Agar plates to Syringes?

[joystik]

Hello fellow Topians. I have some fully colonized agar plates that i want to use to noc up some WBS, but i dont want to risk contaminating it by opening the jars.So i was planning to use the micelium in syringes and injecting it through the tyvek filters.

I would like some advice on how to do this the safest way possible. I mean i have only a glovebox to work with and the plates seem free of contams. I have 14 Qt jars ready from last night.

Thx for the input.

Joy.

[Hippie3]

draw up some sterile water into sterile syringe
working in sterile area open agar plate then
squirt on the water then stir it around the mycelia,
using the needle to scratch up the mycelia into a slurry
then draw it back up into the syringe.
one could alternatively cut out some tissue-covered agar squares
then toss those into a prepared jar of sterile water and numerous bits of broken glass.
screw on lid and shake well, the glass will shred it so you can fill syringes.
if your jar lid has two holes silicon'd over you could use my airport tek to draw syringes right from the sealed jar.

[the_chosen_one]

a 16 gauge needle is usually best either way. 18 gauge will work, but tends to clog more often.

[joystik]

ok, thank you both. doin this today.

[joystik]

I dont know if this is the right thread to post this but i wanted to show the results of this. i will post 1 bad pic now and some more later. The news is ALL 14 WBS jars completely colonized yesterday. Zero casualties!! Thats 7 days.

Thanks hippie3, i knew the tek, just needed the confidence of your advice.

BTW, this is my own wild columbian strain. It was picked in near Ibague, Colombia. I had to clean this print cause it was soo dirty.

We´ll see how well this one fruits.

Joy.

[Hippie3]

congrats
&
yer welcome

plz consider sending me a print of this new strain once it flushes,
i'd appreciate it.

[goldenteacher1163]

just curious, which tech did you decided to go with?
Good luck taming your specimen I have always thaught it would be interesting to do.

[joystik]

I used hippies tek. I used a sterile syringe with sterile water, poured it on the petri, used the needle to break the mycelium apart and suck it right back. 60 mL syringe.
I suggest to try not to break too much agar so it wont clump the needle. It happened to me a lot and it was a PITA. It was worth it though, all the jars worked out fine.

For the jars, I used WBS. Simmered, dried, 1% gypsum and 90 min PC. Put the wbs as dry as you can in the jars. I dry my wbs on newspaper. When it cools down, inoculate thru the injection port, in my case, thru the tyvek. Ill work on the injection ports on a later time.

Heres a pic of the orignal culture dish, after a few transfers. A few days before it fully colonized the plate. I used only 1 dish for the 14 jars and i have some LC left over which has been growing since in the Distilled water.

more pics later.

Joy

[joystik]

I know its been a while, just wanted to update on this grow.

Thanx again to Hippie3 for suggesting the initial micelium syringe tek used to colonize the WBS.

O so after all 14 Jars were successfully colonized I decided to do 2 different teks and try them out. I layed 2 trays of only WBS and one plastic container with WBS + Verm (REZ).

I shook 3 qt of WBS and used 2 Alum trays 6"x4", covered with foil and incubated for a couple of days. Pic 1 shows the tray in the FC already before casing layer was applied.

After a day in the FC, I added a light verm layer, about 1/2 inch. Misted and Left it therefor a few days. Pic 2 shows the casing after 3 days in the FC.

Pic 3 is day 4, Pic 4 is day 5, Pic 5 is day 6. Yo can see in the pic that it overlayed. I have a small electric fan inside the bin and I open the Lid twice a day. Humidity is ~90%, and i mist twice a day if needed. The fan runs for 5 mins every time i open the lid. Miniature knotting visible.

Pic 6 is day 7, you can begin to see knots clearly now. Pic 7 is just a Zoom at the knots.

Pic 8 is day 8 and shows first primordia and few pins forming.

Pic 9 shows the tray with some well formed pins today.

Pic 10 shows the REZ WBS tray 3 days after incubating. Already in the fruiting chamber.

I also used one of the trays for a small experiment. Explained in the next post.

[joystik]

Since the 2 trays overlayed, perhaps because of the high RH, I decided to stop spraying them, so the verm layer dried out a bit. Speaking to Eatyoualive he suggested i dunk it. I was a little reluctant because primordia were already forming, so i used only one tray. Pic 1 shows the tray before dunking.

So i decided to dunk it in tap water for about 3 hours. I let it drain and recased with a fine layer of vermiculite. You can see what the tray looks like today in pic 2.

I now wonder if it would be best to dunk and add the casing as soon as you see the knots forming, instead of waiting only a couple of days after the micelium fully colonizes the surface of the tray. We will know soon enough.

Thats it for now. Ill keep updating this thread daily if possible.

Peace.


Joy.

[Hippie3]

thx for updating
won't be long now.

[goldenteacher1163]

nice! everything looks great. Good job, looking forward to see what you end up with

good luck

[joystik]

Ok, I have some pics taken today from the above trays.

I also cased the Rez tray which showed early primordia. I used 100% coco coir, cause i forgot to paz some vermiculite.

No more talk, heres the pics.

[the_chosen_one]

nice pinset. nice work!

[joystik]

Todays pics. I think these pins are gonna end small mushies. Lets wait and see how this turns out. Coir tray is growing fine after the dunk. Im anxious to see how that one does.
I still have 9 more plates of different isolates waiting to fruit em.
I also put some tyvek on the holes now. I changed the old newspaper. I got a catalog from Fungi Perfecti, which came in a very useful envelope.
Pics.

[joystik]

Thing look really different today. I was impressed. I have to say that i have never grown so many mushrooms in one flush in the single tray. Although they are not as big as what I expected, the look really good.

I do have to say that, the tray with the vermiculite layer performed much better than the other one. That tray was also dunked for 3 hours just before pinning. The other tray was left to fruit as it was. It had the best primordia formation in the beginning, so I didnt wanna mess with it.

Ill have to repeat the experiment once more, just to be shure.

The coir casing looks fine, I can already see some pins breaking through the coir. I can also see some mycelia poking through. This casing is a WBS with REZ(verm). I really wanna see the pinset on this one.

Wish me Luck.

Thanks to all for viewing. I really love this hobby.

Joy.

PS. I picked all the shrooms on the first tray. It weighted 99.8 Grams. YAY!!

[Hippie3]

well done.

[joystik]

New pics. This time from the coir casing, since the other two were just harvested and dunked.

[joystik]

Hi ppl. I brought an update on the coir cased WBS Rez tray. I forgot to take pics for a couple days but I was a bit busy. I didnt touch the bin for the las 24 hours and I found a surprise today. All the shrooms on the tray were mature, sporulating all over.

I picked them all execept a single small one. Total weight 192 Grs wet. First flush. Heres the pics.

[Hippie3]

your columbians resemble the classic malabar veil.
taking prints for sharing with friends ?

[joystik]

8 caps in the printing board....

[joystik]

Originally Posted by Hippie3

plz consider sending me a print of this new strain once it flushes,
i'd appreciate it.

Did u ever get the print???

JoY.

[Hippie3]

i think so, seem to recall it.

[vinz]

beautiful grow joystik
love the look..

[joystik]

Thanks, i still got a few pics i never posted. Gonna post them as soon as I can.