Christopher G Williams

Ronaldo Montoya wrote:

Christopher G Williams wrote:
Is there any way to avoid that Orange stuff?

Not that I'm aware of, it's nothing to worry much over anyway.

Ronaldo Montoya wrote:

Should i put My mycelium in The refrigerator now?

Yes, not a bad idea.  

I'm a day late to celebrate Lorenz Hart's birthday (5/2), but better late than never. His lyrics treated here with the utmost sensitivity by the great Shirley Horn:

Orange or brownish metabolites that appear to be present here are fairly common and harmless, but this picture also shows what seems to be green mold at the bottom of the jar, near your pinky finger. Maybe it is just an artifact of the photo, but it looks like contamination to me. You might get away with using the top part of the jar for spawning a mass substrate like straw, but I would not use it to make more grain jars.

r ransom wrote:What is this sign called and what does it do?

That sign is called a 'natural accidental', the sharp and flat symbols are also 'accidentals'. The natural accidental cancels out any previous accidentals, including in the key signature. In your example it is canceling out the F# on the first beat of that measure, so you would play it as an F natural.

As to your second question there are no real 'side effects' of playing in a higher or lower octave, it will absolutely be recognizable as the same tune. You can even transpose a tune a half step, a third, a fifth, etc higher or lower, and it will still be the same tune. It is common for standard songs to played in different keys, depending on the singer's preferred key.

It's a very good practice to learn your songs in several different keys, and aspire to be able to transpose into different keys in real time.

For actual sterilization a pressure cooker is irreplaceable. What you are doing with the hot water bath would be more like pasteurization. I think mere pasteurization of grain substrates is fairly common among a certain type of hobbyist mushroom growers, but you are guaranteed to have higher contamination rates than you would with a pressure cooker. Oyster mushrooms are quite aggressive and fast to colonize grain, so are more likely to work with your methods. I predict you would have a much harder time growing other, slower colonizing, species with mere pasteurization though.

This is a fun site: Mushroom Color Atlas

I've grown mushrooms on logs for many years, and only occasionally would have some minor losses due to squirrels nibbling off the bark. This past spring however I put up around 1500 red oak logs and the squirrels have just been relentless. I blame myself for not keeping a closer eye on my piles; by the time I noticed they had about 100 logs nearly destroyed. They are attacking my red oak fire wood with the same veracity, so I know it has nothing to do with with mushrooms, I guess they just like to chew the bark...

I'm about at my wits end. I have been able to pop a few with a pellet gun and a few stepped into my rat trap, but they are smart and numerous. I'd really like some way to keep them off the logs rather than trying to pick them off one by one. I did try mothballs, but that doesn't seem to bother them. Any advice appreciated!  

LibreOffice user here too, highly recommended. I used OpenOffice for several years as well, but find Libre to be superior.

Something you can often hear on public radio over Easter weekend.