DOC'S WILD BIRD SEED TEK

posted by doc34

"This pictorial gives step by step directions for pre-

paring wild bird seed to be used as mushroom
spawn or substrate.

Materials Needed:

Pressure Cooker

Wild Bird Seed(WBS) , for instance Pennington's

brand

Pint or Quart Canning jars

Pint:
Quart:

Tyvek:

Polyfil:

Coffee Filters:

Aluminum Foil:
"Preparation:
First, take all of the jars that are to be used and
wash them really good and allow them to dry.
Open your bag of WBS and pour enough of it into
a jar so as to fill it up little less than 1/2 way.

Dump this into a colander(strainer)

and repeat for each jar used.

Cleaning the WBS : The purpose of these first few
steps is to thoroughly clean your WBS and to re-
move any and as much of the unwanted additives
as possible and to remove any unwanted seeds
such as the Black Sunflower Seeds along with any
'Floaters'
Rinse: Run warm tap water over your WBS and
mix it up under the water, really well.
Wash: Place the WBS into a large pot and fill with
water, covering the WBS completely over with
about 2 inches of water on top.

Now, you see all of those seeds?

They are Millet(Whitish/yellow), milo(Redish/

brown), Wheat(Tan), and Sunflower(Black) "

"Now, the ones that are floating on top of the wa-

ter needs to be taken off and discarded, get them
all out of there-yup-everyone of them.

They are mostly just seeds that never fully devel-

oped and they are hollow except for the sunflower
seeds and they have no use, well, to me that is,
LOL. Now take your hand and stir, swirl, mix, toss,
whatever, to mix that WBS in that water. This
serves two purposes:
It brings the rest of the "floaters"to the top
It helps to "clean" it even more. Keep swirling your
hand and picking out all of the floaters, try to get
all of the them and every sunflower seed you see,
especially the 'black' ones.

Rinse: Dump your WBS back into your strainer

(colander) and run warm tap water over it again to
rinse.

Soak: Dump the WBS back into your large pot, fill
with water, covering the seed with about 2 inches
of water.

Cover with a lid and allow this to set for 12-14

hours at room temperature. I usually just let mine
soak overnight and I find it works well. The soak-
ing time can be adjusted to your taste though.
Some may find that it takes longer, while others
find it takes less.
Soaking serves two purpose: There are certain
bacterial endospores that are very heat resistant.
Meaning, that simply pressure cooking the WBS
will not kill them all. So, we allow the grain to soak
which in turn germinates those unwanted endo-
spores. Making them vulnerable to the high temps
of the PC and much easier to destroy. Secondly
the grain is soaked with water to some extent.
At this point you may notice a slight 'fermentation'
smell coming from your WBS . This is normal and
will not effect the outcome.

Rinse: Now, if you will notice the water has a

RUSTY look to it.

This is the remaining trash (unwanted additives)

that we don't want. So dump this back into your
strainer and rinse thoroughly.

Simmer: This serves one purpose and one purpose

only - to soak the WBS in order to achieve the
'perfect' water content for WBS .
When you simmer, you are forcing the grain to ab-
sorb as much water as it can hold without explod-
ing any grains (there may be a few exploded ker-
nels, thats expected-just not too many). This step,
from my experience, is the best way to do that.
There is no guessing, estimating, or wondering if
you got the right water content, simmering does
that for you.
Load the WBS back into your pot and turn on heat
to medium low. Once you see steam rising, start
your timer and simmer for 20-30 minutes. A rule
of thumb as to when the grain has simmered
enough, is when about 5% of the kernels have
started to disintegrate-'pop up'. Stir the grain oc-
casionally during the simmering phase and scoop a
spoon-fool of the kernels and observe for exploded
kernels.

DO NOT VIGOROUSLY BOIL THE WBS ! If you do

boil it, it will cause the grains to explode more than
usual and will hinder your efforts. You can stir this
as it simmers to keep the grains on the bottom
from exploding during this process. When it is
done simmering it should look like this.

Rinse: This is your final rinse. You should notice at

this point that the WBS has swollen. That was
caused by the simmering process. It is now 'hy-
drated' to the fullest.
This step serves one purpose. To remove any 'gel-
like substance' that has formed on the grain from
simmering. I like to use cold water at this
point(preference). If you don't rinse at this point,
your grain will have a 'slimy' appearance when
PC'd and you don't want that cause it will slow
colonization , so rinse it well.

Drain: Dump your WBS back into your strainer

and allow this to set and drain for 20 minutes. You
may want to cover it with the lid or foil to keep the
top layer from drying out during this step.

"Preparation of jars:

Lids: Take a 1/4 inch drill bit and drill a hole

through the middle of the disc.
If you are 'good', you can do all of them at once,
but, I would only recommend that after you feel
comfortable with the drill. You could cut yourself on
the discs as the drill bit has a tendency to 'grab'
and the discs will spin with the bit. So just to play
it safe-do one at a time.
Take a small amount of polyfill and wad it up so
you can stick it in the hole you just made in the lid
and pull it into the hole, just to where it is snug.

Not too tight. If you get it too tight it will be hard

to inoculate it. I have bent needles because of
having too tight, so just make sure it is 'snug'. I
like to take a pair of scissors and cut off the ends
that protrude from the discs. It is, in my opinion, a
cosmetic thing - just for looks (neater appear-
ance).

tyvek : Cut enough to cover each jar respectively

and set it aside.

Foil: prepare two layers of foil for each jar, just like
you did with the tyvek .
Load jars: Load each jar 1/2 way with the WBS .

Take an apply the tyvek over the mouth of the jar

.
This tyvek layer offers an additional protection
from airborne contaminants in addition to the Poly-
fill filter. If your house is reasonably clean, you can
omit it.

Apply the disc/polyfill filter, put on outer lid ring,

and trim off the excess tyvek from around the lid.

This is done for a neater appearance also, and

cover with two layers of foil.

Pressure Cook: Load jars into your Pressure Cook-

er on top of the rack that comes with your PC .
If it doesn't have a rack, put a piece of cloth down
on the bottom so your jars do not touch the bot-
tom. If they do they will crack from the heat. Then
add enough water to your PC so that it only comes
up to about 1-1 1/2 inches up the sides of the jars.
You don't want to put too much, but yet you don't
want it to dry out either. About 1-1 1/2 inches up
the sides of the jars is sufficient. Put on the lid of
the PC . Turn heat on medium high and allow it to
vent for 5 minutes. Then close the vent and allow
it to build pressure. Once the weight starts to
'wobble' reduce heat to medium low and PC for 60
minutes at 15 psi.

Turn off the heat and allow the PC to cool enough

to reduce the pressure. DO NOT manually try to
release the pressure. Let it reduce the pressure on
its own. Depending on the Pressure Cooker size
and the amount of jars this takes from 10-20 min-
utes.

Shake: Once the pressure has come back to nor-

mal you can open the PC . Open it and remove
each jar, while they are still quite hot. As you take
out each one, shake the crap out of it. This lets
you redistribute the grains evenly. Some have set-
tled on the bottom and look 'wetter' than the ones
on top. This shaking will make them all uniform.

Cool: Allow them to cool overnight. At least until

they are cool to the touch. Although they appear
'cool', it doesn't mean that the center of the jars
are. So, that is why I like to wait 'overnight', or at
least 12-14 hours at room temp. Do not place hot
jars in your refrigerator to aid in cooling them
down-this could crack the jars, rendering them
useless and losing your WBS . Just be patient and
allow them to cool on their own.

inoculation :
Once they are cool, it is time to inoculate . This is
easy. Soak a paper towel with alcohol(ethanol pr
propanol) . 70% is preferred, but, 91% is fine too.

Take your syringe and flame the needle until it is

glowing red.
Then immediately wipe it clean with an alcohol
soaked paper towel and leave the paper towel
wrapped around the needle.

Then, remove foil from jar, hold syringe and alco-

hol soaked paper towel close to the polyfill

and in one motion, remove from alcohol soaked

paper towel and insert the needle into the polyfill
and through the tyvek

Inject 1-2 cc/ml into jar.

When you remove the needle, hold the alcohol
soaked paper towel over the polyfill and remove
the syringe and immediately wrap with the paper
towel

lay it aside. and cover jar with 2 coffee filters and

secure with a rubber band(or tape)
Repeat for each jar used. The reason I like to use
the coffee filters is because when you insert the
needle into the jar, it creates a small hole that
could allow for contams to enter. I like to play it
safe.

Shake: Once you inoculate all of the jars, take and

shake each one vigorously to distribute the spores
throughout the WBS

Then incubate jars at 80°F - 85°F for 2 -3 weeks,

until completely colonized. Once you notice white
growth cowering around 20% of the jars surface
shake the jars to redistribute the colonized kernels.
This will speed up the colonization . If you are us-
ing a liquid inoculant , the jars will colonize in less
than 10 days, but with multi spore you have to
add 5-7 days to that time to allow for the germina-
tion period of the spores.

spawn : Once your jars have colonized

it is time to use them. You can either case them
using your favorite casing materials or you can
use them as spawn to inoculate bulk substrates. I
have used them both ways without a problem. If
you case them, you may want to add some wet
vermiculite as a bottom layer to give them extra
moisture, since grains can only hold so much. I
prefer to spawn them to straw or manure or both.
I have also had great success just casing them
with adding nothing but a casing layer, but if you
want a higher yield and more flushes, then I would
definitely spawn them to straw , manure or both!

This is a picture of a casing that was done using

my tek and cased using coco coir .

This is the final results of the first flush of that cas-

ing."
archive material
thx, doc34

seed ID
Millet(Whitish/yellow), milo(Redish/brown),
Wheat(Tan), and Sunflower(Black)
Attached Images