Hello,

I recently grew my first batch of mushrooms from a grow kit and I collected a bunch of spore prints. I have a syringe from the spores I ordered online and now I'm trying to work out how to make my own syringes so that I can be self sufficient in growing (I just want to be able to do this for some reason). The problem that I have is that I'm not in the least bit technical. The grow kit was easy peasy, I literally just injected the spores into the bag, followed a few basic instructions and the mushrooms did all the work. I've had a look at some of the info on here and I'm finding it hard to follow. Could someone point me in the direction of the easiest possible method for making syringes from prints? I need something that an 8 year old could follow, or maybe a 6 year old

If anyone could help I would really appreciate it.

Thanks xx

You will need to get technical sooner or later as you dwelve into the business of mycology.

At minimum, everything need to be sterile. And that does not mean just clean. That includes all tools, water, the spore print etc. etc.

There are great tutorials, just YouTube: "spore syringe".

Of course you can go the simple way, just boil some water, let it cool, scrape some spores in it and suck it in a syringe. It may work some times, but you would get a lot of contamination.

I get occassional trichoderma or other moulds from spore prints and this is even when sterile technique is used.

Growing mushrooms doesn't necessarily require you to be very technical. But you do need to be practical and methodical. Those two skills are crucial for sterile work methods. Cultivating mushrooms is most of the time about staying ahead of competing opportunistic micro-organisms.

Making your own spore syringes starts with the ability to make your own sterile spore prints. You'll need quite a bit of experience with sterile workflow to achieve these abilities. I recommend that you invest in a pressure cooker and start playing with agar cultures. Besides allowing you to start cultures from not fully sterile spore prints or from tiny bits of mushroom fruitbodies, agar plates offer a very quick confirmation on the accuracy of your sterile techniques.

Once the agar work has given you a good feel for the requirements for making spore syringes, I trust that you will have no problems in finding thew right tricks to make that work for you. As with most things in life, it is easy when you understand it.

Okay I've meant "methodical" too, it's a synonym for "technical" in my language. Maybe OP meant it the same way.

Willy Myco just posted "SPORE SYRINGES IN 5 MINS!" video on hiw Patreon page, it will appearon YouTube soon along with other videos.

There many tiny details in the process, like hand movements and controlling airflow that reduce the change of contamination. It's a matter of practice.

I personally like agar and liquid cultures since you can sometimes see the contaminations before you inoculate the substrate. With agar, it is also possible to purify the culture before making LC and then LC syringe.

Thank you! Ok, I can see I need to get technical. Or methodical I'll start where you guys have suggested, cheers xxx

It is true that the quality of the spore prints you have taken is primordial for further experiments from these. Starting petridishes at the beginning isn't a good idea, in my opinion, because it requires already some more skills and equipment.
Liquid culture is a good start, especially with prints that are not completly made in the state of the art.

I handled to get fruitings from wild South American Cubensis Prints that were harvested totally unsterile and "like not to do" with liquid culture. It requires little equpiments and doesn't take a lot of time.

Beginning mycology is surely not easy but like the others said: method and technique will help to go further little by litte.

I like the book by Peter McCoy "Radical mycology".

Inside there is a whole chapter about how to get into mycology which is quite inspiring with a lot of little tasks and manipulations to get familiar with the processes.

I recommend it highly for beginners in mycology!