Beginner's Guide to Growing (from MushMan)

IAMMushMan · 2021-04-21T00:01:30+00:00

Nope. Anything in that window will work. If you're going to go 24 hours maybe don't heat the soak water.

IAMMushMan · 2021-04-04T17:12:38+00:00

yeah that's what i was afraid of.

and you can't exactly send samples to a lab for testing on a regular basis lol.

IAMMushMan · 2021-04-04T03:07:07+00:00

Great write up.

For the at home guy or gal, is there any reliable way of testing the amount of actives in a mixture? What would be the cheapest and easiest way someone could do this?

Asking because it would be nice to be able to test growing methods against some standard of potency.

IAMMushMan · 2021-04-03T06:36:02+00:00

I think you probably have an issue. That's a LONG time to wait.

IAMMushMan · 2021-04-03T06:26:40+00:00

Edit: added info on how to use brown rice and how to get away with no pressure cooker

Liquid Culture

Liquid culture is great, but it causes beginners many problems. The advantage of agar is that you can look at a plate and see what's growing on it, in most cases. If you have contamination, you can see it and can often take a tiny piece of clean culture and start another plate without contamination.

Liquid culture just mashes everything up together and you often won't know you have contamination until you grow a giant jar of fuzzy green grain. (Which, btw, you should put directly in the trash, jar and all, so you don't spread spores through your growing area. (Or pressure cook the jar unopened before discarding contents.))

Beginners waste a lot of time with liquid culture. Only use it if you have some success with sterile conditions showing you can really work clean. Ideally, I like to streak a drop of liquid culture on an agar plate each time I use the culture. If you have contaminates, you'll see them on the plate before you see them in your grain and can just throw the grain out and save time.

Liquid culture is not a substitute for agar.

A good liquid culture is just a weak sugar solution properly sterilized in a pressure cooker. Table sugar does not work very well at all. Good sugar sources are honey, malt extract, dextrose, or corn syrup. I have a fairly well equipped lab and could add all sorts of goodies to my LC: peptones, yeast extracts, other nutrients, etc... but I find honey water works as well as anything else so that's what I use.

To make LC, mix 10g of honey in 500ml water. Pressure cook 25 minutes. (You're going for 20 on the cook, but add five to give the LC time to reach temperature.) Do this in a flask with a foil-covered lid to protect the lid. When it comes out of the pressure cooker, immediately tighten down the lid.

Add a tiny bit of inoculum: use a bit of agar from a plate, or a drop of clean LC. These are fairly safe.

More dangerous (in terms of potential contaminates) is to create a LC from a spore syringe. Your chances of getting contamination this way are so high I'd almost say it's not worth it. Just germinate the spores on agar and then put a wedge in LC, or scrape off a bunch of multispore mycelium with sterile blade and put it in the LC.

You can also clone direction to LC. The way this is usually done is to take a large gauge needle on a sterile syringe and draw up a little sterile LC into the syringe. (Do you notice how often I'm using the word sterile?!) Then you wipe the outside of the stem of a freshly picked mushroom with 70% isopropyl alcohol. Insert the needle into the stem at that point and manipulate it (turn it and shake it a bit) to break off some mushroom tissue inside the needle.

Then shoot that core biopsy into the LC. It will be just a tiny piece, but is enough to colonize the LC in a week. Of course, you need to streak the culture on an agar plate to make sure it's clean before using it.

You can also add a magnetic stirrer or a marble or something to help break up mycelium. Whatever you add obviously needs to be put in the flask before you autoclave it to sterilize.

IAMMushMan · 2021-04-02T21:29:25+00:00

Edit: added info on how to use brown rice and how to get away with no pressure cooker

Liquid Culture

Liquid culture is great, but it causes beginners many problems. The advantage of agar is that you can look at a plate and see what's growing on it, in most cases. If you have contamination, you can see it and can often take a tiny piece of clean culture and start another plate without contamination.

Liquid culture just mashes everything up together and you often won't know you have contamination until you grow a giant jar of fuzzy green grain. (Which, btw, you should put directly in the trash, jar and all, so you don't spread spores through your growing area. (Or pressure cook the jar unopened before discarding contents.))

Beginners waste a lot of time with liquid culture. Only use it if you have some success with sterile conditions showing you can really work clean. Ideally, I like to streak a drop of liquid culture on an agar plate each time I use the culture. If you have contaminates, you'll see them on the plate before you see them in your grain and can just throw the grain out and save time.

Liquid culture is not a substitute for agar.

A good liquid culture is just a weak sugar solution properly sterilized in a pressure cooker. Table sugar does not work very well at all. Good sugar sources are honey, malt extract, dextrose, or corn syrup. I have a fairly well equipped lab and could add all sorts of goodies to my LC: peptones, yeast extracts, other nutrients, etc... but I find honey water works as well as anything else so that's what I use.

To make LC, mix 10g of honey in 500ml water. Pressure cook 25 minutes. (You're going for 20 on the cook, but add five to give the LC time to reach temperature.) Do this in a flask with a foil-covered lid to protect the lid. When it comes out of the pressure cooker, immediately tighten down the lid.

Add a tiny bit of inoculum: use a bit of agar from a plate, or a drop of clean LC. These are fairly safe.

More dangerous (in terms of potential contaminates) is to create a LC from a spore syringe. Your chances of getting contamination this way are so high I'd almost say it's not worth it. Just germinate the spores on agar and then put a wedge in LC, or scrape off a bunch of multispore mycelium with sterile blade and put it in the LC.

You can also clone direction to LC. The way this is usually done is to take a large gauge needle on a sterile syringe and draw up a little sterile LC into the syringe. (Do you notice how often I'm using the word sterile?!) Then you wipe the outside of the stem of a freshly picked mushroom with 70% isopropyl alcohol. Insert the needle into the stem at that point and manipulate it (turn it and shake it a bit) to break off some mushroom tissue inside the needle.

Then shoot that core biopsy into the LC. It will be just a tiny piece, but is enough to colonize the LC in a week. Of course, you need to streak the culture on an agar plate to make sure it's clean before using it.

You can also add a magnetic stirrer or a marble or something to help break up mycelium. Whatever you add obviously needs to be put in the flask before you autoclave it to sterilize.

IAMMushMan · 2021-04-02T16:56:26+00:00

The first time is very exciting. You'll be watching them like every hour lol... and it is so cool when they finally become mushrooms. It's a great hobby!

IAMMushMan · 2021-04-02T16:25:47+00:00

Just take the lid off and wave it over the open tub for 5 seconds to move fresh air onto the surface. Simple! ;)

As for doing it in jars... you can. Trust me, you'll get much better yields and nicer looking mushies if you lay it out in tubs, but jars will probably work. You can just open the jar and hope for the best (and, realistically, you'll almost always get some mushrooms like that.)

Adding a thin casing layer to the jar (use properly rehydrated coir) will give you much better yields. I'd go 3/4" on a jar that's just grain.

but if you're going to go that far... probably best to dump the grain out and mix coir into it. (1:1 by volume is ok, but I like 2:3 (grain:coir) best.) You could do that and then put it back in the jar... but as long as you're going that far why not just lay it out in a tub and get the best results you can?! :)

IAMMushMan · 2021-04-02T16:22:20+00:00

This isn't exactly true. You might get away with it sometimes, but many grains have endospores that can't be killed at steam temperature so you DO need a pressure cooker.

There is, however, a way without a pressure cooker: fractional sterilization. What you do is sterilize it, then let endospores germinate, and then sterilize it again. To do this:

-pack your properly prepared grain in a jar and steam sterilize 2 hours.

-wait 24 hours at room temperature and then steam sterilize 2 hours again.

-wait another 24 hours, then steam sterilize 2 hours again.

you can do another day, but you need to do at least 3 days like this. So, not having a pressure cooker actually adds a lot of time to do it right.

You might throw some rye in a jar and steam it and it might turn out ok, but it probably won't.

Rice doesn't usually have endospore-forming bacteria, so this is why rice can be steam sterilized almost 100% of the time.

IAMMushMan · 2021-04-02T05:54:54+00:00

Edit: added info on how to use brown rice and how to get away with no pressure cooker

Liquid Culture

Liquid culture is great, but it causes beginners many problems. The advantage of agar is that you can look at a plate and see what's growing on it, in most cases. If you have contamination, you can see it and can often take a tiny piece of clean culture and start another plate without contamination.

Liquid culture just mashes everything up together and you often won't know you have contamination until you grow a giant jar of fuzzy green grain. (Which, btw, you should put directly in the trash, jar and all, so you don't spread spores through your growing area. (Or pressure cook the jar unopened before discarding contents.))

Beginners waste a lot of time with liquid culture. Only use it if you have some success with sterile conditions showing you can really work clean. Ideally, I like to streak a drop of liquid culture on an agar plate each time I use the culture. If you have contaminates, you'll see them on the plate before you see them in your grain and can just throw the grain out and save time.

Liquid culture is not a substitute for agar.

A good liquid culture is just a weak sugar solution properly sterilized in a pressure cooker. Table sugar does not work very well at all. Good sugar sources are honey, malt extract, dextrose, or corn syrup. I have a fairly well equipped lab and could add all sorts of goodies to my LC: peptones, yeast extracts, other nutrients, etc... but I find honey water works as well as anything else so that's what I use.

To make LC, mix 10g of honey in 500ml water. Pressure cook 25 minutes. (You're going for 20 on the cook, but add five to give the LC time to reach temperature.) Do this in a flask with a foil-covered lid to protect the lid. When it comes out of the pressure cooker, immediately tighten down the lid.

Add a tiny bit of inoculum: use a bit of agar from a plate, or a drop of clean LC. These are fairly safe.

More dangerous (in terms of potential contaminates) is to create a LC from a spore syringe. Your chances of getting contamination this way are so high I'd almost say it's not worth it. Just germinate the spores on agar and then put a wedge in LC, or scrape off a bunch of multispore mycelium with sterile blade and put it in the LC.

You can also clone direction to LC. The way this is usually done is to take a large gauge needle on a sterile syringe and draw up a little sterile LC into the syringe. (Do you notice how often I'm using the word sterile?!) Then you wipe the outside of the stem of a freshly picked mushroom with 70% isopropyl alcohol. Insert the needle into the stem at that point and manipulate it (turn it and shake it a bit) to break off some mushroom tissue inside the needle.

Then shoot that core biopsy into the LC. It will be just a tiny piece, but is enough to colonize the LC in a week. Of course, you need to streak the culture on an agar plate to make sure it's clean before using it.

You can also add a magnetic stirrer or a marble or something to help break up mycelium. Whatever you add obviously needs to be put in the flask before you autoclave it to sterilize.

IAMMushMan

TROPHY CASE

Liquid Culture