Some questions about growing shrooms

[flipper]

I've got some questions.

1)If I have some agar dishes fully grown with mycelia. Can I just cut the Mycelia into pieces and put them in the jars with rye seeds and vermiculite and grow them further?

2)What is the advantage with using syringes. If I have made some Mycelia water can I just inject it into a jar with rye seeds and vermiculite?

3)Don't you kill the Mycelia when you shake it or blender it when making mycelia water. And do you have to keep shaking or blending until you see just a milky suspension or must there been some little pieces of mycelia floating around.

3)How much water do you need too use for 1 petri-dish with Mycelia?

[hCiLdOdUeDn]

www.shroomery.org is a better place for this sort of questions.

1) Yes

2) Using syringes is easier to inject than any other methods. You must keep everything sterile.

3) No it wont kill the mycelia if you shake it up as long as everything is sterile.

[flipper]

thanks  

[Lilienthal]

Blending will kill a lot of cells depending on the duration and the intensity. Keep it as short as possible.

[flipper]

Take the water jar, put a finger on the tin foil where the hole is and shake it vigorously at least 3 minutes until you see many tiny mycelium pieces swimming in the water. Take a clean, sterilized syringe, sterilize the tip of the needle over the flame and pull (holding the needle still in the flame) the plunger back 4 millimeters (1/5 inch). This will give you a little airspace so later on you can shake the mycelium water prior to inoculation of the PF jars.

Remove the tin cover, hold the jar at an angle, insert the needle into water and pull the plunger until the syringe is full. Be careful the syringe needle is clean and sterilized or you will contaminate the mycelium water.

Those little pieces of mycelium. Do you have to suck them to into the syringe??

[becomezen]

Of course one must consider casings versus cakes. Swim started with cakes , crumbled and cased. Swim also birthed some cakes and compared their growth to the casings growth : all 6 cakes got contaminated , all 6 casings sprouted shroomies over a foot tall !!!  

BTW , bioassay was strange , as Swim never took enough due to significant others's fears......

You have a nice journey ahead of you , make sure to check out the shroomery......

[Yachaj]

> put a finger on the tin foil where the hole is and shake it

Sounds as an excellent technique to inoculate the myceliumwater with bacteria from a finger top

[mellow]

This is what I prefered to do.

Containers for large-scale cultivation (Mason Jars, Polypropylene air-tight containers) have a small hole (diameter large enough to fit a syringe needle) drilled in the top and masking tape is stuck over the hole (I used to put a small aluminium foil circlet in the centre of the masking tape (where it covers the hole).  I prefered PP bowls with air-tight tops - much cheaper than Mason jars and they don't break when you drop them - but you can't see what's going on inside them!!!

Draw about 4 mL of water or saline or broth into a syringe (sterile); gently cut the mycelia in the Petri dish with the syringe tip vertically & horizontally; squirt most of the saline onto the Petri dish surface; draw the mashed mycelia into the syringe. (see Note 1).

After sterilisation & cooling the containers are injected with drops of mycelia shreds from the syringe and holes recovered.

I find this method superior to traditional techniques:  (1) because the growth container lid is not opened the chance of contamination is lessened, (2) the Petri dish only needs to be opened once to get enough inoculum for several containers and the agar is not exposed to the air outside the Petri dish - again lessening the chances of contamination (3) because several drops of inoculum are used growth starts in several places at once so it takes less time for the growth media to be completely colonised with fungi.

Note 1: The bigger the syringe the better (10 mL is practical) - if you can find one.
Note 2: I never liked to inoculate directly from the spore syringe - and can't really comment on this. I would always germinate the spores on a Petri disk 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.
Note 3: I never used a blender to mash the mycelia as the syringe method worked well for me - although if you were doing hundreds of jars rather than ten or so (like me) I can see the advantage of the blender.

[Yachaj]

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).

[flipper]

that the Panaeolus Cyanescens also grows pretty quickly.

First by growing some liquid mycelia in Tapwater with a spoon of Dextrose. Then Inoculating with a syringe in some Rye. Full 100% growth should be within a week. Then Transferring some infected rye too a Cow dung/straw mixture in bags. Sealing the bags. The bags should also be fully covered with Mycelia within a week. Then you cut openthe bags and put the substrate in a bin and cover it with casing. Vermiculite or some mixture with Vermiculite. Then you put the bins into your freezer and coldshock it for 24 hours. Do not freeze it. Let it fruit. 12 hours light from a 25 watt bulb, 85% humidity with a humidifier, Good air exchange (very important), Temp around the 75 degrees.

Ofcourse you have to sterilize and pasteurize everything first. Mycelia grows best in the dark with temp around the 80/85 degrees. Be carefull with the mycelia. It is different then that of the cubensis. It is weaker so it quicker damaged.

This is the Theorie. It should work. Most Information I got from the

Shroomery

(http://www.shroomery.org/index)