soaking substrate cakes benifits or no?

[mushhed8055]

hey all
Just getting close to the fruiting stage and i have my perilite and all but im reading a lot on people dunking the cake for a full 24 hours. how keep em in the fridge wile soaking others dont. whats the reason and what does soaking do that makes it benificial. does it mean it keeps humidity up better and fruits faster or should i just soak perilite and put 2 inches of it in a glass tank and make sure i spray and keep up 100% humidity at 75 degrees. any info tho on weather dunking is better or just setting em in a tank just trying to choose. thanks

 

[user_1919]

I am not sure why dunking the cake works, but it does. I too would like an explanation. But my last grow I dunked all my cakes except one, and notice significant size differences between the dunked and undunked cake. Acourse the dunked cake was larger than the undunked.

PEACE & LOVE

 

[mushhed8055]

do you mean larger as in the amount of fruited mushrooms it produced or the actual size of the cake?

 

[user_1919]

Larger fruited mushrooms. The cake stays the same size.

 

[mushhed8055]

hey all. i have a bunch of jars at 100% and i need to know weather the dunking method is a must or its just one type of method. is it perferred or what. any help would be great. il take pics n post em up in a few minits but i need to know weather to dunk these cakes over night or what to do. id greatly appriciate it :wink:

 

[mushhed8055]

and whats the reason for putting the bucket of soaking cakes into the fridge for 24 hours? or do you just leave it in the bucet and seal it for 24 hrs or i dono im confused here

 

[MycoMate]

When the substrate(cake) is fully colonized some of the mosture content has been depleted through growth, evaporation, etc. Dunking replenishes the lost moisture after colonization AND between flushes after the mushrooms have been removed(which contained a great % of the water). It additionally adds more H2O than you would have been able to start with and still have healthy growth. Now that the cakes are fully colonized you can really "fill them up".
Dunking is also utilized for shiitake(and other) mushroom cultivation. Typically they place real or artificial logs under water for several hours after colonization. This essentially does the same as dunking bfr cakes.
The cake is placed under refrigeration to prevent contamination after dunking. Water standing at room temperature breeds colonies of bacteria in little time so keeping it cool keeps everything "cool". The additional benefit of a cold shock can assist in initiating a timely fruiting cycle.
One good method is to place the cake in a ziploc bag filled with water, then suck the air out until the cake is covered and seal the bag. Place ziploc in a bowl in case it leaks out during dunking. After dunking be sure to rinse the cake off with cold water prior to fruiting.
After dunking place the cake on a bed of moist perlite or moist vermiculite (or other fruiting chamber with appropriate microclimate). Either provides a sufficient level of humidity through evaporation. If utilizing perlite then you might want to place the cake on a a plastic cover or something to keep the perlite from oversaturating the bottom of the cake and mushrooms. Humidity is also increased as the water evaporates from the surface of the cake. Dunking works!

 

[tryptonaut]

I can only say I tried it multiple times, and dunking the cake for about 24 hours always helped me getting a much higher fruiting rate in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th harvest. The shrooms were larger, and more, as soon as I dunked the cake for about 24 hours. It can tell you it wasn't only like 5% more, but more like 100% more (plus bigger!) than without dunking. I tried like 5 times without dunking, and like 10 times with dunking.