Hi guys,

I have a P.Sub spore print and was told from numerous sources to spawn it on the gelatine substitute called 'agar' or 'agar agar'.
I'm wondering if anyone has any information to confirm this is a good way to spawn mycelium or if there are any alternatives.

Thanks
OneEye

To be honest I wouldn't say agar is necessary but is a good way to do it. Alternatively you could nock up pf cakes and then crumble it up and inoculate your wanted medium (Woodchips/pine needles are probably the best), this can be done without a pressure cooker if you don't have one.

Not sure if you're doing indoors or outdoors but if you're having trouble getting them to fruit outdoors get a few bags of ice and pour them ontop of your bed. Subs don't grow in my area but a friend puts ice on his beds and they fruit quite well.

A.

Outdoors. I won't have any trouble to get them to fruit because I live close to an area where they grow like everywhere late Autumn. Just want a patch for fun

Thanks for the great information!

agar is the best way to get your culture started. you can ensure that there are no contaminants, you can see how strong the mycelium is and how quickly it grows, and you can isolate individual strains to selectively keep preferred characteristics.

overall agar is a much better route to go than MS syringe.

If you do choose to go with agar the stuff you'll find in health food stores will work fine if you add a source of nutrients to it. I've had good success with vegemite agar, honey agar, molasses agar and even just ordinary sugar mixed in with the agar.

These homemade agar blends work fine if you aim for approx. 2-3% added carbohydrate as a nutrient source. Even straight agar will work to germinate spores but the growth of the mycelium will be a lot slower without nutrients.

Another route you can take is sterilised cardboard to germinate spores and it works quite well too.

It all should be done under sterile conditions so a PC and glovebox are important.

agree, but disagree.

i honestly feel that there is really no substitute for sterile procedure - everyone should learn and practice it.

BUT - all my work is done in open air. i make agar, i do clones, i do prints, i mean literally anything you can think of, including G2Gs, i do in open air successfully. rarely do i get even an iota of contamination and when i do it's only a mild case of cobweb which is easy to remedy. now the only way i can get away with this is b/c i know my environment. my home has no carpet, it's only 10 years old so there is no mold problem, there is no central air or heat.

my point? you CAN be successful w.o a glovebox or flowhood or "sterile procedure" experiment with the boundaries of your environment and see what is possible.

Yeah true, I was just giving general advice.

The last house I lived in had black mould growing all over the walls and ceiling and I could do open air work there quite successfully. The house I now live in has no obvious mould and open air work is just not possible here.

Nature isn't sterile.

Nature doesn't cultivate so many contaminating spores in a domestic environment. Being more sterile in this situation is actually closer to nature. Not that nature itself excludes humanity but that's a whole other philosophical bish bash bosh... yeah. That said... I've never needed a glove box.

Cloning stem butts onto cardboard is loads easier than using spores. Surely autumn is soon to arrive in your part of the world, then you'll have specimens to work from? You'll know it's definitely a fruiting strain too.

Of course, if you want to learn agar work, it's another handy skill to practice!

Stem butts is fun
Only tried it a few times and while it can fail you'll usually get some results out of it.
Spores are really good though because they're easily postable, can be kept pretty sterile in glass 'folders' and you don't have to have a specimen to hand..
But generally it's a good idea to run them out on agar first to take away any contaminants that will inevitably come from harvested mushrooms, which is why I want to learn more..
Got a nice A4 glass folder covered with spore prints now so plenty to play with