In theory this guy is right on, and he has the science and the knowledge down. But in reality, spores to grain does work better than he is insinuating. I have used this method before with a very high success rate. With that being said, he makes a very good point and it makes a lot of sense to use agar or a LC and I am going to experiment using agar next grow.
I sometimes wonder if he's a bit "overtrained" with his lab background. That said, I find a lot of advice on the web is the other extreme, "bro-science", particularly from psilocybin growers. They jump on their first assumption of what caused contamination, without really testing their hypothesis. This video does seem aimed at commercial production, though.
@@squirlmy You're right, there are so many videos of mushroom growers who grew a few mushrooms, then think they are certified mycologists, and dispense their knowledge as if it's fact. I've been growing for years, and I take detailed notes on every grow as to what I did, what I didn't do, and the various conditions that were present. I often go back to my notes and look for trends, or look where I might have done something to produce good results. The more I learn about this hobby the more I realize how much I don't know.
@@JubeProductions I have very little experience yet. In my mind, natural selection should be totally adequate. Shouldn't a spore inoculation result in the strongest strain(s) colonizing at least 50% of the available real estate? Whereas if a novice like myself could spend weeks isolating random bits of mycelium, only to have isolated the weakest strains because its all guess work.
What I’ve done a couple times now is put quality spore samples to grain and grow them out and then take the best looking big early mushroom and clone that to agar, then make cultures from that. For me, putting spores to agar and then picking the best looking mycelium hell I have no idea how to even do that so it wouldn’t even make sense for me to go that route. I can pick the best of the crop to clone easily.
Was thinking the exact same thing. You can certainly go from spore to grain and get fine results, as I have done many times in my early days growing. I get what he's saying but I've never had any issues going straight to grain from spores.
Yes it can be done successfully but it’s missing the point. In nature they do not grow on highly nutritious spawn that is prepared in vitro. The point of cultivation is to maximize yields. If you have many phenotypes competing for the same nutrients it is not maximizing the value of the grain. That’s what the real subject of the video is - efficiency
@@ChadtinoJohn Exactly, in nature there is no concern about some mycelium getting contaminated because some of them are going to grow no matter what and only a few mushroom fruits are required to produce more spores for propagation.
You could do a video on designing a substrate. Specifically carbon:nitrogen ratios. I’ve noticed a lot of new mushroom growers are unaware this even exists.
I bought 4 spore syringes a month ago. 3 of them have worked incredibly well but I’m unsure about the 4th but it’s to early to tell. This guy has some good points, but if you have 10ml in a syringe you go directly to grain and can keep a little for agar plates.
I go spore syringe to agar AND grain spawn jars but not to scale up or skip the agar phenotype isolation.. First, yes, going to grain spawn is risky for contam. But a syringe contains a lot to work with usually.. and I am looking to work genetics off the bat before of course doing a production run.. I'm a home grower with a diy lab set up, so redundancy is always a good idea. I'll innoculate several agar plates but also do a half dozen grain jars. The grain jars usually germinate and grow out much faster.. and as I'm doing my agar transfers, when the jars colonize I'll go grain to agar (if the jars do not contam, which they usually do not with the vendors I use, the instance is very low. Low enough to make this very viable..) I'll then do several shoebox grows of the spawn (all the while still isolating my initial agar samples) for the purpose of the random factor of a box producing a superior or interesting specimen to take a clone sample from... And then do several test grows, clones and develop the genetics up to a fair starting point for a production run (I say production run but I am not commercial, I just mean bulk).. I just figure a few grain jars is a no brainer. Sure it's a risk, but usually it's a fairly low one, especially for the risk/reward possibilities.. it doesn't replace but compliments the spore to agar.. and I've had good success with it, at worst either contam out or doesn't produce anything I interesting then it's a push, with a loss of just a little extra work...
@@TTGTanner oh no, I get he's talking in general.. and yes, I've been known to go into greater depth than needed and be pretty wordy, lol..I blame caffeine and being a bit on the autism spectrum for that but really, I'm more being conversational than anything and also expressing a situation where it's not always a binary decision.. you can do both, but yes don't skip the agar.. and if you mean in dealing with genetics in general, no.. not really.. it's not like it's a huge deal to grab some sterile grain jars and use what's left in a spore syringe, lol.. I do a lot of work with my samples before growing them out in bulk, only putting to bulk fully developed strains. in the end, it saves me a lot of time and effort as I can always just go back to the stored slants if I take a break or if the genetic line starts breaking down over time. it does take extra time in the beginning but it's worth it in the end.. I mean, admittedly, I am still learning an am probably overdoing it a bit in my ignorance but that's part of the process.. learning from mistakes and refining techniques are all part of things.. and I was interested in his opinion on my method, which is why I shared it.. not to contrast his own, but to put mine up for discussion.. and hopefully learn. tho I can't really learn much from "you went too deep fam" other than it was too long for you to read, lol.. right? and if that's so, why bother to comment? (tho I do appreciate the niceness of your reply) I mean, this is a hobby and I've been doing it for several years now.. I'm working with a limited budget as I'm disabled and living on disability. my lab is fairly DIY, I don't even have a microscope or a pro flowhood (I have a DIY flowhood/clean box I designed and built that works very well). I've worked genetics over a period of many weeks on a spore sample only to find I was working with a non-germinated isolate (as they will not produce fruits and growing them out is the only way to tell or looking at them via microscope for the clamping and a few other indications I've picked up over the years). it's very rare but it happens.. so during my genetics phase, I do small grows, select the best fruits with the characteristics I want to promote, and then continue the genetic line with that.. I don't grow out at every step of course, I will transfer for promoting rhizomorphic mycelium and rapid growth/colonization as well.. I usually end up with three or so solid variations for each strain from each spore sample (depending on what unique variations I developed via growing out).. I haven't gotten into cross-straining yet, that's a little more advanced but I'm working my way towards that over time.. I really enjoy this mycology hobby, it gives me hours and hours of endless enjoyment and reward.. I've learned so much and have come so far since my very first grow a few years ago and there's still so much to learn and experiment with.. cheers my friend!
you arent selecting for phenotype on agar because you cant see the fruiting bodies, you are isolating from different strains or picking better looking based on arbitrary factors to most growers mycelium from a mono culture
Luckily today some suppliers like PNWspores have already done all the work on strains so what you’re getting with spores now will produce great mushrooms all pretty consistent. I’m presently growing NSS from them it’s very fast colonizing and strong and high yielding.
This guy is right you should never do spore to grain IF YOU HAVE ANY AVAILABLE ALTERNATIVE. Otherwise spore to grain may be your only option in which case dont worry you CAN STILL SUCCEED with this method as thousands of others already have however you can expect some degree of failure with this method which is why I'd always recommend innoculating a few extra than you would have normally done so you have some room for error. Doing a liquid culture or agar to grain transfer is almost always going to be cleaner/quicker and have pre-determined genetics. Spores are going to be worse in almost every regard unless you're specifically trying to get a lot of genetic diversity in your grow if thats your goal then spores are actually the way to go. Hope this finds someone unsure about spore to grain inoculation and clears some things up for them. Good luck and happy growing!!
Dunno guy, seems us backyard mechanics just seem to make it work without the huff and puff. As a scientist in this field you would know, life finds a way. Fungi is probably the one that can excuse mistakes. Gotta be a mighty dirty person to screw up spore to grain.
i’m currently running an experiment of a spore to grain method that i developed. The contamination rate is very low at the 1/2 way point. Ended up with 19 out of 20 bags came out looking and smelling clean! 😮
that is a good success rate. Now try to select the best fruits from that batch and clone it - it will create a mono culture that will have even looking canopy or clusters next round
You're trying to reinvent the wheel. Using spores straight to grain makes contamination much more likely. That the grain spawn smells 'clean,' is absolutely meaningless by the way.
@@ZenAndPsychedelicHealingCenter thanks for your input, i think there is utility my “swab to grain” tek in the same way that there is utility in any other spore to grain tek.. did you watch the video i made that documented my process and the results?
Wow thanks this makes a lot of sense, to relate it to cannabis growing spores to grain is like letting the males release their polen into the female tent, and going soores to agar would be like separating the males, collecting their pollen, and fertilizing the females by brush.
I’ve had real trouble with using spore syringes to inoculate my agar plates. There’s too much water left swimming on the plate and I can’t see what’s going on. Is there a way to get the spores onto the plate without the water?
As a hobby grower I once innoculated grains with a oyster spore print (the print was made in open air) and then in a sterile box I scraped the spores into a cleaned cup of water and sucked it up, injected about 8 jars with a spore syringe and got 0 significant contam, however it did take 2 weeks to see the first mycelium and to see it take off, so that's a big downside, but I did transfer some of the mycelium climbing the wall of the jar to agar, and it came out clean, and say what you want but that strain or whatever you want to call it can colonize grain as quickly as any commercial culture
Awesome - I don’t want to steer people away from trying to use what they have, but using spores to substrate is very unpredictable and inefficient compared to using refined techniques
@@FreshfromtheFarmFungi yeah I agree I dont why would you not want to germinate and see your culture first? newbs always fight against agar like bro order some premade plates and pop your damn cherry!
Don't let this scare you, MSS to grain can work great. Yes LC and agar cultures are faster and you can control contamination, but putting spore to graim isn't an automatic failure every time.
@@davids11131113 That's impossible by the way. You cannot have a sterile spore syringe. To do so, you'd have to heat the liquid to boiling point at least and that would kill the spores. Spores are taken in open air remember, so there are always some bacteria present. There is no such thing as a sterile spore syringe.
@@ZenAndPsychedelicHealingCenter I never said spore syringes are sterile, I said you have to inoculate in a sterile environment…..and of course it works I’ve been inoculating grain jars with spore syringes for years just fine what are you even talking about?
@@ZenAndPsychedelicHealingCenter Now this guy is a farmer/researcher so he can’t risk something maybe going wrong with hundreds of pounds of substrate, or a strain he’s developing, but doing 5 grain jars you’re going to be just fine most all of the time with quality MSS try NWS, always had great results from them, and if something does go wrong it’s likely your grain prep technique and not the spores in the syringe anyway as I’ve done 1 batch with a syringe that did fine and then later same syringe to other prep batch of grain jars and they had problems. Even this guy doesn’t say you CANT do it, just that it’s better going to agar first, which I don’t care to take all the time to do, taking an extra 60 days just for a $30 spore syringe. Yea it would be ‘better’, but your claim of ‘impossible’ is just clearly wrong.
There’s a high chance of contamination in a pressure cooked grain jar, IF you didn’t do it right. A lot of people prepping corn do not use the right methods and don’t pressure cook it long enough. I have a way to prep corn jars that for at least a year have gotten perfect results from MSS syringes.
@@FreshfromtheFarmFungi Of course grain prep can be done wrong, if you’re short, or even too long on pressure cooking time on your grain, or if your grain wasn’t dried properly prior to jarring it, you can use the best LC and it will contam.
@@FreshfromtheFarmFungi For a while I’ve gotten my spore syringes from PNWspores, they collect their spores under the cleanest conditions they can, and then they run agar tests on them before they make syringes for sale so the chances of contaminated spores is very slim. That is if your grain is prepped right. You’re still going to have the wide variety of mushroom types you will get from spores but I don’t care about that, as long as it’s pretty high yielding and places like PNW have already refined their mushrooms to good types.
@@FreshfromtheFarmFungi Of course it’s the grain prep if you’re not doing it right not pressure cooking it long enough, how do you figure grains can’t contain contamination? Are you saying that if you just jar up some hard corn and pressure cook it for 5 minutes, it will be fine? That’s ridiculous. And my entire point here is reputable MSS suppliers collect their spores carefully ALSO they test them before making syringes for the market so there are chances some spore syringes from the local pipe and vape shop may not be very quality, but companies like PNWspores have great tested spore samples.
Still, you don’t really know what you’re selecting for example you could take great looking mycelium from the agar sample, but when grown out the mushrooms are actually just tall and thin. You can’t know what you’ll get just from appearance of agar mycelium. So what I do is grow out a crop from spores and then pick the mushroom I want to copy the faster growing and biggest, put pieces of that one on agar then everything you get will be the same type. Luckily today some suppliers like PNWspores have done all this work already so the spores you’re getting are already pretty refined.
On an agar plate you add your spores. There are millions of spores on that plate that create the mycelium. You are not isolating one phenotype. To isolate one phenotype you have to do that on a microscopic level. Spore syringes do work to grain.
Hey quick question, i mix in about 20% sawdust with my whole grain oats, soak it overnight and use that as spawn, the idea is to get the mycelium accustomed to my bulk sub and have more inoculation points, any thoughts on this? is the sawdust acting as valid inoculation points because it's hard to tell.
interesting! Sawdust clumps a lot - I used to use it strictly for spawn until I dialed in with grains - It can work well as long as it’s broken up into finer pieces
@@FreshfromtheFarmFungi It's not extremely fine sawdust, and is not a lot, maybe more like 15% and i mix it dry with the grain and then soak it so it ends up very well mixed, one downside is that when fully colonised if left too long it gets a bit harder to breakup. I have tried only sawdust spawn for fun because that what mushrooms growers used to do a while ago but damn in my experience the mycelium takes much longer to grow and is much less vigorous but maybe i did something wrong.
@@CMZneu making spawn with sawdust you’ll need to add whatever nitrogen source you will be using in the bulk. Be it soy meal or peptones etc. a small amount is necessary. I stick with a 12:1 C:N ratio. Fungi need nitrogen to process carbon (sawdust).
@@FreshfromtheFarmFungi mix vermiculite in or anything else to reduce clumping then. texture can always be changed...you didnt comment on his question and TBH I noticed you have a LOT of videos giving advice as an amateur grower and TBH as a long term expert I dont really like seeing this. dont give out bad advice based off of ego or lack of knowledge like you just did. that response would have been eviscerated in the shroomery while TCs came through and ACTUALLY answered the question like I, a trusted cultivator, am about to. read on
try diluting the spores in sterile water and you may have more success. If the contams are low enough you could get a clean run otherwise you need to isolate on agar
@@FreshfromtheFarmFungi ive got some spores on agar now, nearly 2 weeks no mycelial development. The liquid sort of just spread out across the top of the agar.
Man that's bogus what you just said because I still inject migraines with spores very often at least twice a month and I have nothing but good luck maybe takes a week and a half before you see any action but it grows out really really good and thick so I don't know why you're saying don't do that you sure you're not high
No need for any shade on the guy, he’s just talking from a farming point of view. Before you transfer to hundreds of pounds of substrate you’d want to make sure you don’t have a bunch of contamination, but these days the spore syringes you can get are clean and pre tested, also they’re taking from isolated types already so you can get great results doing spore to grain to spawn.
I have an extremely dirty dried out sample of Reshi (G. Lucidum) that I'm trying to propagate via spores to agar. I've grown aspergillius, trich, bacteria, and a few things that look new to me... but no clean mycelium. I've tried soaking to lift the spores then applying a drop to the plate, mechanically shaking spores off, using sterile swabs, and now I'm trying water agar with swabs taken from mid-pore to maybe get ahead of the molds. Any thoughts? I'm a little at a loss because the mold grows so fast and my attempts at isolating what does grow have only given the molds a new place to flash colonize.
try dilutions to get the cell count to 1-10 cfu per drop and do like 15 plates this way you might get an active spore - you can try using selective media like drbc or antibiotic agar to slow the molds down until you can transfer a clean piece of mycelium - this is probably the hardest process for mycology but keep trying 👍🍄❤️
@@FreshfromtheFarmFungi Ooo! I had no idea there was a selective medium for yeast, thanks. That could be huge. I figured that it comes down to getting a little lucky. Being self taught is great, but comes with some temporary disadvantages (like knowledge gaps) My daughter found the reshi and I thought it would be nice to be able to work with it over the next year to breed it out and maybe get a marginally productive strain. Otherwise I wouldn't bother.
@@FreshfromtheFarmFungi molds can be so easily killed and antibiotic refers to bacteria, NOT molds obviously. really stop giving advice please this is pathetic. I get it mushrooms are awesome and you fruited a few times and now want to do it but still learn first before pretending to be an expert...at least go scour shroomery posts and do some fucking experimentation.
rehydrate a piece of tissue and try to cut out a piece from the center in sterile conditions and see if you can CLONE the fruit body. you will not get spores with your equipment and why bother when you have fungal material? that is regenerable...you could also do an unsterile LC with a sodium chloride concentration that is OK for fungus and bad for bacteria with dried material hoping to generate mycelium from spores or the rehydrated material itself and then pull some out spray w hydrogen peroxide and or ISO (ISO wont kill myc but will kill mold spores and bacteria) and put on AGAR. use a UV C sterilizer to fight off/kill contamination and sector away until you have a clean culture. read shroomery info
@@jakelooter5139 This^ tho I would try to do without peroxide etc. but like you said, rehydrate a chunk of fruitbody big enough to tear in half in the SAB and take tissue from the "clean" inside. if its too tough to tear, id try breaking a dry piece in the SAB, taking inside tissue, then dropping it onto "wetter" agar (less agar powder), and a drop of water on the tissue to rehydrate on the plate.
Will a (UVC light) Harm mycelial growth / 🍄 or agar 🧫 ??? Just starting and thinking of using one in my stale airbox , but should I be working transfers inoculations gene editing under the light? My box is sealed and gloves attached so I don’t smell the ozone the light produces and I don’t believe the UVC light can penetrate plastic or glass so my health should be safe as long as I don’t smell it but I wonder about my agar 🧫 and stuff.
garry I inoculated a few petri's with spore print, its been3 days no contam at all. so after the myc grows out a bit should I consider it clean and just dump the inoculation petri into grains or it would be safer to transfer the myc to a second plate?
yeah. on the initial plate you may have a few different but separate colonies going.. you want one set of genetics and for the mycelium to be of the thick ropey rhizomorphic type. the fluffy cottony type is called tomentose.. the rhizomorphic is wanted because that is what helps create the mycelium network and the ends of the strands turn into hypheal knots and those turn into primordia, and those in turn, into pins and pins grow up to be mature fruits (mushrooms). so for this first transfer, look for a small section of rhizomorph to transfer to a new agar dish.. you don't need a lot, just a tiny square a few mm wide. you can take a few samples from a few places in this initial agar dish, even if you don't have any rhizomorphic mycelium yet developed, it should develop later on... so take a few small transfers to new agar dishes and let those grow out... this process is repeated several times until you get a very even sample that's uniformly rhizomorphic and also fast growing.. there are several hundreds of guides on this.. once you have it at the proper stage, you can do more transfers to clone it out to create more agar to use for spawn as you'll want to keep a master sample or samples rather than using it up in one go after doing all that work.. storing a cloned sample of it on a slant or agar dish in a refrigerator for up to a year (do not freeze it, keep it in the upper 30's and let it come up to room temp for a bit before using it) is a good safety practice as well.. tho it all depends on your usage. cheers!
Sounds like your doubling exposure to contamination by increasing the amount of steps you take. Inoculated substrate can just be thrown out. No biggie. Using agar requires more equipment, flow hood ect. I would rather just re-sterilise the substrate and start again.
Agar doesn't require a flow hood. You can use a still air box just fine and you need that anyway. Spores straight to grain was debunked years ago, since it's much more likely to contaminate, in comparison to using clean mycelium from agar.
@@ZenAndPsychedelicHealingCenter they 100% are better because of genetics. You can have perfect grain and sub and get a shit Yeild if your genetics aren't good. Genetics are the final factor in Yeild 100% of the time.
Sure germinate spores on agar but put the whole piece of agar to grain , fruit and clone from best the mushrooms. Isolating from agar really doesn't make sense. All you can tell is how the mycelium is growing on agar, fruiting them all in the same tote , then observing , and then clone and spore print.
After a lot of growing the best method to me is growing out from a spore syringe, then selecting a great mushroom and cloning that to agar and make a liquid culture from that mycelium.
I am sure then that you are selecting for optimal genetic characteristics. no seriously you are pitting genetics against each other it works but if you had more skill and experience you would easily isolate a culture first and then use that to inoculate media.
That's all good for the advanced hobbyist. However, those trying their hand at growing are going to be intimidated at having to do agar plates and needing a super clean environment and the expenses tied into that. I agree, he is correct. However, those just seeing if this is anything they might want to get into. Well, it's not what they need to hear. Hobbyist outnumber commercial growers and eventually a percentage of those hobbyist become extremely knowledgeable. They'll be the ones opening new doors into the Mycelium World.
There is no real expense. Agar can be bought for about $4 and that's enough to make many plates. The only other expense is for a kitchen hand held flamer - about $8 and a still air box. So, for around $20, you have everything you need to grow clean mycelium on agar.
you can get all the info from the title - the rest is just my opinion and train of thought to get to the conclusion. you maybe should stick to to tiktok where videos are limited to 15/30 seconds here is our page - vm.tiktok.com/TTPdBHLrTT/
@@FreshfromtheFarmFungi lol this is such a bad response to more than one third of a 12 minute video being about anything but the topic people came to it for, you make this guy seem so much more unreasonable than he is
Video starts at 5:15
thank u for your service
someones gotta stop these time thieves man
i was looking for this
thanks, I was wondering when he was gonna get to the BS.
Thx
Thx
In theory this guy is right on, and he has the science and the knowledge down. But in reality, spores to grain does work better than he is insinuating. I have used this method before with a very high success rate. With that being said, he makes a very good point and it makes a lot of sense to use agar or a LC and I am going to experiment using agar next grow.
I sometimes wonder if he's a bit "overtrained" with his lab background. That said, I find a lot of advice on the web is the other extreme, "bro-science", particularly from psilocybin growers. They jump on their first assumption of what caused contamination, without really testing their hypothesis. This video does seem aimed at commercial production, though.
@@squirlmy You're right, there are so many videos of mushroom growers who grew a few mushrooms, then think they are certified mycologists, and dispense their knowledge as if it's fact.
I've been growing for years, and I take detailed notes on every grow as to what I did, what I didn't do, and the various conditions that were present. I often go back to my notes and look for trends, or look where I might have done something to produce good results. The more I learn about this hobby the more I realize how much I don't know.
@@JubeProductions I have very little experience yet. In my mind, natural selection should be totally adequate. Shouldn't a spore inoculation result in the strongest strain(s) colonizing at least 50% of the available real estate? Whereas if a novice like myself could spend weeks isolating random bits of mycelium, only to have isolated the weakest strains because its all guess work.
What I’ve done a couple times now is put quality spore samples to grain and grow them out and then take the best looking big early mushroom and clone that to agar, then make cultures from that. For me, putting spores to agar and then picking the best looking mycelium hell I have no idea how to even do that so it wouldn’t even make sense for me to go that route. I can pick the best of the crop to clone easily.
Was thinking the exact same thing. You can certainly go from spore to grain and get fine results, as I have done many times in my early days growing. I get what he's saying but I've never had any issues going straight to grain from spores.
I do spores to grain. It's actually how nature does it so I see no issues.. Mycelium colonized perfectly and had a perfect shroomy smell to it
Yes it can be done successfully but it’s missing the point. In nature they do not grow on highly nutritious spawn that is prepared in vitro. The point of cultivation is to maximize yields. If you have many phenotypes competing for the same nutrients it is not maximizing the value of the grain. That’s what the real subject of the video is - efficiency
Cow shit is pretty damn nutritious..
@@ChadtinoJohn Exactly, in nature there is no concern about some mycelium getting contaminated because some of them are going to grow no matter what and only a few mushroom fruits are required to produce more spores for propagation.
I just did spores the grain, and 4 days later I started to see mycelium growth
You could do a video on designing a substrate. Specifically carbon:nitrogen ratios. I’ve noticed a lot of new mushroom growers are unaware this even exists.
I bought 4 spore syringes a month ago. 3 of them have worked incredibly well but I’m unsure about the 4th but it’s to early to tell. This guy has some good points, but if you have 10ml in a syringe you go directly to grain and can keep a little for agar plates.
I go spore syringe to agar AND grain spawn jars but not to scale up or skip the agar phenotype isolation..
First, yes, going to grain spawn is risky for contam. But a syringe contains a lot to work with usually.. and I am looking to work genetics off the bat before of course doing a production run..
I'm a home grower with a diy lab set up, so redundancy is always a good idea.
I'll innoculate several agar plates but also do a half dozen grain jars. The grain jars usually germinate and grow out much faster.. and as I'm doing my agar transfers, when the jars colonize I'll go grain to agar (if the jars do not contam, which they usually do not with the vendors I use, the instance is very low. Low enough to make this very viable..) I'll then do several shoebox grows of the spawn (all the while still isolating my initial agar samples) for the purpose of the random factor of a box producing a superior or interesting specimen to take a clone sample from...
And then do several test grows, clones and develop the genetics up to a fair starting point for a production run (I say production run but I am not commercial, I just mean bulk)..
I just figure a few grain jars is a no brainer. Sure it's a risk, but usually it's a fairly low one, especially for the risk/reward possibilities.. it doesn't replace but compliments the spore to agar.. and I've had good success with it, at worst either contam out or doesn't produce anything I interesting then it's a push, with a loss of just a little extra work...
You went too deep fam
@@TTGTanner oh no, I get he's talking in general.. and yes, I've been known to go into greater depth than needed and be pretty wordy, lol..I blame caffeine and being a bit on the autism spectrum for that but really, I'm more being conversational than anything and also expressing a situation where it's not always a binary decision.. you can do both, but yes don't skip the agar.. and if you mean in dealing with genetics in general, no.. not really.. it's not like it's a huge deal to grab some sterile grain jars and use what's left in a spore syringe, lol.. I do a lot of work with my samples before growing them out in bulk, only putting to bulk fully developed strains. in the end, it saves me a lot of time and effort as I can always just go back to the stored slants if I take a break or if the genetic line starts breaking down over time.
it does take extra time in the beginning but it's worth it in the end.. I mean, admittedly, I am still learning an am probably overdoing it a bit in my ignorance but that's part of the process.. learning from mistakes and refining techniques are all part of things.. and I was interested in his opinion on my method, which is why I shared it.. not to contrast his own, but to put mine up for discussion.. and hopefully learn. tho I can't really learn much from "you went too deep fam" other than it was too long for you to read, lol.. right? and if that's so, why bother to comment? (tho I do appreciate the niceness of your reply)
I mean, this is a hobby and I've been doing it for several years now.. I'm working with a limited budget as I'm disabled and living on disability. my lab is fairly DIY, I don't even have a microscope or a pro flowhood (I have a DIY flowhood/clean box I designed and built that works very well). I've worked genetics over a period of many weeks on a spore sample only to find I was working with a non-germinated isolate (as they will not produce fruits and growing them out is the only way to tell or looking at them via microscope for the clamping and a few other indications I've picked up over the years). it's very rare but it happens..
so during my genetics phase, I do small grows, select the best fruits with the characteristics I want to promote, and then continue the genetic line with that.. I don't grow out at every step of course, I will transfer for promoting rhizomorphic mycelium and rapid growth/colonization as well.. I usually end up with three or so solid variations for each strain from each spore sample (depending on what unique variations I developed via growing out)..
I haven't gotten into cross-straining yet, that's a little more advanced but I'm working my way towards that over time.. I really enjoy this mycology hobby, it gives me hours and hours of endless enjoyment and reward.. I've learned so much and have come so far since my very first grow a few years ago and there's still so much to learn and experiment with.. cheers my friend!
Sounds fun man! Keep rocking out! You never know, could find the next big pheno!
you arent selecting for phenotype on agar because you cant see the fruiting bodies, you are isolating from different strains or picking better looking based on arbitrary factors to most growers mycelium from a mono culture
Luckily today some suppliers like PNWspores have already done all the work on strains so what you’re getting with spores now will produce great mushrooms all pretty consistent. I’m presently growing NSS from them it’s very fast colonizing and strong and high yielding.
This guy is right you should never do spore to grain IF YOU HAVE ANY AVAILABLE ALTERNATIVE. Otherwise spore to grain may be your only option in which case dont worry you CAN STILL SUCCEED with this method as thousands of others already have however you can expect some degree of failure with this method which is why I'd always recommend innoculating a few extra than you would have normally done so you have some room for error. Doing a liquid culture or agar to grain transfer is almost always going to be cleaner/quicker and have pre-determined genetics. Spores are going to be worse in almost every regard unless you're specifically trying to get a lot of genetic diversity in your grow if thats your goal then spores are actually the way to go. Hope this finds someone unsure about spore to grain inoculation and clears some things up for them. Good luck and happy growing!!
Thanks Gary for sharing your knowledge. Much appreciated.
Great video Great Info! I'm a newbie and I think I found the best teacher on RUclips.
thanks for watching!
Dunno guy, seems us backyard mechanics just seem to make it work without the huff and puff. As a scientist in this field you would know, life finds a way. Fungi is probably the one that can excuse mistakes. Gotta be a mighty dirty person to screw up spore to grain.
Spore to grain was debunked years ago as a successful method, in comparison to others. It's just not worth it.
i’m currently running an experiment of a spore to grain method that i developed. The contamination rate is very low at the 1/2 way point. Ended up with 19 out of 20 bags came out looking and smelling clean! 😮
that is a good success rate. Now try to select the best fruits from that batch and clone it - it will create a mono culture that will have even looking canopy or clusters next round
@freshfromtheFarmFungi i will for sure do that! i really love seeing all the variability from spores, it’s fascinating and fun
You're trying to reinvent the wheel. Using spores straight to grain makes contamination much more likely. That the grain spawn smells 'clean,' is absolutely meaningless by the way.
@@ZenAndPsychedelicHealingCenter thanks for your input, i think there is utility my “swab to grain” tek in the same way that there is utility in any other spore to grain tek.. did you watch the video i made that documented my process and the results?
@@sporemuse Yes. So what? It's still much more likely to contaminate.
Wow thanks this makes a lot of sense, to relate it to cannabis growing spores to grain is like letting the males release their polen into the female tent, and going soores to agar would be like separating the males, collecting their pollen, and fertilizing the females by brush.
I’ve had real trouble with using spore syringes to inoculate my agar plates. There’s too much water left swimming on the plate and I can’t see what’s going on. Is there a way to get the spores onto the plate without the water?
you can do a swab/streak with the spore solution
Ill do a video for that
@@FreshfromtheFarmFungi That would be awesome!!! Thank you.
Good stuff! Great view!
You only need one drop from the syringe to agar, that’s more than enough
As a hobby grower I once innoculated grains with a oyster spore print (the print was made in open air) and then in a sterile box I scraped the spores into a cleaned cup of water and sucked it up, injected about 8 jars with a spore syringe and got 0 significant contam, however it did take 2 weeks to see the first mycelium and to see it take off, so that's a big downside, but I did transfer some of the mycelium climbing the wall of the jar to agar, and it came out clean, and say what you want but that strain or whatever you want to call it can colonize grain as quickly as any commercial culture
Awesome - I don’t want to steer people away from trying to use what they have, but using spores to substrate is very unpredictable and inefficient compared to using refined techniques
@@FreshfromtheFarmFungi yeah I agree I dont why would you not want to germinate and see your culture first? newbs always fight against agar like bro order some premade plates and pop your damn cherry!
Don't let this scare you, MSS to grain can work great. Yes LC and agar cultures are faster and you can control contamination, but putting spore to graim isn't an automatic failure every time.
Yea I’ve used spore syringes to grain it works fine as long as it’s all sterilized carefully.
It's not faster necessarily and it's also highly likely to contaminate. Never go spores straight to grain.
@@davids11131113 That's impossible by the way. You cannot have a sterile spore syringe. To do so, you'd have to heat the liquid to boiling point at least and that would kill the spores. Spores are taken in open air remember, so there are always some bacteria present. There is no such thing as a sterile spore syringe.
@@ZenAndPsychedelicHealingCenter I never said spore syringes are sterile, I said you have to inoculate in a sterile environment…..and of course it works I’ve been inoculating grain jars with spore syringes for years just fine what are you even talking about?
@@ZenAndPsychedelicHealingCenter Now this guy is a farmer/researcher so he can’t risk something maybe going wrong with hundreds of pounds of substrate, or a strain he’s developing, but doing 5 grain jars you’re going to be just fine most all of the time with quality MSS try NWS, always had great results from them, and if something does go wrong it’s likely your grain prep technique and not the spores in the syringe anyway as I’ve done 1 batch with a syringe that did fine and then later same syringe to other prep batch of grain jars and they had problems.
Even this guy doesn’t say you CANT do it, just that it’s better going to agar first, which I don’t care to take all the time to do, taking an extra 60 days just for a $30 spore syringe. Yea it would be ‘better’, but your claim of ‘impossible’ is just clearly wrong.
There’s a high chance of contamination in a pressure cooked grain jar, IF you didn’t do it right. A lot of people prepping corn do not use the right methods and don’t pressure cook it long enough. I have a way to prep corn jars that for at least a year have gotten perfect results from MSS syringes.
it’s not the grain prep but the spores themselves that can be contaminated. You need to trust the vendors or use LC’s that have been purified
@@FreshfromtheFarmFungi Of course grain prep can be done wrong, if you’re short, or even too long on pressure cooking time on your grain, or if your grain wasn’t dried properly prior to jarring it, you can use the best LC and it will contam.
@@FreshfromtheFarmFungi For a while I’ve gotten my spore syringes from PNWspores, they collect their spores under the cleanest conditions they can, and then they run agar tests on them before they make syringes for sale so the chances of contaminated spores is very slim. That is if your grain is prepped right. You’re still going to have the wide variety of mushroom types you will get from spores but I don’t care about that, as long as it’s pretty high yielding and places like PNW have already refined their mushrooms to good types.
@@FreshfromtheFarmFungi Of course it’s the grain prep if you’re not doing it right not pressure cooking it long enough, how do you figure grains can’t contain contamination? Are you saying that if you just jar up some hard corn and pressure cook it for 5 minutes, it will be fine? That’s ridiculous.
And my entire point here is reputable MSS suppliers collect their spores carefully ALSO they test them before making syringes for the market so there are chances some spore syringes from the local pipe and vape shop may not be very quality, but companies like PNWspores have great tested spore samples.
Good lookin out brotha!! You're the man
- seperate n view contaminants
- select clean healthy mycelium
- competition occuring between spores / multiple phenotypes / inconsistent output
Still, you don’t really know what you’re selecting for example you could take great looking mycelium from the agar sample, but when grown out the mushrooms are actually just tall and thin. You can’t know what you’ll get just from appearance of agar mycelium. So what I do is grow out a crop from spores and then pick the mushroom I want to copy the faster growing and biggest, put pieces of that one on agar then everything you get will be the same type. Luckily today some suppliers like PNWspores have done all this work already so the spores you’re getting are already pretty refined.
thank you brother for your wisdom and sharing it with us all
On an agar plate you add your spores. There are millions of spores on that plate that create the mycelium. You are not isolating one phenotype. To isolate one phenotype you have to do that on a microscopic level. Spore syringes do work to grain.
If I want to isolate a characteristic I will clone a mushroom I like. Seems like the best method to me.
Skip to 4:48 for the topic
Hey quick question, i mix in about 20% sawdust with my whole grain oats, soak it overnight and use that as spawn, the idea is to get the mycelium accustomed to my bulk sub and have more inoculation points, any thoughts on this? is the sawdust acting as valid inoculation points because it's hard to tell.
interesting! Sawdust clumps a lot - I used to use it strictly for spawn until I dialed in with grains - It can work well as long as it’s broken up into finer pieces
@@FreshfromtheFarmFungi It's not extremely fine sawdust, and is not a lot, maybe more like 15% and i mix it dry with the grain and then soak it so it ends up very well mixed, one downside is that when fully colonised if left too long it gets a bit harder to breakup.
I have tried only sawdust spawn for fun because that what mushrooms growers used to do a while ago but damn in my experience the mycelium takes much longer to grow and is much less vigorous but maybe i did something wrong.
@@CMZneu making spawn with sawdust you’ll need to add whatever nitrogen source you will be using in the bulk. Be it soy meal or peptones etc. a small amount is necessary. I stick with a 12:1 C:N ratio. Fungi need nitrogen to process carbon (sawdust).
@@SirBoden Wood has a very small amount of nitrogen, I have grown mushrooms on only sawdust, the yield is low but it certainly works.
@@FreshfromtheFarmFungi mix vermiculite in or anything else to reduce clumping then. texture can always be changed...you didnt comment on his question and TBH I noticed you have a LOT of videos giving advice as an amateur grower and TBH as a long term expert I dont really like seeing this. dont give out bad advice based off of ego or lack of knowledge like you just did. that response would have been eviscerated in the shroomery while TCs came through and ACTUALLY answered the question like I, a trusted cultivator, am about to. read on
i've contaminated 5/5 bags so far going from spores to grain :/
try diluting the spores in sterile water and you may have more success. If the contams are low enough you could get a clean run otherwise you need to isolate on agar
@@FreshfromtheFarmFungi ive got some spores on agar now, nearly 2 weeks no mycelial development. The liquid sort of just spread out across the top of the agar.
@@CEOofCTOs Then the spores were not viable.
Bags of what?
@5:16 VIDEO BEGINS
Man that's bogus what you just said because I still inject migraines with spores very often at least twice a month and I have nothing but good luck maybe takes a week and a half before you see any action but it grows out really really good and thick so I don't know why you're saying don't do that you sure you're not high
it’s not the best way. Try isolating and then running a clone it will be much more efficient
Cool story bro.
No need for any shade on the guy, he’s just talking from a farming point of view. Before you transfer to hundreds of pounds of substrate you’d want to make sure you don’t have a bunch of contamination, but these days the spore syringes you can get are clean and pre tested, also they’re taking from isolated types already so you can get great results doing spore to grain to spawn.
Thank you for sharing you knowledge
I have an extremely dirty dried out sample of Reshi (G. Lucidum) that I'm trying to propagate via spores to agar.
I've grown aspergillius, trich, bacteria, and a few things that look new to me... but no clean mycelium.
I've tried soaking to lift the spores then applying a drop to the plate, mechanically shaking spores off, using sterile swabs, and now I'm trying water agar with swabs taken from mid-pore to maybe get ahead of the molds.
Any thoughts? I'm a little at a loss because the mold grows so fast and my attempts at isolating what does grow have only given the molds a new place to flash colonize.
try dilutions to get the cell count to 1-10 cfu per drop and do like 15 plates this way you might get an active spore - you can try using selective media like drbc or antibiotic agar to slow the molds down until you can transfer a clean piece of mycelium - this is probably the hardest process for mycology but keep trying 👍🍄❤️
@@FreshfromtheFarmFungi Ooo! I had no idea there was a selective medium for yeast, thanks. That could be huge.
I figured that it comes down to getting a little lucky. Being self taught is great, but comes with some temporary disadvantages (like knowledge gaps)
My daughter found the reshi and I thought it would be nice to be able to work with it over the next year to breed it out and maybe get a marginally productive strain. Otherwise I wouldn't bother.
@@FreshfromtheFarmFungi molds can be so easily killed and antibiotic refers to bacteria, NOT molds obviously. really stop giving advice please this is pathetic. I get it mushrooms are awesome and you fruited a few times and now want to do it but still learn first before pretending to be an expert...at least go scour shroomery posts and do some fucking experimentation.
rehydrate a piece of tissue and try to cut out a piece from the center in sterile conditions and see if you can CLONE the fruit body. you will not get spores with your equipment and why bother when you have fungal material? that is regenerable...you could also do an unsterile LC with a sodium chloride concentration that is OK for fungus and bad for bacteria with dried material hoping to generate mycelium from spores or the rehydrated material itself and then pull some out spray w hydrogen peroxide and or ISO (ISO wont kill myc but will kill mold spores and bacteria) and put on AGAR. use a UV C sterilizer to fight off/kill contamination and sector away until you have a clean culture. read shroomery info
@@jakelooter5139 This^ tho I would try to do without peroxide etc. but like you said, rehydrate a chunk of fruitbody big enough to tear in half in the SAB and take tissue from the "clean" inside. if its too tough to tear, id try breaking a dry piece in the SAB, taking inside tissue, then dropping it onto "wetter" agar (less agar powder), and a drop of water on the tissue to rehydrate on the plate.
Will a (UVC light) Harm mycelial growth / 🍄 or agar 🧫 ???
Just starting and thinking of using one in my stale airbox , but should I be working transfers inoculations gene editing under the light? My box is sealed and gloves attached so I don’t smell the ozone the light produces and I don’t believe the UVC light can penetrate plastic or glass so my health should be safe as long as I don’t smell it but I wonder about my agar 🧫 and stuff.
If i were you i wouldn’t mess with being in the same room as UV-C.. in theory what you say would work but it’s best to be safe and use ISO / bleach
I’m not sure if you mentioned this but what if it’s a full jar of BRF with a MSS?
that’s different and I think more appropriate since it’s the final fruiting substrate and can fruit out much faster than grains
Can some phenotypes never fruit? Will they take over a multi spore LC?
it is possible
1. yes. 2. I would imagine that the genetics that take over would be the most likely to fruit fastest, but not necessarily any other metric.
garry I inoculated a few petri's with spore print, its been3 days no contam at all. so after the myc grows out a bit should I consider it clean and just dump the inoculation petri into grains or it would be safer to transfer the myc to a second plate?
you should select the healthy growth and transfer onto another clean plate
yeah. on the initial plate you may have a few different but separate colonies going.. you want one set of genetics and for the mycelium to be of the thick ropey rhizomorphic type. the fluffy cottony type is called tomentose.. the rhizomorphic is wanted because that is what helps create the mycelium network and the ends of the strands turn into hypheal knots and those turn into primordia, and those in turn, into pins and pins grow up to be mature fruits (mushrooms). so for this first transfer, look for a small section of rhizomorph to transfer to a new agar dish.. you don't need a lot, just a tiny square a few mm wide. you can take a few samples from a few places in this initial agar dish, even if you don't have any rhizomorphic mycelium yet developed, it should develop later on... so take a few small transfers to new agar dishes and let those grow out... this process is repeated several times until you get a very even sample that's uniformly rhizomorphic and also fast growing.. there are several hundreds of guides on this.. once you have it at the proper stage, you can do more transfers to clone it out to create more agar to use for spawn as you'll want to keep a master sample or samples rather than using it up in one go after doing all that work.. storing a cloned sample of it on a slant or agar dish in a refrigerator for up to a year (do not freeze it, keep it in the upper 30's and let it come up to room temp for a bit before using it) is a good safety practice as well.. tho it all depends on your usage. cheers!
@@Sgtspork Wow- thank you for this detailed explanation- you personify why I love this community of like-minded folks!
Trichoderma can take 2 weeks to show up do NOT count your ducks yet broski
@@jakelooter5139 lmao true sometimes, also you can shake grain spawn or jars at 30-40% colonization time and see if it recovers fast or not
Sounds like your doubling exposure to contamination by increasing the amount of steps you take. Inoculated substrate can just be thrown out. No biggie. Using agar requires more equipment, flow hood ect. I would rather just re-sterilise the substrate and start again.
Agar doesn't require a flow hood. You can use a still air box just fine and you need that anyway. Spores straight to grain was debunked years ago, since it's much more likely to contaminate, in comparison to using clean mycelium from agar.
This is just nonsense. Never inoculate straight to substrate. You'll be growing mold, not mushrooms.
Won’t the spores compete also in Petri dish ?
yes - this is why you need to isolate a monoculture 👍
100% good cultures and genetics will be the final factor in a good yield no matter how good your substrate and grains are.
Not really. It certainly helps but without clean mycelium and attention to substrate and grain, yields aren't magically better just through genetics.
@@ZenAndPsychedelicHealingCenter they 100% are better because of genetics. You can have perfect grain and sub and get a shit Yeild if your genetics aren't good. Genetics are the final factor in Yeild 100% of the time.
I love you Gary! 😍
Would have been nice if someone explained this before I wasted $100 trying to get this shit to work
Sure germinate spores on agar but put the whole piece of agar to grain , fruit and clone from best the mushrooms. Isolating from agar really doesn't make sense. All you can tell is how the mycelium is growing on agar, fruiting them all in the same tote , then observing , and then clone and spore print.
After a lot of growing the best method to me is growing out from a spore syringe, then selecting a great mushroom and cloning that to agar and make a liquid culture from that mycelium.
I go spores to substrates and it works well
Commercially? As in hundreds of pounds per week?
@@LongDefiant LOL
I am sure then that you are selecting for optimal genetic characteristics. no seriously you are pitting genetics against each other it works but if you had more skill and experience you would easily isolate a culture first and then use that to inoculate media.
its agar not ahhgar
That's all good for the advanced hobbyist. However, those trying their hand at growing are going to be intimidated at having to do agar plates and needing a super clean environment and the expenses tied into that. I agree, he is correct. However, those just seeing if this is anything they might want to get into. Well, it's not what they need to hear. Hobbyist outnumber commercial growers and eventually a percentage of those hobbyist become extremely knowledgeable. They'll be the ones opening new doors into the Mycelium World.
There is no real expense. Agar can be bought for about $4 and that's enough to make many plates. The only other expense is for a kitchen hand held flamer - about $8 and a still air box. So, for around $20, you have everything you need to grow clean mycelium on agar.
I did spore to grain my first time and I waited 2 months and nothing happened. Waste of life
4:45 video starts
Auger?Agar!
To much information that is off topic
Video starts at 4:45 thank me later
thanks! (later)
next time pls, it would be nicer to have your life explaination AFTER the actual content and not the other way around
Interesting topic tho
Took to long to get to the info. Lost me
you can get all the info from the title - the rest is just my opinion and train of thought to get to the conclusion. you maybe should stick to to tiktok where videos are limited to 15/30 seconds here is our page - vm.tiktok.com/TTPdBHLrTT/
@@FreshfromtheFarmFungi lol this is such a bad response to more than one third of a 12 minute video being about anything but the topic people came to it for, you make this guy seem so much more unreasonable than he is
I made it to 4:36 and decided I better unsub
Don't like clickbait long intros
Not an intro just one take video of my thoughts - if you want shorter content check out my tiktok vm.tiktok.com/TTPdS444Nq/
Anyone here from Rhode Island?
Wow that view!
I keep a collection of my favorite sunsets.
Feel free to do this more please!