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Mushrooms, Mycology and Psychedelics > Mushroom Cultivation
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Agar-Geeking * 5
    #28603072 -

First of all, I want to say something about where this forum is as a repository of information.

It seems to me that we've got so many dissections and sub-dissections of different techniques available, and so many different ways to perform the same procedures, that there are very few new "TEKs" to publish. There are just naturally fewer novel procedures for people to come up with. Also, as the number of proven viable vessels, sterilizing devices, and transfer techniques expands, it gets into a territory where a lot of new TEKs are really just one person explaining how they do things.

And there's nothing wrong with any of that. It's a natural consequence of having a larger body of knowledge and experience to draw from. But it's got me thinking. A lot of people come here and want to know specifics of various techniques, ask about how a specific culture or substrate looks, etc. And we spend a lot of time disabusing them of wrong-headed concepts. Not techniques, concepts.

And so now we see some brave and intrepid souls trying to lay out conceptual maps of this space, and several who have made up flowcharts for determining what to do and how to do it.

I think, as a whole, it's probably best to continue these projects, and think about generating more conceptual "TEKs" to help people wrap their heads around things. And maybe, just maybe, cut down on some of the silliness and wasted time. Also, perhaps it's better/higher impact to address things BEFORE you're explaining to a new poster that their entire concept of fungal biology and sterile technique is wrong. Might be a little more visible and better-received as a pre-emptive post.

FEBRUARY 2025 EDIT:

I'm hoping to give this thread new legs and promote it just a litte more. But one thing that occurred to me recently, which I was not really thinking about at time of publication, is that disposable petri dishes are all the rage in some circles. I'm not trying to judge other people's practices, but the thought that my encouragement to fuck around with agar could lead people to burn through a bunch of polystyrene is horrifying to me. So pet me just say that this entire concept, and everything connected to it, is predicated on the use of re-usable plates. If going the no-pour route, there are re-usable options for every budget and price range. If you are inspired by my advice and thoughts here, then KNOW that I didn't intend for them to be applied to disposable petri dishes.


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Edited by B Traven (02/18/25 03:55 AM)

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Re: Agar-Geeking [Re: B Traven] * 8
    #28603082 -

B, I came in here for some agar shit.


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🅂🄸🄶🄼🄰


Helpful Threads
stonesun
Mycolorado’s Tamp Fruit Project
Tampanensis Grow with Mycolorado
bw86's Jalisco Grow

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Re: Agar-Geeking [Re: B Traven]
    #28603091 -

Alright, so here's my latest entry in the conceptual-TEK department.

We run in circles around all kinds of issues here. Light, FAE, moisture content, temperature, etc. My reductionist take on growing is this: all of those parameters just need to be within an acceptable range. If your conditions aren't super extreme in some way, then none of that is going to be the source of your successes or failures.

There are really only two things that matter enough to geek out over: genetics and contamination. Most of us address these through agar work. We also get better at managing them through agar work. When a bunch of tubs go off the rails, we go back to our agar work. When a culture turns out to be a rockstar, we make sure to preserve it via agar work.

I often see arguments about the purpose of a grow, and how that determines someone's practices. i.e., "some people just want to trip," "I'm looking for maximum :yields:, etc.). Here's my personal take on it: any mushrooms are virtually useless to me if I have no idea how potent they are. And there are two main ways to control for potency: homogenize a larger batch of fruit and then titrate, or do genetic work to reduce variability. So, essentially, from my point of view, it doesn't make any difference what your "goal" is. An ounce of all-over-the-place fruit is useless, a pound of all-over-the-place fruit less so. But only if you homogenize it. If you have any interest in eating whole fruit, AND knowing what it'll do, then there really aren't any shortcuts.


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Re: Agar-Geeking [Re: Mycolorado] * 1
    #28603093 -

Mycolorado said:
B, I came in here for some agar shit.


Lol, I'll get there


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Re: Agar-Geeking [Re: B Traven]
    #28603109 -

So,once again, all roads lead back to agar (because we're ignoring PF tek for the purposes of this discussion).

Another perennial issue is getting cultures together and then not having room to expand and grow them out. Or trying to test too many cultures, and getting completely overwhelmed.

So, here's the concept I'm proposing: just geeking out on agar with no other goal. No agonizing over when to "send it" to grain. No deluding yourself into thinking something is clean because Gathering of the Juggalos is only three months away and you want to get something on grain. None of that. Just an endless iterative cycle of agar work.


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Re: Agar-Geeking [Re: B Traven] * 1
    #28603111 -

I don't have much experience but I also agree and like the idea of finding the right genetics rather than tuning fae, light, moisture to get acceptable yields when all of the parameters are far from the extremes


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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Shroomery

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Re: Agar-Geeking [Re: B Traven] * 1
    #28603118 -

AGAR-GEEKING

WHAT IT IS: Working to build a library of clean and stable cultures without other goals

END PRODUCTS: Preserved cultures for future cultivation work, experience propagating and observing live cultures.

ADVANTAGES:
-Minimal legal risk
-Minimal space requirements
-Infinitely scale-able time and material requirements
-Allows one to quickly gain experience evaluating the cleanliness and stability of cultures, without other confounding factors.
-Allows one to develop agar-making and sterile transfer skills, without getting bogged down in the later stages of cultivation.
-You get to look at lots of mycelium growing in a 2D environment, without any further psychological pressure.


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Re: Agar-Geeking [Re: B Traven] * 1
    #28603121 -

Do you agree that when starting out with agar and wanting to get a grow going, the first priority should be to get a clean culture and send it asap, in other words it's not necessary to isolate further once a clean culture is obtained and may even be in detrimental not only in lost time, but in lost genetic variability to choose a good performing clone or print from later?


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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Shroomery

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Re: Agar-Geeking [Re: B Traven] * 1
    #28603130 -

I know that plate pins are not everyone's favorite way to take clones, but I personally love em to death. And it was when things got out of hand recently and I got busy, and was looking at all the plate pins I had no time or space to clone, that I got this whole idea. Based on stuff like this:



Now, I'm admittedly a bit of a lightweight, and I've also been developing this culture for a long time, so that should be factored in. But I have no doubt that if I'd caught this plate-fruit before it senesced to the point of tummy-aches, and just eaten it fresh, it would have provided a glorious evening.

So then I thought: well, someone who's looking to get some experience but also only wants a small amount of fruit could easily sustain themselves on plate-pins. And also use that to provide real-time bio-assays, and determine which culture lines they wanted to preserve. Someone who devoted a year or two to this, and THEN moved to grain, would come out the starting gate strong.


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Re: Agar-Geeking [Re: B Traven] * 1
    #28603140 -

MINI-LAUNCHING

WHAT IT IS: A corny name I just made up on the spot to describe dropping agar to very small grain vessels, then spawning those to very small containers.

ADVANTAGES:
-All the same stuff as agar-geeking.
-The ability to test your guesses as to when cultures are clean without going all-out.
-The ability to see cultures grow out and fruit in a situation closer to normal cultivation conditions.
-The abiliity to take proper spore prints, and not just plate-pin swabs.
-The ability to generate slightly more material, for more proper bio-assays, and/or just to meet a slightly higher need.


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Re: Agar-Geeking [Re: Blueberry Muffin]
    #28603148 -

Blueberry Muffin said:
Do you agree that when starting out with agar and wanting to get a grow going, the first priority should be to get a clean culture and send it asap, in other words it's not necessary to isolate further once a clean culture is obtained and may even be in detrimental not only in lost time, but in lost genetic variability to choose a good performing clone or print from later?


More or less, yeah, if your objective is to get a grow going. Though I think that your starting point is also important. If I were taking a wild spore print and trying to tame it, I'd be pretty comfortable doing a bunch of extra transfers until I saw some semblance of order.

While it may get cumbersome, there is always the option of preserving earlier versions of a culture and then continuing to take transfers down the line.

Personally, I usually end up taking multiple bifurcating transfers from multispore plates, then eventually just pulling some nice plate pins from them and keeping those lines going.

One thing that I think is important to keep in mind is that transfers are an abstract concept we're applying to the mycelium. From the point of view of individual strands of myc, they're just growing. Yes, of course we're excluding certain genetic material each time we make a transfer, but if you've got a unified mat of compatible strains, then transfers past that point aren't really going to narrow things down. I've done some experiments recently with taking successive plate pins from a culture line -OK, I lied, they weren't experiments, I just felt like it- and I can't say I notice much difference from one generation to the next, so I doubt I'm doing much isolation work at this point.


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Re: Agar-Geeking [Re: B Traven]
    #28603332 -

What is the minimum amount of grain to get enough to test the potency? Let's say half to 1 gram dried.


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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Shroomery

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Re: Agar-Geeking [Re: Blueberry Muffin]
    #28603336 -

Also I wonder what is the efficacy of using many little grows vs one big tub for testing ms genetics


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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Shroomery

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Re: Agar-Geeking [Re: Blueberry Muffin]
    #28603433 -

Assuming one was starting from spores, the first step would be to streak or squirt them onto agar and try to get germinated plates. Then run a few rounds of transfers to clean them up and narrow the genetics a bit.

From there, one could just let plate pins form and start taking clones. At any point where a culture seemed worth messing with further down the line, it could be stored until the time came. Testing in mini-grows could be done, and cultures could be kept or tossed based on those results. I like to do a few rounds of transfers after a lengthy period of cold storage, which shouldn't be a problem genetics-wise in the grand scheme of things.

Kinda the go-to agar thread, though there are many:

https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/25662166/vc/1

Kinda the go-to storage thread, though there are many:

https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/28161262


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Re: Agar-Geeking [Re: Blueberry Muffin]
    #28603443 -

Blueberry Muffin said:
What is the minimum amount of grain to get enough to test the potency? Let's say half to 1 gram dried.

Also I wonder what is the efficacy of using many little grows vs one big tub for testing ms genetics


I mean, it would be a ton of work, but technically, one could pull that off plate pins. I'd say it's more about the practical lower limits for pulling off a mini-grow. Considering that I wouldn't be worried about being able to get that much from a single successful PF cake, I'd say a half-pint grain jar would definitely be fine. And I think you could go smaller, you just might run into difficulties with maintaining moisture levels in a tiny substrate with a lower surface-area-to-volume ratio. Personally, when I've done this, it was with small masters that I decided to just go ahead and spawn, and most of those would be in the half-pint range.

Many little grows will definitely be more work per unit of harvested fruit, and of course they won't replicate the conditions of a big tub. On the other hand, you could test way more cultures in a smaller space, and not be stuck managing big tubs just to see how your genetics might play out. You may even find, if you're seeking to eventually just homogenize everything you pick, that many small containers from many different plates provides a more stable average without having to generate too much fruit.


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Re: Agar-Geeking [Re: B Traven] * 1
    #28603597 -

im so into this.  i want to get into glas petris though bc i dont like throwing away so much poly.


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Need a lift?

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Re: Agar-Geeking [Re: BeefExtreme]
    #28604257 -

BeefSupremeJr said:
im so into this.  i want to get into glas petris though bc i dont like throwing away so much poly.


Yeah, they're awesome. I was very lucky to have a friend give me a bunch of old pyrex petris from a university lab he was cleaning out. I have those and a pile of PastyPlates, too. I do most of my active work on the glass petris. I use the PastyPlates for plates I'm going to store, the final plate I'm going to use for grain drops, and plates I'm going to try to pin.

(Of course, any plate can become a pin-plate if I let it go for long enough)


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Re: Agar-Geeking [Re: BeefExtreme] * 1
    #28604282 -

Agreed. I’m a huge condiment cup whore but fuck do I ever feel guilty wasting all that plastic. I decided to slowly start building up a large collection of 60mm glass petris. Bought my first 5 pack the other day for 15 bucks.. kinda sucks because I could get 200 cups for that price but eh. I need to make, yet another, conscious effort, to reduce my ecological footprint.

Great thread also B Traven! Make sure you show your SAB at some point in it. That thing is mint!

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Re: Agar-Geeking [Re: PhenoDreamers] * 1
    #28604425 -

i started looking into little tubs last night.  seems like honestly bottle tek is maybe the way to go?


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Need a lift?

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Re: Agar-Geeking [Re: B Traven]
    #28604436 -

B Traven said:
any mushrooms are virtually useless to me if I have no idea how potent they are. And there are two main ways to control for potency: homogenize a larger batch of fruit and then titrate, or do genetic work to reduce variability. So, essentially, from my point of view, it doesn't make any difference what your "goal" is. An ounce of all-over-the-place fruit is useless, a pound of all-over-the-place fruit less so. But only if you homogenize it. If you have any interest in eating whole fruit, AND knowing what it'll do, then there really aren't any shortcuts.


My take is a bit different I suppose. I like going even further and quantifying how potent my mushrooms are by actual testing. I don't think of doses in terms of grams but actually in terms of mg psilocybin equivalent I am consuming.


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If you have used a Miraculix Psilocybin QTest, could you please share your results?

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:mushroom2: Mush love :mushroom2:

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