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Mushrooms, Mycology and Psychedelics > Mushroom Cultivation
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Are my spores dead? * 2
    #29685578 -

TLDR I collected some spores from a bunch of mazapatec shrooms I grew earlier this year. Got a wonderful spore print on alu foil and I stored it in the fridge in a tightly sealed plastic box with a couple of silicon bags to reduce the level of moisture inside.

A week later I tried using said spores to make some LC...nothing. Waited 3 weeks. Nada.

Ok, I thought, maybe they don't work with LC (even though it SHOULD). Fast forward a few months later and I remembered about the spore print, made some fresh new agar plates and sprinkled some spore specks onto the plate.



Again...nothing after 3 weeks (see above), only minor activity which I'm guessing is contam. So my question is, can spores die or "senesce"?

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Re: Are my spores dead? [Re: chewinggum] * 2
    #29685615 -

Spores -> LC is not a viable technique. Could just be the spores got super dried out, wetter agar may help. Minimizing the amount of material that ends up on agar is a good thing, you really don't need a visible amount of spores to get going. If you need a fresh print :pm: me your address or get over in the marketplace


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

:crankbowcloud:

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Re: Are my spores dead? [Re: chewinggum] * 1
    #29685666 -

:whathesaid: spores to LC is asking for contamination because spores are inherently dirty.

With your plates...sprinkling spores is the issue, it goes against the important sterile technique of a "no fly zone" nothing should be hovering over the open plate accept a sterilized inoculation loop you use to scrape and streak the spores.

This Tek has a great demonstration on how to do this

Agar tek

Please keep us posted with updates and if you have anymore questions :hug::mushroom2:


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Pasteurizing Straw with Hydrated Lime
Swiss Cheese Fruiting Chamber

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Re: Are my spores dead? [Re: Saxifrage]
    #29685726 -

Saxifrage said:
Spores -> LC is not a viable technique. Could just be the spores got super dried out, wetter agar may help. Minimizing the amount of material that ends up on agar is a good thing, you really don't need a visible amount of spores to get going. If you need a fresh print :pm: me your address or get over in the marketplace



Yeah but why exactly is that? I would have thought that putting spores into a nutrient rich environment with plenty of water would be heaven for spores...Is there a reason why spores -> LC isn't a good idea?

Edited by chewinggum (10/04/26 04:48 PM)

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Re: Are my spores dead? [Re: Agar Wedge]
    #29685735 -

Saxifrage said:
Spores -> LC is not a viable technique. Could just be the spores got super dried out, wetter agar may help. Minimizing the amount of material that ends up on agar is a good thing, you really don't need a visible amount of spores to get going. If you need a fresh print :pm: me your address or get over in the marketplace


Not every plate was sprinkled from above, I scraped some with my knife and quickly opened and closed a few plates (just enough to allow the knife to drop a few specks onto the agar). That said, I will definitely be more careful in the future regardless. :thumbup:

As for spore prints, I'm based in the EU, so transport may take a while :grin:

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Re: Are my spores dead? [Re: chewinggum] * 1
    #29685736 -

Hey bud thanks for joining us!

Um.  Honestly i see some myc in that pic you posted.  You may be able to clean it up as i also do see a lot of bacteria. If you can get us a better closeup pic we might be able to help you clean it up.

I always recommend new members should read the hitchikers guide linked in my signature.  It tends to answer about 90% of the questiond most people have but as a courtesy ill try to summarize:

We assume spores to be contaminated as youre seeing here.  If you were to put them to Lc, you might not even see that big blob of yeast thars going ham.

We have ways of cleaning up even fucked up plates. We really want new growers to master agar before moving into other phases of our convention


Anyway thanks again


--------------------
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Shroomery
Visit our cultivation museum
The Hitchhiker's guide Pt. 3

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Re: Are my spores dead? [Re: BeefExtreme]
    #29685865 -

Read (and read and read) through Beef's link.

If you want to put spores to agar, a really simple technique is to use a sterile swab, just barely touch it to the print, and scribe a few lines on a plate. You can do some scribbles like starting an old ball point pen in one sector, then squiggle down from another area. You might find that the area that got the least of them gives some clean myc, then transfer a tiny bit of that to a new plate. There are more lab-tech ways but this works well and is simple.

You can make your own cheap af swabs; cut some drugstore swabs in two, stick in a jar, and PC for 45m. You could do shorter time, 20m should be fine but why not be extra sure.

I always have little jars of swabs. Found one the other day like "wtf, these must be a year old!", tried one and it was ace.


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Edited by bluescreen (10/04/26 07:30 PM)

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Re: Are my spores dead? [Re: BeefExtreme]
    #29686334 -

BeefExtreme said:
Hey bud thanks for joining us!

Um.  Honestly i see some myc in that pic you posted.  You may be able to clean it up as i also do see a lot of bacteria. If you can get us a better closeup pic we might be able to help you clean it up.


Glad to be here :laugh:

Are you sure it's mycelium? It looks very faint to me. I've done agar a few times in the past with much better success. Here's a pic of something I made late last year.



Granted, I used bits of grain here though. But when I tried agar for the first time ever, I remember the spores germinating in less than a week (around 5 days iirc). The first photo is after 3 weeks...and that's with all 10 plates. Zero activity (only 2 of them have contam though).

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Re: Are my spores dead? [Re: chewinggum]
    #29686443 -

No im not sure.  Clear up
The condensation by placing a hot cup of coffee on it for a few minutes and then get me a better closeup and well see
What we can do with it.

Yes sometimes myc is faint like that at first.  Its weak.  It will take time to get stronger. Its called "tomentose" growth pattern and it may switch to a different more agressive mode later on.  The ropey patterns is called "rhyzomorphic" growth pattern and its not always neccesarily better.  Ive got awesome cultures that are always tommy.


--------------------
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Shroomery
Visit our cultivation museum
The Hitchhiker's guide Pt. 3

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Re: Are my spores dead? [Re: BeefExtreme]
    #29687723 -

BeefExtreme said:
No im not sure.  Clear up
The condensation by placing a hot cup of coffee on it for a few minutes and then get me a better closeup and well see
What we can do with it.

Yes sometimes myc is faint like that at first.  Its weak.  It will take time to get stronger. Its called "tomentose" growth pattern and it may switch to a different more agressive mode later on.  The ropey patterns is called "rhyzomorphic" growth pattern and its not always neccesarily better.  Ive got awesome cultures that are always tommy.


The types of mycelium I'm already aware of. What shocks me is that you've had good cultures from tomentose growth because afaik, rhizomorphic growth occurs when you've got a successful pairing of genetic material between two haploid mycelial cells. That's why you tend to hear that you have to extract the rhizomorphic growth from agar for "the best strains". Or people often say that if you see rhizomorphic growth in your grain then it's gonna be "good mycelium".

Although I don't understand why this SHOULDN'T be the case, I took have inoculated grain with some strains and seen the bag be covered by tomentose growth through and through, and they turned out to be pretty decent mushrooms in the end. :confused:

Anyway, as requested, I took a few more photos of the other plates.

Here's one with "no activity". Just a sort of "patch" around the spores. Half of the plates are like this.

The rest are like this.

Edit - The upload photo function has disappeared????????

Edited by chewinggum (10/06/26 09:02 AM)

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Re: Are my spores dead? [Re: chewinggum]
    #29687731 -

Where did you hear that? That doesn't sound correct to me. some of my best cultures are Tommy and i got them from some of the godfathers of the shroomery who also continually swear by some tommy cultures.

the photo upload can be a little buggy sometimes.  Ythan works on it.

Just keep refreshing and try again. it'll go.


--------------------
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Shroomery
Visit our cultivation museum
The Hitchhiker's guide Pt. 3

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Re: Are my spores dead? [Re: chewinggum]
    #29687910 -

chewinggum said:
BeefExtreme said:
No im not sure.  Clear up
The condensation by placing a hot cup of coffee on it for a few minutes and then get me a better closeup and well see
What we can do with it.

Yes sometimes myc is faint like that at first.  Its weak.  It will take time to get stronger. Its called "tomentose" growth pattern and it may switch to a different more agressive mode later on.  The ropey patterns is called "rhyzomorphic" growth pattern and its not always neccesarily better.  Ive got awesome cultures that are always tommy.


The types of mycelium I'm already aware of. What shocks me is that you've had good cultures from tomentose growth because afaik, rhizomorphic growth occurs when you've got a successful pairing of genetic material between two haploid mycelial cells. That's why you tend to hear that you have to extract the rhizomorphic growth from agar for "the best strains". Or people often say that if you see rhizomorphic growth in your grain then it's gonna be "good mycelium".

Although I don't understand why this SHOULDN'T be the case, I took have inoculated grain with some strains and seen the bag be covered by tomentose growth through and through, and they turned out to be pretty decent mushrooms in the end. :confused:

Anyway, as requested, I took a few more photos of the other plates.

Here's one with "no activity". Just a sort of "patch" around the spores. Half of the plates are like this.

The rest are like this.

Edit - The upload photo function has disappeared????????


Tomentose are a more "methodical" colonizer,  whereas rhizo is a more "aggressive" colonizer

Both have the ability to produce great fruits with desirable phenos


--------------------
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When my pies have nine lives?"
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Re: Are my spores dead? [Re: BeefExtreme]
    #29688128 -

BeefExtreme said:
Where did you hear that? That doesn't sound correct to me. some of my best cultures are Tommy and i got them from some of the godfathers of the shroomery who also continually swear by some tommy cultures.

the photo upload can be a little buggy sometimes.  Ythan works on it.

Just keep refreshing and try again. it'll go.


I remember reading about it in a book on mushroom cultivation but it was written quite a while ago, it was the first pdf I read on it a few years back. They stated that tomentose growth is when the genetics are still split, and you get rhizomorphic growth once a successful genetic pairing has occurred. I haven't read up on the concrete biology of mushrooms yet (if you know a good source, please tell me btw!!!).

I remember being a little disappointed with the book tbh, as I felt I didn't really learn any crucial details about mycology itself or the "why" behind all the techniques in the book. It was more just..."do this because it worked for us and it should work for you".

In any case, here are the images.

Here's one with "no activity". Just a sort of "patch" around the spores. Half of the plates are like this.



The rest have a sort of fuzzy mess around them. I suspect it's actually contam but I could be wrong, so I refer to your expertise!








Edited by chewinggum (10/06/26 06:17 PM)

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Re: Are my spores dead? [Re: chewinggum] * 1
    #29688503 -

That last one is mostly myc.  Transfer from around 7 o clock and report back in like 10
Days.


--------------------
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Shroomery
Visit our cultivation museum
The Hitchhiker's guide Pt. 3

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Re: Are my spores dead? [Re: BeefExtreme]
    #29688782 -

BeefExtreme said:
That last one is mostly myc.  Transfer from around 7 o clock and report back in like 10
Days.


Yessir, will do! Glad to know it's fine though. Thanks!!! πŸ‘Œ

Btw, what does the splotch in the first pic represent? Is that just bacterial growth?

Edited by chewinggum (10/07/26 11:56 AM)

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Re: Are my spores dead? [Re: chewinggum] * 1
    #29688833 -

chewinggum said:
BeefExtreme said:
That last one is mostly myc.  Transfer from around 7 o clock and report back in like 10
Days.


Yessir, will do! Glad to know it's fine though. Thanks!!! πŸ‘Œ

Btw, what does the splotch in the first pic represent? Is that just bacterial growth?


None of the plates are fine, they're all bacterial, but might be fine to try and clean up :strokebeard:

I suggest you look into doing cabins, it's a great way to clean up a bacterial culture :awesomenod:


--------------------
β€œAll Fungi are edible.

Some fungi are only edible once.”
― Terry Pratchett


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