Vacation is over and it's back for a soak...

On Friday, it was time to start revving up to back for the next round, hoping for a fantastic harvest again. The block was so dry and starting to crack a bit. It definitely had plenty of rest. I haven't touched in for two weeks, well, I poked it a few times. I may have picked it up, too, to see if it was light, heavy or just funky. Throughout the inspections, it still smelled like one giant mushroom.

During the break period, I filled up my standby pitcher of water with my leftover boiled tap water. Without any other container, I haven't been consistently boiling tap water to prepare for the soak. So on a Friday night, I whip out (after some thought as it was a Friday night and I'm not brillant on a Friday night) the two largest pots to boil water on top of the personal size tea kettle. Let's just say that while I was boiling the water, I put the mushroom block in a cooler and dumped in the water I had. Clearly, it wasn't enough to submerge it. It was about as deep as a toddler wading pool. Very sad.

Though as the water came to a boil, I encountered a new issue. The pots keep the water warm, and I can't dump it in the cooler boiling hot or even less than boiling warm. I might as eat the cooked block before it even grows! I started to scoop out water in large glass cups and the pitcher to help the cooling process. Let's just say it was until morning that I dumped the water in. Even then alas, I didn't have enough water to submerge the block.

This time as it was floating as it so often likes to as a light, block of faux marshmellow mushroom fluff... I held it down with one of the pots. Sigh, that's less water that I can boil. As of right now, the stock pot is boiling a new batch for the submersion AND for future spritzing. I'm pretty empty there, too. But in 20 some hours, we're back in the spritz and grow business. Woohoo!