how does everybody prep,take,dry, and store their prints?

[xxcportxx]

Since there is more than one way to skin a cat ..... figured would ask how everybody preps to take a print, how they take it ....on foil or paper? ........... in a glove box? in a jar? or just out in the open? , how they dry it or if they dry it, and how they eventually store the print? .......and it would also be cool if they tell if they go back to their prints to make MS or agar and if they have a low contam rate or a high contam rate? there are so many teks out there that just wanted to see whats popular and what works

[TastyBeverage]

Lucky for you, we have a whole section of the vaults about printing!

http://forums.mycotopia.net/mushroom...hroom-biology/

[xxcportxx]

yeah spend a hour or more a day in the vaults....... on a few dif sites...... just wanted imput from sucessful people on this site operated with their print taking..... if they do out in the open.... and what not...... you can always afford to learn something but never afford a mistake

[TastyBeverage]

Well, all of the threads in the vaults are written by members of this site, and the threads were vaulted because they showed good examples of how to do the thing in question. Are you looking for a sort of Cliff Notes or bullet points on the process?

I guess if i had one tip about printing it would be this: print on foil. Spores can germinate on paper (it is wood fiber after all) which will then shorten their viable life span.

[Om shanti]

I realize this is probably a bit of a confusing read, sorry about that. but here goes. I made a lot of Pan. cambodgiensis prints a few weeks ago and also surveyed the different printing teks before and while doing it. I've been testing some of the prints and am still gathering results (from some of the others growing these now), so I hope to be able to evaluate my printing procedure.. so I also think this is a very interesting subject.

I don't have any hard 'n' smart conclusions to present, this is just a description of what I did and my thoughts on it. If I had had a big lab and a few employees I would have tested prints in the thousands, but alas... not so

All prints were made on alu foil, which for the ones that were folded (closed) was folded before baking in the oven for one hour at around 200 degree C. All pieces of foil were cut out before this, except for the pieces used for the 'unsterile' batch. All were taken inside a glovebox without attached gloves, meaning it's not 100% closed. I wore latex gloves and put a tiny bit of lysol on these and instruments (scissor etc) now and then.

The 'unsterile' batch was made like this: Collect shrooms for printing into glovebox. Open container with large piece of foil. Now cut and place the caps of about 20-30 shrooms. Close container and leave for 24 hours. Remove caps. Dry for 24 hours. Cut out prints and place in ziplock bags. All movements inside glovebox. I am not saying this couldn't be done in a sterile way, since it's the way many do it.. I was just less sure of it, that's why I call it 'unsterile'.

The more 'sterile' batches.. most on folded alu foil (I find that safer, but for the first time I made some on open foil as well).
Bring 4-6 shrooms inside glovebox. lightly clean gloves and instruments with lysol. Now place 1 piece of foil in clean petri dish, cut cap here and close the dish. Repeat for all shrooms. In some other batches I did two caps per petri dish. Drying etc is the same.

I've made a test of 7 prints... (should have been more but I was short of jars + in one case accidentally pushed a jar of syringe solution on the floor) the results are described below.. (from a mail I sent to recipients of the prints) It's of course just some probability score of what the likely contents of the prints are.. but the details of the score are not really known of course - jars that turned out good could have been made from prints that also contained bad stuff, etc... the bad stuff could have come originated somewhere else than on the print (for instance bad syringe making tek), etc..

The test is finished. Most jars have been fully colonized for a long time, but now the slowest ones also finished. I have tested 3 closed and 3 open prints, from the batches I have sent prints to you from, as well as one print that was already deemed unsterile before hand. The procedure for making the 6 'good' prints was practically the same, though I was a bit more unsure of the open ones because I never did them before, but I have thought of them as identical for testing purposes. I was short of jars so I tested most prints in only one jar, some in two.

The jar inoculated from the unsterile print got some black goo after about 1 week. It may or may not have been Black pin mold but it didn't look like later cases. This is not really relevant for you of course since I didn't send any of these prints out.

One jar inoculated from a closed print caught Black pin mold . In this case it seems there is no compelling guilty verdict for the print since the mold looks like it crept in from the vermiculite layer (http://forums.mycotopia.net/fungi-gr...ck-plague.html (The black plague)). Another jar inoculated from the same print also colonized slowly, but there was no contamination.

One jar inoculated from an open print have just caught something that looks like Black pin mold on top of white myc. The infection is very small compared to the one shown above, but it's obviously no good anyway and has to go. Unlike the jar mentioned above, this infection appeared in the middle of the jar, not at the top. So it appears likely it came from the print. Unfortunately, the print was not tested on other jars.

My personal tentative conclusion is that this means, that out of the 6 'good' prints, there is one bad print with a high likelihood. Mostly, the prints should be fine, but some most likely are not.

I'd much appreciate it if you let me know the results when you use the prints. I never made this many prints from one harvest before so it's a learning experience for me. So far, one grow from these prints by one of you is going according to plan (now past jar stage).

I am going to learn agar as my next project in this hobby and hope that will give me some better knowledge about the extent of sterility measures needed for good prints. It's not that I'm planning on going in to the printing business, it's just that mold spores are just the kind of thing a neurotic geek like me can get obsessed with.

I've used the method outlined under the 'sterile' approach to make two much smaller batches of cubensis prints, of which I haven't seen or heard of any contaminations in.

One trick I will use another time, that I only recently learned of, here on mycotopia, is that you should allow the print to drop spores for a few hours, then remove the foil and only then take the proper print. That should take care of whatever mold spores may have been sitting under the cap.

[xxcportxx]

well tasty if a person wanted cliff notes they wouldnt go to you now would they...... nobody was asking how to take a spore print..... but which way the perfer too and if they've had success with a method and failure with another...... if you would like to know my foaf " carries the cap by a safty pin to a glove box after clean with bleach..... he sprays no lysol in the box for prints..... he wipes the top of the cap with iodine or a weak bleach solution....... then he cuts a circle of tin foil to go into the bottom of a 4oz jelly jar....... he puts the cap into the jar and then puts clean cotton ontop of the cap to wick away moisture so the spores will drop.....since he takes two or three prints of the same cap he changes the cotton out each time..... he labels them 1 or 2 or sometimes if the second is really dark then 3 for the 3rd...... 1 being a poss contam..... 2 being normal same as 3......... he's never really had trouble but with spores not from a sponser he starts on agar and moves away from contam if there is one....... then onto a sadwhich of peroxidated agar.......... thats the way I perfer to make a spore print and have little failure doing so......... so in an essense Tasty one could understand how your reputation has be disabled since you radiate negative vibes in your post....... and you assume that you know more than everyone here and that also you speak for them......... and if you do then cool...... but just in case one would like it if you didnt post any info on cports thread as he needs no help from you .......... and one would like to think you om shanti for your imput that was exactly what one was looking for ...... om shanti you are a real topian......thanks om shanti

[TastyBeverage]

Woah there, cowboy! I wasn't sassing you, i was seriously asking you if you wanted some bullet points. Some people want a long process spelled out for them, some want... bullet points. Calm down and real in your attitude.

[xxcportxx]

one didnt insult you but this " Are you looking for a sort of Cliff Notes or bullet points on the process? " is insulting..... and btw one doesnt care if you take rep points off..... he is here to learn not win a popularity contest..... one doesnt mind the fact that you think one insulted you but he didnt.... he just informed you not to type on his thread again..... which tasty you did anyways..... and who cares its hippies site not yours...... if he thinks one insulted you next time let him take rep points.....

[Umbo]

Seriously Cport??
That reply was pretty rude, IMO.
Seemed to me Tasty was trying to
help, pointing you to the vaults
in case you didnt know about them.
You like to shoot yourself in the foot?
Thats all your doin with comments like
that bro.
now where were we?

[TastyBeverage]

OK, the first time i wasn't trying to be rude and the 2nd time i was actually trying to be nice. If you're going to fly off the handle and start slinging some pretty nasty insults over a totally innocent remark from a moderator, then you're obviously not going to add anything useful to our community.

I don't need to bother with rep points, i'm just gonna ban ya.