Wow very nice!! I hope they pop up a nice canopy for you 8) Are you doing about 1:1 substrate:spawn ratio?
A touch more than 1:2 by volume. I added vermiculite this round to help mitigate moisture loss since Colorado has a really dry climate.
I am going to play around with the spawn/substrate ratios over the next few grows to see what works best, for sure. Last grow, I did a few experiments around how much to compress the spawn/substrate when I did the S2B. (Moderate compression had a huge impact in reducing side pins that I think improved yield.)
Nice, that seems like a good sweet spot with the ratio. I do somewhere between 1:1 and 1:2 myself, (usually closer to 1:1) but sometimes I wonder if that's a bit much. I've found compacting/compressing everything will stop side pins through the 1st flush, but my cakes always shrink up after 1F and I inevitably get the side pins then haha.
Also I hadn't realized you're the same dude with the sprouts in your tub!! Is this the one they popped up in?
The sprouts showed up in one of the three tubs I have going now. But yeah, it's the same run. The only changing variable was the rice as it was a mix of UB and Kroger brand. (No more Kroger brand for me anymore as most bags failed anyway. Now they are sprouting. Lulz.)
Same thing here with the side pins. The first shoebox I ever did I didn't compress it at all and that was a mistake. I had dozens (hundreds?) of pins forming right as soon as the cake started to shrink and the side got air. But same-same: Any tub that I compressed after that only had a few pins that had enough room to mature because of the cake shrinkage.
As far as future mixes, I am liking the vermiculite. It pads the substrate and is holding moisture like a champ. I suppose later on, I'll experiment with other additives like gypsum, dl-tryptophan and such. Maybe.
Cheers!
