From the left to the right (in the attached photo): two jars of Pleurotus ostreatus spores (now mycelium) growing in grain, two jars of P. ostreatus liquid culture cloned from agar, and two jars of Pleurotus pulmonarius liquid culture cloned from agar.

I also have five agar plates I inoculated with a different collection of P. ostreatus spores, but there’s no visible growth yet–so I’ll leave those out.

The P. pulmonarius was cloned from a fruiting body growing on a commercial grower’s spent block that was salvaged from their waste pile. It’s actually a pretty happy, and fast-growing variety. It seems that it hasn’t reached senescence yet.

The P. ostreatus LC was cloned from a several-generations old sample that was initially from a liquid culture bought through amazon. It hasn’t performed super well–which is why I’ve taken it to spore in two different experiments. I may end up disposing of this LC, but I’ll probably store it in the fridge while I work on isolating some new strains from the spore experiments. Hopefully I’ll win the P. ostreatus lottery…

All of this is just done in a simple Still Air Box, it’s just a hobby for now. Some day I want to assemble a proper lab with a FFU/LFH, but that day is not today!

Anyone else culturing anything fun?

  • SalamanderMEnglish
    3•1 year ago

    Some day I want to assemble a proper lab with a FFU/LFH

    Same. I even bought some of the parts to build it, but I don’t know where I would put it. I am waiting until I move into a larger space where I can have a dedicated mushroom lab area.

    By now I am quite comfortable using the SAB and I have very low contamination rates with it, so I am not sure that the investment is even worth it. But I would like to try anyway - maybe it is much more comfortable to work with it.

    At the moment I have a few blocks of Lion’s Mane and King Oyster. I am running an experiment trying to see if I can germinate Boletus edulis spores collected from a dried mushroom from the supermarket. I recently ordered a new cordyceps culture because my culture degenerated. I also ordered a Reishi and a bioluminescent species.

    • @lightingnerdOPEnglish
      3•1 year ago

      Nice! Yeah, I mostly want it for convenience of working with agar–but the need just isn’t there yet. I’m considering a redneck version using one of the 4" thick MERV 12 filters, which are rated to filter 0.3um particles, just not 99.99% of them. I know for a fact it would be much better than my SAB in terms of contamination risk, and I’m considering building my own wooden impeller fan, so if I can scrap an old high RPM motor–I may be able to finagle a basic FFU together for under $50.

      • SalamanderMEnglish
        2•1 year ago

        Cool! Looks like you’ve done your research :-)

        I still haven’t done a deep dive into it, but from the little I did read about flowhood design I understand that one needs to get some numbers right in the design to achieve the correct laminar flow. Do you happen to have a favorite resource on how to build a flowhood? Or are you creating your own design based on what you learned from multiple sources? If you do have a resource you can recommend, I’d love to look at it!