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Coming back to the hobby * 1
    #29606106 -

Hi everyone
This is my first post ever here, but I've been reading this forum for years

Some 3-4 years ago I used what I learnt here to have my first ever flush. It wasn't too much (I started with PF cakes, and then did PF to bulk), but it was enough for my needs, but mostly it was really fun
I meant to come back before running out, but life got in the way...

This time I'm coming in a lot more prepared, though without a PC (there are no reasonably priced PCs in my country, the only ones here are Lab ones for $400-500, they just aren't part of my culture for cooking)

So I intend to document my progress in this thread!

What I've done so far:

1- Attempt to revive my spores, 2 ways

  A- I cut several pieces of veil from my old dry mushies, and placed each piece on a plate. After about a month the spores woke up, and one of the plates was successful and with no contamination at all, so I transferred that to 5 other plates. One of them is growing really nicely. I'm thinking of using this one to multiply into 5-10 more plates.

  B- I put a piece of veil into cool boiled water, shook it really well, put it into a syringe and placed a few drops in different plates. This one is still going, I'm giving it time, they haven't started growing yet.


2- Bought some LC online to speed up the process <- UTTER FAILURE, it's all mold. Put any drop into agar and I get the whole plate green in 2 days.


3- Prepare more agar plates, and leave them to the side to make sure they're clean!


4- Practice tyndallization (or fractional sterilization). I've been using popcorn because that's what I have on hand (we eat a lot of popcorn at home). So far I've been able to succesfully sterilize about 10 jars out of 10,. I'm leaving them to the side and in about 10 days they haven't shown any signs of contam

Photos so far:

Agar plate with nice growth: (it's really really hard to take a good photo of this!!!)


(I took too big a piece of agar from the original one and it broke in 2 when placing it here)


Grain jars for practice, sterilized 10+ days ago:


I've since then learnt that it's better to remove the foil to avoid contamination.

So far the problems that I have faced are:
- Excess moisture in the corn (a few of them get condensation at night)
- Condensation on most of my agar plates
- Contamination on several agar plates, I need better SAB technique
- Didn't filter my agar mix, so most plates are quite cloudy


If you have anything to add that could help I'm more than willing to listen!


I'll be posting some more photos later when more interesting things are happening

Edited by TinFoilHeadphones (07/02/26 12:00 PM)

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Re: Coming back to the hobby [Re: TinFoilHeadphones]
    #29606109 -

I'm also returning after a 20 year break. Welcome back and good luck with your grow!

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Re: Coming back to the hobby [Re: TinFoilHeadphones]
    #29606118 -

Good job! Shaking up the corn can help absorb extra moisture and stacking up all your plates can help with condensation also. Letting your agar cool as much as possible before pouring can also help. Congrats on coming back and going all in. You’ll do great and have some good grows soon enough

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Re: Coming back to the hobby [Re: Awfullotofshrooms]
    #29606130 -

Thanks for the wishes and recommendations. I'll do that with these jars and the next batch of plates!

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Re: Coming back to the hobby [Re: TinFoilHeadphones] * 2
    #29606176 -

Any way you could order an insta-pot online and have it shipped to you? I don't have a regular PC either but have an insta-pot and the only difference is the pressure is only about 11-12.5 psi instead of the 15 used here. To make up for it you just PC for three hours instead of 90 minutes to sterilize things.


--------------------
🍄❤️ fellow shroomer fam."be the change and kindness you want to see in this world"🙏🏽❤️
Noobies guide: https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/28501530#28501530
Instapot Ez grain Tek:https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/29586605

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Re: Coming back to the hobby [Re: LeoHale420]
    #29606905 -

Sadly even that's really uncommon here, there are only ali-express type ones that go for about $100-200 for a 6lt one, but don't even clarify what pressure they go up to. Shipping and customs make it even more expensive to buy one from a different country. I hope that next year I'll have enough money to buy one, though!

For now it seems that I'm having nice success with tyndallization though!

Just cause it's on topic, I noticed that most people seem to advice against this method. Is it because it's too prone to failing, or is it simply because of convenience? Are there things I definitely can't do unless I get a PC?

Edited by TinFoilHeadphones (06/18/26 06:56 PM)

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Re: Coming back to the hobby [Re: TinFoilHeadphones]
    #29607010 -

Well if you don’t have a PC brown rice is the way to go in my opinion. I’ve had great success sterilizing rice jars with steam. You can do the agar at the same time as well.

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Re: Coming back to the hobby [Re: Awfullotofshrooms]
    #29607093 -

I've tried brown rice but I failed so many times at getting the moisture and texture right! I got it either too wet or too mushy too many times (I ended up just eating it whenever I failed though :munchies:)
Any advice there? I don't remember whose tek I followed though

Popcorn seemed to go a lot easier, since it never gets mushy and rarely pops, so I can steam it as many times as needed.
For now I'm doing 3 times total over 3 or 4 days, and no contams so far!
I'll keep it in mind though, if I start seeing issues after I inoculate

Edited by TinFoilHeadphones (06/19/26 02:23 AM)

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Re: Coming back to the hobby [Re: TinFoilHeadphones]
    #29607330 -

Just watching for now :goodluck:


--------------------
"The earth is a very small stage, in a vast cosmic arena.
Our posturing’s, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that
we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged.
To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one
another, and to preserve, and cherish, the only home, we've ever known."

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Re: Coming back to the hobby [Re: TinFoilHeadphones]
    #29607372 -

Here’s how I do it , it comes out great not sticky at all. Bring water to a roaring boil, drop in your rice. Once you put the rice in, lower flame to a low simmer. Set timer for 7/8 minutes. Pour off into a colander to strain the water. If you want, you can pour into a container and use the water for agar. That’s what I do. As soon as you pour the water out, turn the cold water on and rinse the rice thoroughly to stop it from cooking and to rinse off any extra starch which would lead to stickiness. Make sure you rinse it pretty good. I usually put them in front of a fan until they’re dry to the touch but my last few batches I just left them out for 10-15 minutes after no more water came off them. After all that just fill into jars and sterilize like normal whatever that looks like for you. I flip the lids upside down and put some foil on the lids. I’ve gotten away with steaming for 90 minutes but the standard usually 3 hours I think for steam sterilization.

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Re: Coming back to the hobby [Re: Awfullotofshrooms]
    #29608466 -

Thans for the detailed explanation!
I wrote it down in my notebook.
In case I have issues with my corn I'll probably fall back into that!

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Re: Coming back to the hobby [Re: TinFoilHeadphones] * 1
    #29609306 -

Hi TinFoilHeadphones, welcome back :sunny: You're right; growing shrooms is fun. And it's very cool that you get to do it again.

I don't have much to say, except I like where your mind is at. Reviving spores using dried fruit tissue is clever, indeed. I think your whole approach is reasonable, and your methodology is as grounded as your expectations, especially with limited access to cultivation supplies.

I'm not experienced with tyndallization, so this is not advice, but something to consider:

I'm not sure if you have access to millet or sorghum, but it may be a grain to consider because of its small size (and maybe even permeability). I've seen it suggested for people using instapot type pressure cookers that operate at lower psi's.

Apart from that, there's always pf tek. It might not be a bad idea to run some pf cakes while you learn/master grain/agar. It's something that you know will work, and it might keep the learning process more fun in the meantime.

I'll be following along :sunny:


--------------------
MUSHROOMS RULE

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Re: Coming back to the hobby [Re: TinFoilHeadphones] * 1
    #29612625 -

Today I grabbed a plate that had nice growth, and used it in 3 different ways:

1- I transferred it to 10 different petri dishes. I'm still practicing still air box technique, and I think I messed up a few things, but I hope that at least one of them will be clean.


I still have a lot of issues with condensation, even though I waited till the agar was barely above 40°C, and stacked all 10 in a pile as I was working, and left them there until they cooled down completely.

I have some doubts with my agar recipe though. I used one of these ones, N°22

Quote:
22) Potato dextrose yeast agar: 10g agar, 10g potato starch, 7g dextrose, 1g yeast


I chose this one because it was praised in that thread and I had everything necessary at home, but it sounds kinda weird, doesn't it?
If it's for 500ml water, wouldn't this give me a lot highger nutrient content than the traditional 2%?
I still decided to stick to the tek, so did it exactly as the recipe.

The agar itself ended up being super cloudy, and wouldn't go through a filter (even before adding the agar, it seems that the starch gelatinized to an extent), so I think I messed up something there. I still added dyes, so at least this will look fun!


2- I prepared 5 PF jars using mycellium from that original plate.



Or at least I tried, I don't know if what I did was correct. I did not feel comfortable making LC yet, so I just put a small chunk of the plate into a tiny sterilized water jar, and shook it really really hard. I picked up that (hopefully) mycellium water with a syringe, and injected 1ml of that into each PF jar.

My idea with these jars is twofold:
a) I want to see if my technique is good, if my mycellium grows correctly, and to practice more teks
b) I want to fruit the cakes, to attempt to clone whatever grows from one of these, so that later in the year I inoculate grain with cloned mycellium



3- I decided to inoculate all my practice grain jars with tiny pieces of agar from this plate.

I don't think my clean technique is good enough yet, so I'm expecting all these jars to fail, but they were practice runs from the start, and if I keep on waiting I get the feeling that the corn will just end up drying out anyways. So if they fail I'll learn how to spot contamination, and if they succeed I'll probably attempt a monotub.


This is how the plate ended looking after removing like 20 little pieces for all the plates and jars.

This is all a learning journey, and it's quite fun
I know I'm doing some things that won't be conductive to success, so feel free to correct anything that you see wrong, I'm fully open to learning, though I'm somewhat impulsive and careless in some parts of this

(if anyone happens to get irritated with me doing things in ways that will often fail, please comment so we can find a common ground! I'm open to discussion!)

Edited by TinFoilHeadphones (06/27/26 10:00 PM)

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Re: Coming back to the hobby [Re: TinFoilHeadphones] * 1
    #29615210 -

Today most of the PF jars are already showing visible growth, the white fluff is going well!



It's very hard to see in these photos, but the whole area marked in red has visible mycellium growth

Mycellium syringe really does grow quickly...

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Re: Coming back to the hobby [Re: TinFoilHeadphones]
    #29615337 -

TinFoilHeadphones said:
I still have a lot of issues with condensation, even though I waited till the agar was barely above 40°C, and stacked all 10 in a pile as I was working, and left them there until they cooled down completely.


40°C is short to harden.
I use a temp gun, when at ~50°C i load my SAB
and slowly start to work.
It´s not only pouring temps,
but also temp fluctuations for storage.
If you have temp swings at home,
you´ll always have condensation on your plates.
Avoid this by keeping them stacked in a ziplock,
placed in a drawer(f.e).

TinFoilHeadphones said:
Potato dextrose yeast agar: 10g agar, 10g potato starch, 7g dextrose, 1g yeast

I chose this one because it was praised in that thread and I had everything necessary at home, but it sounds kinda weird, doesn't it?
If it's for 500ml water, wouldn't this give me a lot highger nutrient content than the traditional 2%?
I still decided to stick to the tek, so did it exactly as the recipe.


For germination i use per 500ml:
Potato water from ~60gr peeled potato, boiled for 10mins.
8gr agar-agar (makes a bit softer for germination).
No extra sugar added.
What even BRF and LME refuses to germinate, potato water always does for me. Really always (if viable).

TinFoilHeadphones said:
Mycellium syringe really does grow quickly...


Maybe you got a so called isolate syringe.
It´s in fact a live culture then.
If you see growth from a standard spore syringe in a couple of days,
it´s most likely not the growth you want.

          :cookiemonster:

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Re: Coming back to the hobby [Re: Goatrider]
    #29615493 -

Thank you for the information!

Quote:
It´s not only pouring temps,
but also temp fluctuations for storage.
If you have temp swings at home,
you´ll always have condensation on your plates.


This explains! It's probably the main reason for the issues I'm having

Next time I'll try that Agar recipe, thanks for sharing


The syringe I used is live mycellium, I made it myself from a small piece of agar (I just learned that it's called "LI").
I didn't know if it would work, and I never worked with live mycellium before, so I'm surprised at how fast it goes!

Edited by TinFoilHeadphones (07/02/26 08:03 AM)

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Re: Coming back to the hobby [Re: TinFoilHeadphones]
    #29615523 -

TinFoilHeadphones said:
The syringe I used is live mycellium, I made it myself from a small piece of agar (I just learned that it's called "LI").
I didn't know if it would work, and I never worked with live mycellium before, so I'm surprised at how fast it goes!


Oh LI is indeed live mycelium.
LI is mycelium diluted in sterile water,
in opposite to LC (Liquid Culture),
which is mycelium augmented in nutritive broth,
so they´re both live mycelium.

I usually rotate agar recipes between transfers.
I start T0 (germ plate) with soft potato water agar,
and move over to low nutritive and stiff LME agar for transfers.
Low nutrition + stiff agar = Faster growth and usually rhizomorph.

        :cookiemonster:


--------------------

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