In order to grow a species of fungi you need to source the mycelium of a strain that will reliably fruit if grown in the right conditions. The mycelium has to be cultured in a form that can be worked with depending on the techniques involved. The standard practice of cultural fungi using sterile/aseptic culture techniques involve the preparation of agar media. Liquid culture techniques have become much more widely used and accessible in the past few years and has several advantages over agar media. For some species low tech methods of culturing fungi can be applied such as using cardboard, however this has limitations and is best to be considered as a method of creating spawn.
Liquid Culture
Since the development of the DIY airport lid in 2005 the many beneifits of liquid culture have become readily accessible for the home grower. These are some of the advantages…
Preparing Agar Media
The follow example details the process of making 1 litre of Potato Dextrose Agar (PDA) as this is the most accessible method. You will need to adjust the quantities depending…
Creating a New Strain
You may want to experiment in creating a new strain of a given species. This will require initiating sexual reproduction by germinating spores. If you intend to create a sterile…
Cardboard Spawn
You can culture some species of fungi by simply “running” the mycelium on cardboard. Oyster (varieties of the genus Pluerotus), King Stropharia, Wood Blewitt, Nameko among others are amenable to…
Taking a Spore Print
There are two main reasons for making a spore print; to identify the species of a particular fungus; or, to capture the spores for purpose of propagation in order to…
Cloning a Mushroom Strain
In the same way to can clone a mushroom onto agar you can culture directly into liquid culture from a fresh fruitbody, In short you are making a biopsy of…
Agar Media
The first stage of mushroom cultivation involves culturing a strain of the fungus you want to grow onto a medium that will allow for reliable expansion of the mycellium. Making…
