Mellow wrote:
>I would always germinate the spores on a Petri dish and >continue from there - as described above. part of the >reason for this was to make sure that the fungi >had 'mated' (which you can tell by the condition of the >fungal colony when you look at it.
There is one disadvantage of this approach. When the spores are first germinated on agar and the mycelium is transferred to spawn (solid or liquid) and later a fruiting substrate, you do not select for a fast fruiting strain.
In his book GROWING GOURMET AND MEDICINAL MUSHROOMS, the author Paul Stamets states thet 'the ultimate shortcut' in mushroom cultivation is a direct inoculation of the fruiting substrate with mushroom spores.
The 'PF Classic' cubensis is the fastest fruiter that I know of (3 weeks after spore germination). (I like to think that) this quality is breeded in to it because it is never grown with liquid spawn (mycelial broth) inoculations.
Liquid spawn techniques are very productive - hence the promotion for those by Stamets. But I am a real spore fundamentalist and I strongly recommend to keep at least 1 strain going without mycelial transfers. Not many mushrooms are able to fruit as fast as a cubensis - even a Shiitake needs twice as long. Fastfruiting is an important quality you want to preserve, it is easily lost and eventually may lead to total senescence (inability for the mycelium to produce mushrooms).