culture and question

[medicinedan]

Hey all,

Im fully getting the fungus bug. Its like this passion that I have to forfill. Im having dreams about mushroom cultivation, It stops me from sleeping at night

I have just purchased a hawkins universal 10litre pressure cooker (aluminium) from pressure cooker centre

www.pressurecooker.com.au . They have crazy specials on the hawkins universal range. The 10litre is only $60. Check it out.

Anyways, I been doing plenty of research over the yrs and alot recently and I was wondering about the agar method of propagation.

Ie; Under completely sterile conditions, transfer of spores from a spore print to an agar plate, via an innoc loop. Do the spores hydrate on the agar? Or does this pose a problem?

On another note I am looking for a spore print/ some spores (I am a student and lacking sizable amounts of money) possibe trades , probably even better would be a mycel culture on a plate or t/tube. Professional prints arent required as I am game to work my way through contams, by going plate to plate with healthy looking white fluff until I get a clean growth.

Cheers Dan

[mescalito]

Hey Dan, there are a few things you will need before going from spore to shrooms, the first thing will be a glove box and is the cheapest,easiest and most important.

All you need is a foam broccoli box,large rubber gloves,sharp knife,aluminium tape and some clear plastic film.The foam box becomes your transfer case, the knife is used to cut holes for the gloves and the centre section of the lid,the tape to secure gloves in the front and the film onto the cut section of the lid to see through.

When you get through this I'd head to the shroomery and the nook for more detailed step by step explanations on various techniques but I reckon you should start with making your own syringes to start unless you have access to pre-poured plates.

There's a lot of crap in the air!!!!

[medicinedan]

Thanks for the tips mesc, im working on a very similar glovebox to what you described atm.

I have got a good feel for sterile techniques, as I have been attempting plant tissue culturing for a few months now. I have managed to get agar onto plates without contam by using a microwave. Not a great success rate, but I reckon the pressure cooker will fix things there.

Ive yet to cruise through the nook stuff, but i have read pretty much every technique at the shroomery (totally excellent site).

I was thinking; If I swabbed some spores on a plate with an innoc loop,

incubated,

wait for mycel growth, then in a glovebox, transfer some healthy white mycel to fresh plates that have a H2O2 agar mix.

Let them get all fluffy,

then using sterilised containers with a shakeable medium, transfer little pieces of mycel (in the glove box).

Shake the container every so often

It is definately more mucking around than, just going straight into the medium with a syringe. Though I think once I grew some, the first thing I would do would be to take some flesh and start a culture and further growing would be from this method anyway.

ps. I only know what ive read, im certainly lacking in hands on experience

[AndyAmine.]

damn, $60 for the 10ltr ehy, I paid $105.. good score.. shame they dont have the 14ltr bigboy on sale, she's the one I want now.

The thing about Hawkins PC's is that because of the way the lid goes in you loose about 5-8cm's of usable height/space so you should always get a size or two larger than than you think you'll need.