Jrey16 said:

I made 40 agar plates 2 days ago and I checked on them just right now and noticed many of them have rips on the parafilm where air can get inside the dish.

Are these plates still good to use? Should I add another layer or wrap it up again? I was planning on inoculating these in a couple days.



Edit: I just wrapped the stacks up with parafilm. I'm just worried about nasties getting inside the teared areas and into the plates during the days they were sitting there.

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tittlez said:

Phaethon said:

tittlez said:

Ive been reading in the gourmet section seeing as im trying to grow some Shitake, King oyster and Lions Mane and stumbled upon people writing about buying expensive commercial cultures. So im wondering why would i buy an expensive culture on agar or grain if i can just buy a mushroom and clone it? Seeing as i bought it from a commercial vendor it should be safe to say i now have a commercial strain right?

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Cloning store bought mushrooms is a great place to start. What you get with an expensive commercial culture is a younger, less expanded culture, which has in theory been through less environmental stress. The mycelium in that mushroom from the store has likely gone through a lot of expansion - agar -> LC -> maybe more LC -> grain spawn -> maybe more grain spawn -> maybe sawdust spawn -> production block -> fruit -> transport, storage, etc. Whereas the one you buy from e.g. Field and Forest is more likely just stored culture (slant or agar plate) -> agar -> transport.

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Thanks for the feedback! So you want the culture to have germinated from spore as recently as possible? Im guessing you would still have to fruit and theoretically isolate it before you know if its a good culture right?

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Phaethon said:

IMO Stamets's Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms is a pretty good foundation, if you're interested in cultivating non-psychedelic mushrooms too. There's a lot of disdain around here for Paul Stamets (some of it probably deserved, not getting into it here), but he's a talented cultivator, and the book describes in detail the process for gourmet cultivation as it's done commercially. It doesn't really spell out how to build a small fruiting chamber, but it does describe various cultivation methods and the conditions he uses (temperature, humidity, fresh air exchange rate) to grow many different species.

It's not going to help you grow cubensis except maybe to teach you how use agar, make LC, and make and expand grain spawn. For all of those subjects, there are great pictorial guides here, some of which are linked from the Hitchhikers Guide post. And a lot of the sterile technique discussed in the book applies only to flow hoods or FFUs - still air boxes require different techniques, which again are easy to find on this site.

I found it a worthwhile read for the big picture, but I use it now more as a reference for per-species growing conditions than anything else.

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thirdeyewild said:

Before the internet Stamets was a bright light in a world of darkness.

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EniQma said:

Carnonos said:

The Tao said:

Have a read.
Spore revival

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well... shit.  Not looking too good for tissue revival.

Hopefully I can get that pheno from that batch of spawn again...
Maybe I'll use a sacrificial plate or two to test anyways... in the name of science and all... grumble grumble...

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If it was your playa don’t sweat it brother. I got the same genetics when I went back to spore!

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Nah, wasn't the playa - that's still alive and kickin'... It was a homestead culture - person I got it from said that they've never been able to get the classic PE pheno from it, it only ever put out reverted Amazon lookin caps... Well I lucked out and got a couple PE pheno off of one spawn jar... hopefully I get them again

misterswisher said:

So let’s say I have way more agar plates than grain.
Plan to grow it all out eventually, but not like the next few weeks.

How long is an agar plate viable when left in the fridge? Would it be better to use one that’s not fully colonized?

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Camera93 said:

People dislike Paul for a specific reason and it's not his knowledge of mycology.

Then other people see people shitting on him and it becomes a fad and by the end its just the thing to say

And so the cycle goes

Two TCs just went against the fad and I'm sure we'll see a resurgence of parroting how great he is.

Quick question, how long does a roll of parafilm last? I bought a big roll back in like 2018/2019 and I feel like it's gotten brittle, getting a lot of breaks on wrap and seeing cracking on the film on plates

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Camera93 said:

...
Quick question, how long does a roll of parafilm last? I bought a big roll back in like 2018/2019 and I feel like it's gotten brittle, getting a lot of breaks on wrap and seeing cracking on the film on plates

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lifescientist said:

Sorry for the delay, was busy with work and stuff. Here are pics I just took and then randomly misted again because something told me I should:







Thank you !!

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ThurmanMurman said:

MS culture to a pint jar of LC or nah? Im chomping at the bit for more clone candidates...

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lifescientist said:

lifescientist said:

Sorry for the delay, was busy with work and stuff. Here are pics I just took and then randomly misted again because something told me I should:







Thank you !!

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Bump lol

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Smellyhobbit said:

ThurmanMurman said:

MS culture to a pint jar of LC or nah? Im chomping at the bit for more clone candidates...

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Do it. Make a bunch of quarts of spawn and send them individually. The LC is going to give you a wider array of gene expression than a wedge, so you’ll get a lot of variation. It’s my favorite tool for this situation.

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