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Spawning to shredded water agar (silly experiment) * 4
    #29609224 -

Okay, first of all, eww, boo, yuck - I get it. But I haven't found much info on using water agar as a substrate, so maybe it's worth sharing anyway.

Here's the story.
- Had a few bacterial jars with stagnant cube mycelium on WBS.
- Made water agar (8g agar per 500ml of filtered water) and shredded it with a fork.
- Took a couple tablespoons of colonized WBS and mixed with agar in a 2l jar.
- Left it on the shelf to see what happens.
- Harvested 11g fresh (which is actually not bad considering how little spawn there was).



Very poor FAE, I know, but such small space forces you to choose between low FAE and low humidity.
Also, I forgot to add colorant, but I have fully accepted my stupidity by now, so no regrets.

My observations:
1) Shredding agar releases free water. It would be better to let it dry out a little before mixing.
2) Transparent medium causes pins EVERYWHERE (duh).
3) Mycelium did colonize agar - there were consolidated areas with visible white fluff.
4) Things looked stable at colonization, no new contaminants or anything.
5) When fruiting started, mycelium began digesting agar more aggressively. This released more free water and created small hollow areas.

Further thoughts:
1) I fantasized that water agar as an additive to normal bulk could be a path to self-rehydrating setup, but agar probably soaks things too much too fast. Also, agar has no inert carcass, so it simply DISAPPEARS as it's digested, which could lead to mechanical collapse.
2) This hydroponic shit may be worth another try, I'll do my best to have a cleaner run and post the results (unless I'm banned for being an idiot, which would make perfect sense).
3) Water agar might perform a lot better with TRUFFLES. Just imagine: a see-through medium and nothing to peel off. Sounds like a direction to me!


--------------------
You gave me a wonderful, wonderful world,
And you gave me eyes to see it,
And you gave me LSD to open them.

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Re: Spawning to shredded water agar (silly experiment) [Re: kyu] * 1
    #29609232 -

Pretty cool experiment you got going on lol. I read the title and immediately said “wtf”  I didn’t know what to expect but even more so I didn’t expect it to work like that. Obviously I know agar can grow fruits by itself but never thought what would happen if I did THAT.  Pretty cool man👍

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Re: Spawning to shredded water agar (silly experiment) [Re: Awfullotofshrooms] * 1
    #29616129 -



Second flush - another 8g of skinnies.

I was wrong in my original post - it's definitely not too wet there (except for the free moisture that I introduced initially, but it's gone now). I'd say things go slower than in regular bulk. I'd try reducing agar/liter ratio, maybe it will be easier to digest.

Harvesting fruits is a shitshow, everything breaks apart.

BUT I'm definitely doing this with truffles.
The way I imagine it, it could go like this:
1) Make shitload of water agar
2) Add spawn
3) Harvest truffles, add more spawn as needed
4) Repeat until there's no jelly left.

We'll see how it goes outside my head ofc.


--------------------
You gave me a wonderful, wonderful world,
And you gave me eyes to see it,
And you gave me LSD to open them.

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Re: Spawning to shredded water agar (silly experiment) [Re: kyu]
    #29616132 -

I'm optimistic about re-spawning like that, because I think this setup should be resilient as hell.
In most other bulks, there's always some uncolonized nutrients that contams can race for to nest and give you attitude. But this is totally inert medium. From the moment you spawn, all the nutrients are already dominated by shrooms.

Here's another stupid experiment as a proof-of-concept of what I'm rambling about.

Put a few buckwheat grains in water agar plates. Just completely dry non-sterile grains, straight out of the package.



Left - not inoculated. I suspect contamination. It doesn't spread far, though!

Right - leftover ms germination plate. The grain was colonized as it was hydrating. Looks like that gave the mushroom a head-start. And once it established, nothing went to shit. There's no struggle, no surprises, just a healthy colony.


--------------------
You gave me a wonderful, wonderful world,
And you gave me eyes to see it,
And you gave me LSD to open them.

Edited by kyu (07/03/26 06:25 AM)

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Re: Spawning to shredded water agar (silly experiment) [Re: kyu] * 1
    #29616141 -

Next experiment look into water crystal as a substitute. Easier to measure b.e. that way.


--------------------
The better guide to grow mushrooms.
https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/8553541

Beware the power of one.  The power of two. The power of many.

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Re: Spawning to shredded water agar (silly experiment) [Re: kyu] * 1
    #29681052 -

Decided to repeat the experiment with Ochra.
Why do I keep doing this shit? Because I'm after novelty, not results. Anyway, here's some pics.







First change - I cut the agar, not shredded with a fork - less free moisture.
Second change - more spawn

Now, here's what. Cubes were noticeably reluctant to colonize water agar, even though they used some water and fruited like crazy.
I wouldn't call Ochra just "aggressive".
Unlike Cubes, Ochra seems to be better at transporting nutrients and moisture around. Cubes tend to use locally available resources and create complex infrastructure mostly just for fruiting. Ochra fires in all directions.

I suspected bacterial, because by the fruiting time everything looked like mush. But it's actually solid mushroom tissue with chunks of water agar inside. The smell is fine, and everything looks like a single huge sclerotia rather than bacterial goo.
Jars are annoying, I'm moving to bags in a fruiting chamber.

Just harvested 17g from a 2l jar, which is modest but enough for microdosing, and I made clones.


--------------------
You gave me a wonderful, wonderful world,
And you gave me eyes to see it,
And you gave me LSD to open them.

Edited by kyu (10/20/26 11:57 AM)

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Re: Spawning to shredded water agar (silly experiment) [Re: kyu] * 1
    #29681296 -

This is neat. Cool experiment!


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


.~`  𝔅 𝔞 𝔤 𝔢 𝔩  🥯  𝔅 𝔦 𝔱 𝔢 𝔰  `~.
:salute: CAKE WARS III HAPPENING NOW :salute:

🧪 Castellani Preservation | 🔬 The Slidewich | ☠️ Touchless skull sterilizer | 📸 Agar plate scanner


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Re: Spawning to shredded water agar (silly experiment) [Re: kyu] * 1
    #29681425 -

Variety is the spice of life

Keep experimenting, it means you have the passion for life :thumbup:


--------------------
"Why try for high fives,
When my pies have nine lives?"
DUBJUG : H.D. : PLASTIC-MYC : TGE : JOIN CAKE WARS : MODERN FRUITING : MCWA : QDMT : ♾️ : MY FAV TEKS 📖

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Re: Spawning to shredded water agar (silly experiment) [Re: kyu]
    #29688530 -







Harvested another 33g, printed a couple of dudes, left a few to mature more. The temperatures are lower now, around 20C. I think this slowed down the metabolism and improved the FAE situation.

The substrate looks like a battlefield, and it gets darker every day, but the fruits look healthy and well-attached.


--------------------
You gave me a wonderful, wonderful world,
And you gave me eyes to see it,
And you gave me LSD to open them.

Edited by kyu (10/20/26 11:57 AM)

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Re: Spawning to shredded water agar (silly experiment) [Re: kyu] * 5
    #29688690 -

I like this idea, very similar to something I was doing way back when I was messing around with the idea of reusable substrate.

https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/25638606/vc/1


--------------------
:headbang3: Pastywhyte's Easy Writeups :headbang3: My Favorite Grow Logs :headbang3:
:headbang3: Avoiding the dreaded facepalm in cultivation :headbang3: The worst threads all have the same subjects :headbang3:
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Re: Spawning to shredded water agar (silly experiment) [Re: Pastywhyte]
    #29688699 -

:neat:


--------------------
:hypnotoad:
Making Liquid Culture :  Go insane with LC
Mushboy likes these teks : Making shroom tea
Dank Education

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Re: Spawning to shredded water agar (silly experiment) [Re: Pastywhyte]
    #29688729 -

Pastywhyte said:
I like this idea, very similar to something I was doing way back when I was messing around with the idea of reusable substrate.

https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/25638606/vc/1


:hewut:

Holy smokes, the cum rag tek :rofl:


--------------------
“All Fungi are edible.

Some fungi are only edible once.”
― Terry Pratchett


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Re: Spawning to shredded water agar (silly experiment) [Re: Pastywhyte]
    #29688910 -

Pastywhyte said:
I like this idea, very similar to something I was doing way back when I was messing around with the idea of reusable substrate.

https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/25638606/vc/1


Scanned the whole thread- mostly just read your posts- at work and dude, what a blast. And Violet was there!

Made me think of a fail blog post or something where some manky dude's towel sprouted a bigass shroom after being left on the floor for weeks. Except you were getting decent grows of PE :bow2:.


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

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Re: Spawning to shredded water agar (silly experiment) [Re: bluescreen] * 2
    #29702969 -

Shit exploded. Third wave, 60 grams. That's 110g total (so far) from a fucking 2-liter jar. Okay, nothing extraordinary, but also not as bad as I expected.



Next time someone asks what's the deal with multispore cultures, you can show them these pics. One corner is dominated by a straight phenotype, the opposite corner hosts curly fags. Different growth stages. Bald patches in between. Competition over resources and territory. It's not a grow, it's a dog fight!







--------------------
You gave me a wonderful, wonderful world,
And you gave me eyes to see it,
And you gave me LSD to open them.

Edited by kyu (10/19/26 06:11 PM)

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Re: Spawning to shredded water agar (silly experiment) [Re: kyu] * 1
    #29702974 -

Time for some intermediate conclusions.

Water agar as bulk substrate

Upsides:
- Water agar clearly works.
- No problem with free moisture, as I feared initially. It's consumed as needed.
- Quite resistant to contamination (considering how sloppy I am).
- Consolidates well (at least with Ochra and enough spawn).
- Good performance on small scale.

Downsides:
- Lower evaporation, comparing to fluffier bulk.
- Denser substrate, might have anaerobic bubbles more often etc.
- Unknown (probably bad) performance on larger scale.

Open questions:
- Is it good for truffles? (My spores refused to germinate, which is sad, and I'm blaming the print).
- Is water agar bottom layer a good addition to classic monotub setups with normal bulk and all?
...


--------------------
You gave me a wonderful, wonderful world,
And you gave me eyes to see it,
And you gave me LSD to open them.

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Re: Spawning to shredded water agar (silly experiment) [Re: kyu] * 1
    #29703019 -

Out of curiosity, how did you rip up the agar, with a sterile tool in a sab?

110g wet from just agar is actually quite impressive.

Now, could this be done with JUST agar and no grains? They probably need those nutes but idk.


--------------------
I call them Huskies cause they Mush!


Huskies' Grimoire
The Official Wild Cubensis Thread
Easy Instant Pot Agar
Let's Talk Cowtek

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Re: Spawning to shredded water agar (silly experiment) [Re: kyu] * 2
    #29703048 -

So cool. Thankee for sharing :hatsoff:


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

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Re: Spawning to shredded water agar (silly experiment) [Re: Huskies] * 1
    #29703332 -

Huskies said:
Out of curiosity, how did you rip up the agar, with a sterile tool in a sab?

110g wet from just agar is actually quite impressive.

Now, could this be done with JUST agar and no grains? They probably need those nutes but idk.


Thanks for asking! Here's more details about my current grow. Please brace yourself, cuz I cut corners wherever I can.
- 500 ml water agar (no nutrients, no additives, just water)
- 350 ml WBS MS badass spawn (Psilocybe Ochra)
- One guy, one jar

The culture was germinated on *drumroll* water agar and immediately transferred to 5 spawn jars.
I don't have a SAB or even a pressure cooker. The spawn was double-boiled in a regular pot. I transferred in open air while reciting my best prayers.
All jars got bacterial, 2 jars went straight to trash, but the other 3 managed to colonize and looked okish, so I spawned one.

How did I prepare the bulk agar?
- I used 8g agar per 500ml water,
- Boiled in a regular pot,
- Left to cool and solidify under a lid
- Drained as much free water as I could (condensate)
- Cut the agar into small pieces using a kitchen knife and a fork (wiped with alcohol). Oh, and I was wearing gloves and a face mask, cuz I care about sterility *canned laughter*.

Can we skip grains? Nope. Even if agar itself was super nutritious, there's just a few grams, the rest is pure water that only looks meaty and solid. It's like vermiculite, except you don't waste vermiculite.
That's exactly why water agar is a usable bulk substrate and doesn't require sterile conditions: there's nothing to feed contams. When it sits long enough, you can observe tiny isolated bacterial colonies that feast on dust particles, but they stay in line.
When you germinate on water agar, yes, there's some thin growth, but that's mostly spores eating other spores. The colony eventually halts.


--------------------
You gave me a wonderful, wonderful world,
And you gave me eyes to see it,
And you gave me LSD to open them.

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Re: Spawning to shredded water agar (silly experiment) [Re: kyu] * 1
    #29703492 -

Ok, that makes more sense. I didn't realize it wasn't even sterilized, but that makes sense for pure water agar.

How low on the agar powder do you think you can go then? Obviously if its runny it aint good, but any solidness at all should be good enough for the mycelium don't ya think?

I'll have to try this out. Perfect use for leftover g2g grain


--------------------
I call them Huskies cause they Mush!


Huskies' Grimoire
The Official Wild Cubensis Thread
Easy Instant Pot Agar
Let's Talk Cowtek

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Re: Spawning to shredded water agar (silly experiment) [Re: Huskies] * 1
    #29703501 -

Cool :takingnotes:


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





An enigma some caerulescens n a mono 😎

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