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Ermahgawd, I can't even guess who or what this might be Bring it on!

Yeah you know there's nothing wrong with a little bit of sobriety every now and again. But I wouldn't take it to excess...

Doan chew love it when... ... you pull some fatty little home kill lamb chops out of the freezer nom nom nom then fry 'em up and realise that maybe the kill day was just that little too warm and they spent a little too long at the top of the freezer and they're just on the turn... ... so you cut em up and put the meat in the dog pile, but the frypan is full of lamb fat and it smells ok... ... so you fry up some thin homegrown sweet potato chippies with some super hot chilli sauce as an antimicrobial and they are fucking delicious I miss ReShroomEd. He'da loved this

Back in those days even riding to work was a bloody adventure. Roads were shocking and that thing steered like a pissed camel Is a luggage rack. I hate pillions. How else do you think I got the Weetbix home? Mind you a snorkel woulda been great for the old 500/4 Kwakka and the stupidly deep creek crossing

Mmm, looks like a fume cabinet, not a flow cabinet. Sucks air in and away from user, not the other way round. Not for sterile work as far as I can see

Course there is. Not having a bike at all is heaps worse. No sooking Now *this* is a Honda. Mine from the early 90s. And no way would I ride it to EGA Shit, the Marzoccis weren't on in the pic. I need glasses for everything these days :/

Worse... ... also, it's purple, well, bits of it are purple. Many of the other bits are rust and peely chrome coloured Engine goes like hot shit off a shovel. When it goes. Nicely ported She's starting to resemble her owner- all engine, no brakes.... Are you trying to distract me from remembering you volunteered to be the Backup Driver for this run? ;)

Looking forward to seeing the final program lineup ( Not pushing the EGA team up for it cos it's a lot of hard yards putting it all together ) Is more like seeing all the parcels under the Xmas tree and having itchy fingers to open them and grinning like a fool :D

It's important to have a plan Ha! My bike currently looks like something the four horsemen of the apocalypse would take on a threeday rooshoot. You are now the official Backup Vehicle mwahahahaha if that's not an incentive to ride down I dunno... The current pool is at exactly fiddy bucks, someone offered to throw in a kidney but I don't think it was theirs so it doesn't count. Unless Ronny can chuck in the EGA Arts Grant funds to buy MoonUnits vajazzled posing strap it's gunna be more of a mooncup than a pot OMG, are you the token hipster for Eugungurararra or however you spell that place? You'd better be going, because I know where you live, maybe Ronny is right. Bring yer fondoo. Otherwise Bad Things Will Happen

I've got fiddy bucks riding on you to win mate, we'll nobble Hillbilly the night before if he looks in winning form Hoping to be riding down again. Any other two wheeled delusionals wanna meet up outside Canberra with an overnighter at Wangaratta?

Not sure what sort of power airflow you'd need for approx 66m3/hr, there are ppl on here who know vastly more than me about that. Also make sure there are no dead spots for air circulation in your room, or allow for them and use them for appropriate or less valuable species. That 5x volume/hr figure was for growing plant crops- check the figure for mushies Fully enclosed grow rooms are a bastard for pest management. New ones are fine, but once something moves in... If you have shelves or benches put that yellow sticky-trap tape round all the feet so it's work for things to climb onto ( or off ) them and keep the units away from the walls Keep the floors as clean and as clear as you can, regular vacuuming with a wet and dry seems like overkill but it's really good pest management. Sticky mats at the entranceways can also help Work clean to dirty every day- ie if your grow space is the cleanest place you work, start there and then move outside- don't spend the morning dealing with dirty spawn bags and compost heaps and then walk into your nice clean workspace Also: assume your neighbours and extended family will believe you're growing pot, no matter what you tell them, so show them around a lot and take them plenty of mushrooms to eat

What will you be using for airflow? I've overseen construction of a fully enclosed plant growth area using panelling and it was great, but it did have a built up floor sloping to a drain so walls and ceiling could be washed. Mould was occasionally an issue for the bits which weren't reached so well by the airflow. Plants require 5 volumes of air/hr to grow ( so for a 100m3 room, you needed 500m3 of airflow per hour ). No idea what mushrooms require per hour, but you do need to calculate that in. Might be easy to incorporate a prefilter on your intake to screen out bugs and pathogens too if you think about it at the planning stage Also, think about dehydration when you've working in that volume of airflow. While temps might be ambient, it's easy to get dehydrated because of the constant air passing over your body while you're working. Keep drinking water handy

This thread makes me happy Respect to youse who made it. I may never find time to be an Ephedra collector but if I ever did this would be the first thing I check. Love Ephedra spp Excellent summary too sagiXsagi, thank you

If not, buy the pdf of Snu's Garden of Eden and do a word search for Australia. AU$12 Even after half a decade it's still the most comprehensive and timely list of ethnobotanically interesting species. It's still my go-to book for most things Snu Voogelbreinder's "Garden of Eden"

Erg, sorry mate the previous sounds all rushed and condescending, didn't mean to talk down to you You know a whole lot more about the wider aspects of this field than I

They look morelly and I haven't found anything local and non-morelly they could be confused with, but that wouldn't be enough for me: Atlas of Living Australia has a bunch of Morchella elata entries and they look similar enough and the northernmost range is currently described as Brisbane: Morchella elata at ALA Maybe add an ALA entry? If you send off the pic to Fungimap they will automatically include them in the ALA database, check the Fungimap page for submission guidelines. Most importantly- were they tasty? Please pass on my thanks to the fairies for their eagle eyes and contribution to local knowledge- and kudos to you for keeping and documenting them.

Geez, already? That was fast I can hardly keep up with you guys. Excellent work. Can't wait to see you all in December Thanks to you and the rest of the EGA crew for all your hard work

the feedback is fully appreciated and , actually needed, once in a while, thank you... Not surprised, you have done some gorgeous work in this and I can imagine it would be hard to keep up the momentum sometimes sometimes I am wonder why the heck I keep posting in these threads This thread and the mangrove log are some of my favourites on the entire site. Threads like these keep all the valuable info in one place and follow the progress of your species and work over years. One of the important things ( at least for me ) is that I can see actual results, in succession, over time- there are lots of forums and posted information online but most of the time it is difficult to tell when a contributor's post is just an idea they had, whether they tried it, if it worked and how the processes/ experiments were adapted It also ( again, it could just be IMO ) marks you out as someone who is dedicated and thorough, not just mouthing off random thought bubbles and leaving the room. If I needed any Ephedra info in the future you would be one of the people I would ask first other times it feels like a calling for a collaborator or more on reviewing the idea of a monograph on ephedra Yum! An Ephedra monograph? Bring it on! Sounds like a big task but it would be a lovely thing indeed Its only suitable that two of the oldest ephedra in the world, foeminea which is in fact the oldest existing sp. and fragilis , are climber and semi-climber respectively.. and are native to greece! fuck I didn't even know we have 4 fucking species of ephedra.. and along with a couple other climber species of middle east like aphylla (syn. E. alte) they seem to be by far the fastest growing ephedras. seeds large too.. So they they're not only the only extant group of species which is entomophilous, older, and faster growing, but that also means that the rest of species are all newer to them . ephedra genus shifted its manners from entomophilus to anemophilus in order to survive, which seems like a pretty funky adaptation move in a group of plants of gymnosperms that might have played a role or in appearance of angiosperms, the "newer" plants.... More lovely things I did not know, thank you

Thank you for all your hard work and updates. Especially the updates, I love 'em

Those jars and lids you are using are exactly the right ones. No need to stick holes in them, kratom clones will survive and thrive in them for several weeks No idea what your contam is, pic is unclear. If it's fuzzy it's fungal, if it's slimy it's bacterial, if it's weird it's probably a yeast

Hey sorry, I only just saw this today. Congratulations on both starting and keeping going! Is hard yakka but I expect you will get it eventually and learn heaps in the meantime I never ended up publishing my media and methods but several other publications have come out on M. speciosa TC in the last few years- I think I linked to them in the thread where shonman and I talked it over. First critique ( please don't take this personally, this stuff happens to everyone especially this early in the learning curve )- you're throwing too much Milton at your tender babies. They only need sterilising for a few min, 1 tablet in 100ml water will do it, start with 10 minutes and work more/ less time into it depending on symptoms. Pretreatment of your parent plant is mission critical- make sure it only gets watered at soil level for a week or so beforehand. Harvest plant parts for TC on a warm sunny morning. This really does make a huge difference Now I have absolutely no experience with microwave sterilisation so can't speak to that. But next time you do a run keep a jar uninoculated and unopened to make sure it works for you and doesn't contaminate. Don't whack any Milton into it at all. Overkill, and some plants don't like it Have had no success with leaf culture, which by no means makes it impossible, keep trying. Ended up after a few generations with a single stage protocol- I could have produced more plants faster with hormones, but the market for them didn't warrant the haste and the added risk of producing off-types over multiple generations From the pics it looks like you have been overcutting your explants ( I could be wrong )- you do need more than just a stem. Two nodes minimum, and don't cut the petioles all the way back to the stem- leave 4-5mm on them, the extra lengths on them make them useful handles to avoid bruising the stem during transfers. Bah, I misread, sorry. Use the stem section. At least two nodes. If you don't have that spare on your plant, pinch out the main growing tip and make more stems. Always keep at least one active growing stem on the parent plant so you make more parent material if you ever need it Early stage your main priority is to get it clean, they will live without hormones for a while, and even grow. Once you have a few clean stems you can worry about hormones. Oi @shonman, how'd your cultured clones go? Any further hints?

Youse are nuts. That was the point of my question. I took your comment and ran a gazillion miles with it and if the OP asks us to move this info to another thread I'm happy to do it. Looks like a nice flow hood, I'll repeat that for those of you at the back of the class. Nice flow hood, well stored. Those are good units, I have worked with one and was pleasantly surprised. Yes, it is facile to get callus. Good quality callus is another issue. I'm not calling you out on the quality of your callus, I assumed it was good or you wouldn't have bothered continuing with it For all I know there are people with much more experience than I on this and many many other topics on the forum and who are keeping quiet. Or laughing at you. Or me. Actually I pretty much assume this is the case You asked for collaboration, you got it. You took the whole thing the wrong way and now you have the bad hurtyfeels. I'm happy to continue collaborating with you but you might want to grow up a bit for groupwork. Failure is a constant in science. For you. For me. For everyone. Good on you for keeping going. We all do, because that's how science happens. Get a little sooky about it and move on. If something I say upsets or stops you, then you need another job There are pics of some of my cactus callus tissue in the gallery. From like the early 2000s. Callus quality was shit ( you really do need to stop taking this stuff personally, shit callus happens to all of us, it's a part of the experimental progress ). Regen was good, good enough to continue running that batch while working on other protocols. However deflasking caused the inner parts of the cactus to collapse in many individuals and it took someone else to handle the deflasking for contam reasons. By then the crop wasn't as financially viable as it was at the start. I still have callus stored for that species, and some whole plants in TC. The callus is still shit. It happens. If I wanted embryogenic callus I'd have to work and fail and keep working to get it- just like you do with your species. Nice flow hood. I hope someone buys it and gets lots of use out of it

Go to this. Absolutely go to this. Put it on your calenders, wend your way to Melbs and just go I have loved every single EGA I have been to . It's not just the presentations, it's the networking and the catching up with old friends you get to see all at once If you've never been and are worried about not knowing anyone yet, start thinking about that now, start a thread here or on FB, and people will often put themselves forward to make sure you don't feel isolated and have an excellent time Run by lovely, friendly, professional people

Ah, sweet. I used one of these units a coupla years ago at a mate's and was surprised how effective it was. Am used to a full flow hood setup, but you probably don't want a full flow hood if you're short on space or moving house ever. They're heavy and take up massive amounts of room Would recommend the units above, do keep the prefilters clean and do run a test with some open PDA plates when you get it just in case seals shift during transport ( simple to fix )- you need to do this with any flow hood regardless of size Sounds like OP has looked after it really well Is here the appropriate place? Do you have callus pics? Callus induction is pretty facile, it's the quality of callus you're looking for and if you can regenerate it back into whole plants you've finished the cycle and know your experiment is working. Do this first before you proceed further with the experiment Callus- especially embryonic callus, those tumescent, friable, egg shaped buggers and the subsequent torpedo shaped embryonic calli- can really speed up the replication process. Embryonic tissue is more 'plastic'- responsive to lower amounts of hormones. Callus requires less energy to reproduce itself, not needing to bother with massive cell and organ differentation. Trick is to regenerate it into whole plants early on in the piece to confirm concept, and not to run so many culture generations it forgets how to regenerate ( unless you're specifically after callus cultures for a specific purpose ). Many protocols regenerate whole plants from callus by reducing the sugars and the nutrients by half, and sometimes by adding an auxin, like IBA to the regeneration mix. If that doesn't work, there is a bunch of other stuff to try, but the above protocol is the standard to try when regenerating whole plants which lack a published protocol. Plant callus is also useful for mutation studies- throw enough hormones at it and you can get 'off types' which, if regenerated, can produce useful horticultural mutants. You can put callus under UV or throw actual mutagens at it ( be very careful with those ) to the same effect If you are using callus for mutation, be aware that while the process itself is a little tricky for noobs, the actual work and time comes from running proper controls and kill curves and maintaining them for the life of the experiment ( minimum a year, sometimes five or six ) monitoring *all* of them until the trait you are seeking is observed in at least your controls ( allow time for the others to catch up, mutations can cause lag in the first generation ). If your mutants propagate by seed only ( esp if you have thrown out all your callus/ sterile explants at that time- do not do this ) you will need to stabilise the mutation over at least one or more generations The logging and observations take time and space and a high degree of thoroughness. Minimum 100 plants incl controls, but serious statistical chance for success kicks in at about 1000 plants. Numbers will reduce over time as you remove unsuccessful candidates from the treated pool. The above is physically easy, but taxing long term as your personal situation will likely change over time. This is the bit anyone can do, but usually don't

Oh Rahli thank you, that's a lovely offer, but I can't promise I will do anything with them for a few years as the garden is quite full now and so is my brain. Sell them off to server costs? Or donate them to a new member? Something something... better ideas welcome I'd love to have a play with seed eventually, but right now they will sit there and go to waste, which would be a shame