A man who speaks truth and common sense. If I may add, mycelium is a neural network, basically colony of neurons each can morph into a specific type to either explore for nutrients or absorb a nutrient rich source, (rhizomorphic vs. tomantose), beyond that there are many other "neural" functions that mycelium can perform, transmitting genetic code to transmitting vital enzymes and nutrients to a symbiotic partner, we, meaning most of us are only beginning to understand the power of mycelium and the way it interacts with the world around it. Personally, I love the process of cloning to petri dishes then cleaning up the subsequent transfers to isolate contaminate free plates. My problem is I generate way too many plates and subsequently I now have 9 tubs all colonized and the first is fruiting 12 days from putting substrate, those are the genetics you want, and a good problem to have
Would you say its really random stab in the dark really as gene transfer expression is a constant back forth. And really Isolation on a dish is like standing over group of people and grabbing some and being confused when children don't replicate the parents.
I think there is a real danger of the community losing valuable genetics because so many choose what they think is the fastest and strongest growth. The Penis Envy strain for example wouldn't exist if everyone thought this way, as it was originally developed from a mutation and doesn't necessarily grow quicker or stronger than some other varieties. In other words, fastest isn't necessarily the best or the only factor that people should value in any given mycelium culture.
Definitely. In the wild in terms of pure propagation, faster is often better but as gourmet cultivators taste is the top priority. And the tastiest fruits often take the longest to mature.
I fell all the way down the agar and LFH rabbit hole. I bought a ll the stuff and studied hard. My first grow was terrible. I was overwhelmed with all these possible problems and controlling the environment, etc. I hope more newbies get this kind of info early. It will save a lot of time and money. Thanks!
I'm currently starting with agar and failing a lot, but I instantly loved working with it and I'm enjoying the process of trial and error. Despite numerous failures, it has helped me in diagnosing the reason for contamination and also in developing sterile technique. Agar is obviously more long term but I believe will pay off in regards to both success and acquiring new skills.
I started with pf, started making my own spore syringes after first harvest. I've been happy. I eventually switched to bulk, still using multi spore. Have thought about agar, but if it's not broken, don't fix it. I'm no mycologist, but have been playing around over 10yrs on and off.
@6:36 - This is the second time I have watched this video according to my history. Something just clicked and the entire video became some of the most useful information I have in my knowledge basket. Well done!
so far you *are* actually my favorite. there's not as much flash as some of the other videos i've seen, but your tendency to focus on sterile tech and other nuances of how you operate in the SAB are top tier. i'll take great info over flashy production any day, not to detract from the quality of your videos either, they're still great.
Great video, I see so many people focusing on selecting for rizo growth when in fact it does not matter. Most of my best genetics are tomentos and are not picture perfect. Thanks again!!
Great video man! I'm finding some of the best information has come from super passionate people that may not have a lot of subscribers. You definitely deserve more!
Thank you Razor, my original channel started in June and grew to over 3k subs by October. Then I got three strikes all of a sudden on that channel so I restarted here. Thankfully some of the hard work is starting to pay off as my videos are starting to get views again 💜 thanks for commenting and being here!
100% agree. Every print or swab I get I make a syringe and inoculate a couple pf cakes. from those I clone my top three mushrooms of each strain onto agar for continued grain and coir tests. always get best genetics and still have most of the print in storage
"Still have most of the print in storage" Thing is, as soon as a mushroom sporelates again and drops spores, you are now left with another multispore spore print. It is not a single genetic inside those spores, it is millions. Only way to continue actual genetics is by using a piece of mycelium or mushroom for transfers.
Such a great video! I have been thinking a lot about this and it really makes sense to me. I was thinking about the 'lottery' part of MSS and was thinking that going MSS to spawn gives you that lottery, but it's limited because of proximity i.e. a germinating spore has to wait for aother spore in it's immediate area to germinate and reach it for reproduction (I'm sure I'm using incorrect terms). This all made me think, if you have a MSS that you know is clean, would going MSS to LC provide more opportunity for more spores to combine and create a larger # of spores that pair up, increasiing the # of opportunities for the lottery to come through with what you are looking for? Would love to hear your take.
I generally don’t recommend MSS to LC, but it is certainly possible and ppl have done it many times. I can only recommend it as an experiment. I find with a clean fresh syringe, you can get loads of germination going straight to brf or even grain so I never felt the need to go the LC route with its added risks. A great way to find good genetics is to noc up a bunch of brf cakes with a syringe, as each cake will have different genetics and thus is a quick way to find the golden one so to speak!
Ben's Tek was my first succesful spawn to bulk... I think as long as you do the hot needle air exchange holes with micropore tape and less than 0.5cc of LC I made from multi spore was the best way to get into it. I prefer lc with bens Tek for the faster colonization. There's also it's sister Tek for lc, the Capri Sun Tek
I find your videos to the most informative than any other, hats off to you and your mush knowledge. You should write some books, come the day these are all accepted
I doubt people will read this, but I started from MSS to agar. I purposely isolated ryzo and put it to corn. I found that the fruits had almost no flavonoids. I made a syringe from an 3rd gen agar plate and put it to brown rice. The tube looks 120% different than the corn tubs. It's got puffy little blobs all over which the other corn did not. The other corn had ryzo and took forever to pin. I don't have updates on the brown rice tubs yet.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHH I was WONDERING why my Lc was Rhizomy in one grain jar and Tomantose in another jar! I didn't even know what the names were but now I do! One jar was popcorn, one was a mix of popcorn, rice and wheat, same LC. THAT is SO COOL! I even took a few grains from each to start separate experiments on agar. HA! Laugh's on me... It's all the same! fun fun fun FUN thank you.
Also, I mostly really wanna grow my mushrooms in shoes, skulls, statues, dolls, car parts, ...etc. The less fussy I am with the growing method, the more ARTSY I can be.
I'm new at this . I'v got a few jars going . I'm working on a glovebox atm . I use popcorn and it seems to be doing well . I also made 2 small jars with cracked corn . Both look good and doing about the same . your Videos are very helpful . Thank you . BTW I started 3 weeks ago .
I did broke boi tek for my first grow got two shoeboxes to fruit twice before contaming out. Got 2 ozs dry total. Didn't get trich, not sure what the contam was it just started smelling bad, probably bacteria from dunking and not getting all the water out.
Hey man, thanks for this well needed vid! I totally agree about the fetishisation of agar, for having fallen for it myself a little at the start of my journey. Got a clearer understanding of how things work now, and this vid helps formalise these concepts I've learned with time. Now about transfers.. focusing on rhizo means nothing when done from a random multi spore, I get that. But as you start narrowing down genetics, via cloning or your own prints, at some point you will need to transfer to new plates right? Either to clean up from contam, or just to duplicate.. And at that point, it does make sense to go for nice aggressive rhizo over tomentose, just in order to get a faster myc expansion of you known genetics.. would you say that's a correct formulation?
It depends. You may be isolating faster mycelium but less potent fruits (usually slower growers are more potent). But the speed of the mycelium colonizing also does not always correlate with faster fruiting times as well. Really depends.
Thanks, I see what you mean. Likewise I don’t tend to clone or print first growers, because of what you said. I’d rather wait for stronger fruits. So this might extend to choosing slow myc over fast.. depending on correlation... Tricky one to find out!
Brilliant video, I'm back to growing after 3 years break and feeling like novice again, which is rather nice going through all this process again and learn new things so thank you for sharing again. There is another question which intrigues me, what if mycelium is fully taking over contamination in petri dish? Is it safe to use? I believe in nature such a battle is on daily basis.
Thanks for the comment Dariusz, mycelium will always lose in the end, at least with the species we’re talking about. It can work in nature because there are many more factors that balance each other out, versus just the isolated mycelium versus a contam.
@@Mycophilia this question was born when I have forgotten to mark contamination on agar plates and I have left it for another few days, when I have comeback to that the only I could see was healthy, white beautiful mycelium, couldn't see contamination anywhere, probably was hidden somewhere underneath waiting for opportunity to spread on substrate? Anyway thank you for your great job and contribution to community.
I just get fully colonized agar plates cut them into pieces and put them in grain jars and shake I don’t really care about all the lab stuff, it works fast is all I care about.
Okay, I'm new to the hobby myself and although this video absolutely helped it does seem to race a few questions. At least for me it does. So since coir has very little to no nutrition the riseomorphic growth is basically the fungal entity rapidly trying to find a new source of food. So then the only point of the coir being to spawn as many fruiting bodies as possible. Well if that's the case isn't the fungal body just using all of the energy it got from say, the grain, to rapidly expand through an area with no nutrition in search of another area with the nutrition that it needed? Wouldn't that just cause a bunch of fruiting bodies that in fact had less nutrition in each than and fungal body that was allowed to fully colonized an entire container with just grain? It seems to me that entire box of just grain the size of a bulk spawn would you
There are definitely some nerds who want to feel cool playing with their super special toys (that energy is a big part of what steers me away from the message boards), but there is more to it. I know you know that already and you're trying to make a point to make all of our lives better and I think you're a really great guy for that, but personally I'm not going to judge someone writing off multispore after their first agar plate from a spore syringe showed them a ton of bacteria. The contamination anxiety is real, and some people probably get it worse than others, I think there's probably just as much obsessive compulsive hijinx going on in the hobby as there is egocentric mad scientist behavior. Also, I don't think everyone is just trying to isolate rhizomorphic because it's "better." I think some people just isolate for uniformity whether it's rhizomorphic, tomentose, or whatever, just to be sure that they've isolated something that's going to grow uniformly. Ultimately though, you're right, you're always going to be rolling the dice once way or another when you go from plate to bulk, and just because it grew uniformly on agar, you don't know that it's going to do well or not. Yeah, I guess I see where you're coming from ^^;
Firstly, thanks for the video😊 Secondly, 5:03 idk about the genetics conservation part but I am pretty sure people would use the petri dishes to ensure they have a pure sample to innoculate spawn next time. Right?
Like if a mold or bacteria grew in your plate then you would not want to use that to grow with, correct? I wonder if one could then loop the mycelium that looks clean in the dish, and see if that sample is contained?
Those are bad syringes, I never get contams from those I have produced (from my own spore prints). I have had plenty of terrible syringes as well, from bad vendors.
@9:00 - Passionate - Dude, that's usually the people that I listen to the most. The ones with passion for a particular hobby. So MSS to grain tops MSS to agar in the long run?
They're both good, but the point I wanted to make in this particular video about multispore syringes is that they can still be a viable option, and should not be totally shunned and looked over as I had been seeing at the time I made this video.
So start from spores, grow that out, clone fruit, grow the clone out, do this about 5-5 times, then take a spore print. If I eventually want a monoculture, where in this process would I do that?
@@Mycophilia idk,I’ve been growing for a few years, but never gotten a monoculture before. I’m probably wrong because I don’t know much about how genetics and all that part of growing work, but if I took the clone of the fruit I want, and cloned it and got a monoculture of that, and if I fruited that out and liked what I got, wouldn’t ever mushroom in the flush be pretty similar to size and speed and such
I am new and understand little. If it was more detailed and explained every term. What is PF plates/cakes, riz, tomentors etc., You think the newbie can understand you.
There are so many people out there insisting that if you get rhizo growth(on some agar formulation completely unrelated to your grains) then it will carry on with that morphology in grains and colonize faster. I just can’t believe that, because the morphology is in response to nutrient availability… seems like they’re wasting time making agar art projects.
I do think there is value in isolating a strong monoculture from spores on agar. If you inoculate a plate and see multiple monocultures from germination, they’re all on the same nutrient diet so it’s reasonable to assume that one growing twice as fast as another will indeed grow twice as fast on another media like grain. The only thing that you absolutely can’t isolate and predict for on agar is what the actual fruiting bodies will look like. The other phenotype traits like contam resistance, growth rate etc all can be reliably tested on agar
Agar art projects are just that. Art projects. And that’s great if that’s what anyone is into, but I take issue when some start correlating it to fruiting performance.
Yes you can test for those features on agar, but you will never know if it will thrive in fruiting conditions outside agar. For example, some genetics will do better in bags than tubs.
@@Mycophilia absolutely. once you reach fruiting and the atmospheric conditions come into play(sub compaction, total FAE, etc) there’s no way to know. I was speaking more to just identifying relative-to-others growth rate. But as we know, speed isn’t the name of the game here. Look at PE - bred to grow slow and become more potent. I wonder how many potential potent genetics we are never going to have due people making these invalid assumptions and prioritizing speed only. And as for people “showing off” their agar art, it’s definitely silly and all it’s showing is that they’re using a low nutrient agar lol. Thank you for making this video, I link people to it who make the argument for rhizo chasing.
Your talk really is big because dedicated rooms, isolation, spores, the list goes on and on its insane and overwhelms practical simple info and its not even better info. still air box, pf tek, simple air filter still air room for hobby. I think profit production mindsets seem to overwhelm every hobby.
Where did you learn that corn has no nutritional value? Corn contains certain B vitamins and vitamin C, as well as magnesium and potassium. Yellow corn is also a good source of two antioxidants, zeaxanthin and lutein. That's just for human consumption too. It has plenty of nutritional value especially to mycelium. That's why it has more rapid growth on corn & less contaminations.
When did I say corn has no nutritional value? I said it has less nutrition compared to other grains. Corn appears to have quicker growth because there’s basically a lot less surface area to colonize versus other grains which have more than double the surface area. Meaning more mycelium, meaning more inoculation points. As for contaminations, I don’t have any issues with contaminations once grains are PC’ed. PC for 3 hours kills just about everything, unless you have a really dirty batch of oats. Popcorn is also made for human consumption rather than as animal feed, so they’re basically cleaner out of the bag, but it doesn’t matter much if you have a PC.
