Ok so a year and a half old spores syringe was used out of curiosity to see if a half pint BRF cake could still be inoculated. To great surprise it was successful. Now one is wondering how to go about using this jar when fully colonized to colonize several more. I searched the shroomery and all the info was misleading and well, just plain cluttered so I figured surely a fellow nexian could lend some good advice.

Simply open the lids of the jars and pour some of the colonized seed into the uncolonized jar.

Try to be as quick as you can. Perfect sterile technique is not needed because the mycelium already
has a foothold.

Peace.

Cool, much thanks.

Hey toadfreak,you should check out Mycotopia you will find answers to all your questions and youll find some really good teks.

especially in the archives

This is called grain to grain transfer. Exept you are not using rye or birdseed, which separates very well into individual grains, each grain serving as an innoculation point. For g2g to really be effective you need small seeds that separate easy.

That said, how it works is you have the contents of 1 jar, can be used to innoculate 10 jars with the same amount of seed/grain in them.

Hit your "master" jar on the floor a few times to shake it up and un-clump the grains.
Have your ten transfer jars nearby, with lids loosely attatched,
pour 1/10 of the contents of the master into each jar, and then shake them up to distribute the grains.

This should all be done in as clean an environment as possible, wash your hands and sterilize any tools used with rubbing alchohol.

Best of luck

Maybe it would be ok just to chop it into five different chunks and use them in 5 different jars containing this time a seed for ease later on. How long can this process go on maintaining healthy Mycelium? Indefinitely?

Maybe check out Liquid Culture. Its easy and once you get one jar of LC, you can colonize a lot more from it, either substrate containers, or more LC.

Goodluck, stay sterilized stay safe

you can also do this:
https://mycotopia.net/fo...s-lazy-mofo-bag-tek.html

These are some great ideas thanks. I was worried phantastica it would be sketchy with the pf cakes but that tek seems too easy. Also I want to see about doing some liquid culture for future experiment seed seems ideal. I really can't even believe the spores took being 1 1/2 year old kept in no certain environment just in the closet.

Grain to grain is just plain the way to go. Way better than LC, heres why:

You exponentially increase your mycelium, Start with one good jar, 1 turns into 10 and 10 into 100!! (and so on and so forth)

It is generally advised to transfer no more than 3 times. if you did that you would have 1000 jars......
No you cannot continue using the same culture for many generations of transfers.... But really, i cant think of a situation where 1000 jars isn't enough lol.

Transfered jars colonize MUCH faster than those started from spore. If you transfered healthy myc, all your baby jars should be fully good to go in 1 week or less.

My most important piece of advice to you: Stop trying the PF tech, and do a real bulk grow. I know they say newbs should use PF tech, but ive done both bulk and pf many times, and bulk is SOOO much more rewarding and consistant, and it is not much more effort than the pf tech. The pftech often fails and leads to really small (not worth it) yields.

Best of luck, its a great journey! (im still on it)

(feel free to pm me with any mushroom cultivation questions, im happy to help)

A good alternative to grain-to-grain is grain liquid culture. You will not expose anything to the open air and you can turn, as with grain-to-grain, 1 jar into 50.

Innoculate a rye jar or two (only add 1/3 the rye you would normally use) and let it colonise fully. Sterilise 2 jars, one with water in it, the other empty (I just used my normal jars for rye with a silicon injection port and gas exchange port).

Let it all cool down after sterilisation, then inject the water into the shaken colonised grain jar with an inch or more over the top of the grain, swirl, then draw out the water and put into the empty sterile jar. Repeat one or two more times.

Now you have enough liquid culture for many jars!

If your using PF cakes, then take them out and use a sterilized knife and cut them up. Have your other jars ready, and put the cutting in there and shake it up. (Hope your not using PF again or it'll just take longer). Do this all in a glove box for best results.