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MorePies
Stranger
Registered: 02/09/16
Posts: 808
Loc: TX
Last seen: 1 month, 3 days
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Lion's Mane Agar Teknique 1
#23973586 - 01/01/17 05:16 PM (7 years, 29 days ago) |
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I have always found Hericium erinaceus to be quite fickle on Agar and I believe that I am not alone in this experience. My strain grows in fits, and starts pinning on the plate when it has colonized an area close to a U.S 50 cent piece. Before, it seemingly took weeks to have a usable amount of colonization. With this method, it took 12 days at ~70° F to reach 90% colonization. For the first time I have an even, fully colonized plate!
This is 1 of 3 plates using this technique, all show the same growth rate and were inoculated 12/19/16. Picture taken 1/1/17. I will be making masters and gen 2 plates which I will document their growth here as well. My apologies for the slight condensation.

I was pulling from a slant for these plates, so I wanted a novel, nutrient diverse formula. I used grain soak water (50/50 milo and oats by volume) that I strained and then boiled with a lid on for 5 minutes. This was an added step to kill of the microbial rich soup that a 24 hour soak creates. For growers that cook their grains, a weaker ratio might be preferred as the cooking process extracts more nutrients from the grain. I used roughly 1 part GSW and 2 parts water. Here are the concepts I derived the creation of H.E. Plates from.
1) Pour a thick plate
I am working with the wonderful Lipa strain and I give credit to Lipa for the first 2 concepts. I found a post of his suggesting to try a thicker than normal plate for H.E. culturing. He surmised that the space between the lid and agar seemed to trigger pinning and reducing that space would reduce it's triggering affect. Furthermore, I like that a thick plate stores longer in cold storage.
2) Make a weaker Agar
From that same Lipa post.
3) Make a less nutrient dense Agar
H.E. is notorious for pinning when the substrate doesn't look fully colonized. I surmised having less nutrients in the agar would encourage it to colonize further than it normally does before pinning.
4) Colonize in the dark
Does light cause fruit formation in H.E.? There are anecdotes supporting both sides of colonizing in dark or on a 12/12 light cycle,so it didn't seem like a bad thing to try.
Formula
170 g Grain Soak Water 330 g Water 8 g Agar
Strain then boil GSW for 5 minutes, measure out GSW. Prepare and sterilize the Agar as you usually do. If my ideal pour depth for standard plates is up to the bottom of the lid's lip, I pour double that for H.E. Plates. 8g of agar might look close to standard for a light malt extract formula, but there is a difference in how LME and GSW set. The Light malt extract binds up its own fair share of h20 giving a firmer set at the same rate of agar used when compared to GSW.
I know that I changed too many variables from what I was doing previously to say that variable A has the most impact, then B, then C, etc. I welcome feedback if some of my logic is off.
In summary, thicker, weaker, and nutrient poorer agar supports swift, even, and non pinning colonization of hericium erinaceus.
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SnowArcher
Hood Rat



Registered: 12/30/13
Posts: 179
Last seen: 2 years, 10 months
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Re: Lion's Mane Agar Teknique [Re: MorePies]
#23973601 - 01/01/17 05:21 PM (7 years, 29 days ago) |
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Interesting, thanks! I may need to make some special plates for Hericium
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Intelligentxfruit
Earth Hippy


Registered: 01/06/13
Posts: 1,545
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Re: Lion's Mane Agar Teknique [Re: SnowArcher]
#23973848 - 01/01/17 06:32 PM (7 years, 29 days ago) |
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Thanks for adding this!
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RolledUhhp
Amateur Cultivator

Registered: 08/10/16
Posts: 246
Last seen: 3 years, 6 months
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Awesome post!
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