Just reading through the mushroom sub forum today, and saw lots of questions about culture/ mycelium propogation.

Grain to grain transfer is a very reliable and fast method for exponential increase of mycelium

heres what i do.

Knock up 10 jars which are about half full of birdseed.

Wait till growth is big and visible. Hit the jar against a rubber tire to loosen the kernels and shake it. Shaking it helps the rest of the jar colonize waaaay faster...

after full colonization Find your strongest jar, with the most rizomorphic growth, and once again hit and shake the jar.

This second shake is done to test your myc. If it recovers fast and all the white comes back and is visible within the next day or 2, it is ready to use as your "grain master". If the myc doesnt come back, you never wanted to use it in the first place.

Prepare and steralize 10 more same size jars with the same amount of seed and let them cool.

Take your Grain master and lightly shake it to loosen up kernels.

Loosen all of the lids from your target jars,

1 by one gently remove the lids, pouring roughly 1/10 the contenst of the grain master, in each jar, after each time pouring seed in a new jar, immediatly re-seal the jar to avoid contamination.

MAKE SURE THERE ARE HOLES IN THE TOP OF ALL JARS. The mycelium still needs oxygen and too much co2 and too litle oxygen and your jar will NEVER finish.

G2g jars with agressive myc will fully colonize within a matter of days.

you can exponentially go from 1 to 10 to 100 to 1000 and so on. Ive never gone past 100 though, theres no need to!

I was actually about to do my first grain to grain transfer next week.

Have you ever successfully done it in open air?
I was going to use my glove box because I don't have a flow hood. I just don't know how comfortable it's going to be working in such a small space with all those jars...

since starting with horse poo growing i havent colonised any jars with spores, i just take my cakes after a few flushes and crumble them in new horse poo and put in a box in the dark for a week or two, then rinse and repeat.

I use the freezer part on an empty fridge (close to being open air) and mist some alcohol/water between jars. Ive been doing this for about 2 years and don't get contams. It is also probably due to the fact that a g2g colonizes so rapidly, that it dosen't allow contams to colonize. So I would think you can do it in open air as long as your using enough colonized grain.

What about the oven method?

Anything that restricts airflow (esp. from above) but gives you enough room to work would be more ideal than open air.

Ahhhh.... Thank you! The oven sounds like a great idea.
A lot more room to work in there. I'll give it a shot.

Any idea how many times you can do grain to grain transfers before the mycelium weakens?

Oven tek is bunk, apparently. Dunno if heat sterilization prior to use would make it a workable area. my bad

Not sure how far you can expand grain.

no worries, it brings some ideas to mind...

Maybe make a large glovebox out of cardbord, oust the hell out of the air in and around there, wait for everything to settle, rubber glove it up, wipe em with alcohol and try it like that?

Worth a shot I guess.

Next I think I'm gonna work on a liquid culture.

all that is way too fancy!

With mushrooms, the best rule i heard was keep it simple, stupid!

Ive only ever done it in open air, and my house can be extremely messy, contams are rare, the key is to only have the lids off for a brief window of time.

Really no glovebox necessary

I thought that this would eventually result in less-potent fruits?

Afaik, genetics are the main (only?) determinant of alkaloid content. I think the myc may eventually lose vigor in that method (not sure), but potency shouldn't suffer.

for working in open air you can increase success by working around a flame (alcohol lamp or simular) the flame acctually creates a small area of positive pressure around it pushing out a certain amount or ambient bacterias, therefor increasing success for the person working in open air

other then genetics the other thing that effects potency is nutrition!!...but if your growing on poo that will never be a problem, poo is very nutritious

This actually increases risk of contam for the same reasons as the oven tek...the positive pressure presents all sorts of potential vectors for contam via the stuff in the air.

Positive pressure in an open air environment, without a HEPA or similar filter, seems to be more detrimental than not. There are a bunch of threads on this at shroomery/mycotopia, which led me to recant my earlier statement re: oven tek.

Source?

I have not seen a single credible source on this oft stated claim. Many underground mycologists actually state that substrate has no effect on potency.

it is only been my experience that growing on a nutritious substrate make stronger shrooms? can you send a link to the conversation about how a positive pressure zone can increase contams? it seems backwards ?

I thought benz said he has doped his with trytamine and it produced really potent cubes..

Well my last batch of shrooms was shit(potency vice, i got decent yields) so maybe this reviving old cakes method is to blame.

Although i mixed upp all kinds of shrooms that some were done by shredding spent cakes into hpoo and some were done by spawning fresh myc.

Anyway the fruit got really big but really weak too.

I guess this could be from bad genes as well as most of these ones came from the same print.

Yes, but that was the addition of a precursor of the alkaloids they synthesize, not nutrients such as nitrogen, which is what mrwiggle would be referring to as present in manure, yet lacking from other substrates. Look around shroomery/mycotopia, it's commonly brought up and addressed along the lines of, "Substrate effects yield and size of mushrooms, not potency."


How does it seem backwards? When you utilize hot air, you create an air current that you have no control over. As a result, you have no clue where anything is going, even if the warm air is generally rising.



Pulled this thread up with a few seconds of searching...there are numerous other ones on the same topic:

http://www.shroomery.org...flat.php/Number/15581642

YAY!! I did it!...

I had seven quart jars fully colonized. Spawned five of them to a pasteurized brick of coir, verm and gypsum.

I took one of my remaining quart jars and did a grain to grain transfer to 9 new jars!

I did it in my glove box and it wasn't as awkward to work in there as I thought.
There about 40% colonized already just a few days later!
It was so easy.

Next I'll work on a liquid culture.
Looks like I have a lot to keep me busy till then!


Edit: To BecometheOther

The reason I chose to use the glove box is because I'm working in a basement. We've had a lot of rain here lately and this is probably the most unclean/musty area of the house. I just wanted to make sure i was successful considering all the time it takes to prepare and sterilize the grains.