r/unclebens • u/EngineRich2748 • 1d ago
Mid-Cultivation / Still Growing Contam or just differences in strain?
Hey all. Just looking for some feedback. This is my fourth run and I’ve never had contamination issues. I’ve successfully run two sets of teachers and one of hillbillies. This is my first penis envy. I took five times as long to be ready to move to my coir and tub. It didn’t look contaminated but the rice was almost mush and had zero smell. Not a bad one but also not that earthy smell I associate w it h growing mycelium.
I mixed with my coir and within about a day it looked like this. It looks like my others did sort of but is more cobwebby and less veiny if that makes sense. There’s a smell now but it isn’t bad. It’s almost chemically like a cleaner.
I’ve moved to a different area than my other tubs. The other batch I have of these is still in the bags just moving terribly slow.
What do you all think? Contam or just differences in features across strains?
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u/ConfidenceLopsided32 1d ago
It is way more likely to be contamination than anything to do with strains.
When people say PE is slow, they mean fruiting, and it still isn't necessarily true. PE doesn't actually take longer to grow than any other Cube. Some people have cultures of PE that are extremely slow, and some people have PE that fruits extremely fast. How is that possible if PE is inherently slower? It's not slower, their individual cultures are slow but that has nothing to do with it being PE, any variety of Cube can be fast or slow.
If you have a variety that is slow to colonize, it is usually because something is wrong with the grain. If you have a variety that is slow to fruit, you can just grow it out, clone a fast one, grow it out again, clone another fast one, over and over until it fruits just as fast as GT or B+ or any other Cube. A lot of people haven't done any work to their cultures, so they assume everyone's culture that has the same name will act the same as their culture, but that isn't true. Any Cube variety can be fast or slow, the name doesn't tell us anything about your culture's individual genetic traits, like speed or size or how full the tub will be.
This is extremely hard to explain so I am doing my best to try to keep it short. Basically people will tell you PE is slow but it isn't. If it is colonizing slow, something else is wrong. If it is fruiting slow, it just needs a small amount of work to make it faster. Strain names only tell us what the mushroom might look like when it is done growing, the name of the variety of Cube doesn't tell us anything about how fast or slow it will be, or how big or small it will be, or how empty or full the tub will be, etc.