there were LED lights in my closet, and my kids are nosy AF. I set them to only run while the kids were at school, but it made me nervous, so I moved the LEDs under my bed and kept the tubs there. Within a few days I had a couple of close calls with my kids, so I abandoned the lights and put the tubs back in the closet. I left the closet light (a small CFL) on during the day, but the mushrooms wanted more light, I'm pretty sure.
• Too little air exchange. I got tired of my tubs drying out so fast (I'm still not entirely sure why) and so I kept the lids closed except for misting. Lots of aborts this way. Probably my biggest mistake - the mushrooms did much better getting too dry than not getting FAE.
• I abandoned my tubs. My family went on a short trip (about 4 days) and I left my tubs alone. I sprayed the lids and walls down pretty heavily before I left and left my lids askew. I came back to dry tubs, aborts, and a tub full of spore drops (what a mess!). The dry tubs did pretty well with a dunk, I picked and dried the aborts, and I did my best to clean up the spore drop. The spore drop tub was a pretty decent flush, actually, but it never did produce another flush.
• I didn't throw away tubs with contam. I still don't regret this. (I may soon though). I just put the lids on these tubs (3 by the end of my grow) and left them be. Pure laziness on my part, but they don't seem to be bothering anything as long as I leave the lid on. I expect they'll be gross to clean though.
• I did covert dehydration. Dehydrators aren't exactly inconspicuous, so I had to figure out the kid problem. I wound up keeping the dehydrator in my bedroom, and because my kids are nosy I didn't want to just run it with shrooms. I wound up using the bottom couple of racks for shrooms and the top couple of racks for apple slices. When my kids opened it up (because again, they're nosy) they saw apples. As a bonus, I got dried apples, which I really enjoy.
• I threw out my tubs while they were still producing. This one was not my choice. My garden made my wife nervous. Apparently when she told me she wanted to try tripping on shrooms, she meant we should buy some, not start a farm. You'd think she knew me better than that, but whatever. We settled on a end date for the agricultural experiment. Anyway, May 31 was the end. I harvested my tubs a final time and put the lids on them. I'm waiting for a time when the kids aren't around to clean them out, but they're done.

All in all I'm happy. 120 grams is far more than enough to last my friends and I a while. My kids didn't catch me. My flushes weren't great, and if I do this again I'll probably go MUCH smaller on my grow - 1-2 bags/tubs. Despite doing all sorts of things the "Wrong" way, I got decent results. I'll bet everything would have produced better if I did things right, but sometime you have to work with what you've got.

Late edit to add: Side pins! SO MANY side pins. I freaked out at first, but then I just decided it wasn’t a problem and probably 1/3 of my total harvest was from side pins. Probably a combination of my initial overmisting and long-term low lighting but I kind of enjoyed seeing the little guys poke their heads up out of the cracks.