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By Mush Zombie · Posted
Welcome to the updated version of my tek "Easy Agar dishes." In this tek we will be making no pour agar dishes with Ball elite half pint wide mouth canning jars, and will be taking out several required time consuming steps of making regular petri dishes for agar work. People who do not have a flow hood and find pouring petri dishes inside of a glovebox to be a bit cumbersome will also appreciate this tek. The main reason why I like no pour agar dishes is simply the ease of use, and reliability that the mason jar provides. My PDA recipe will also ensure that you have an excellent medium for your mycelium to thrive and grow on, and also be stored on for up to 6 months at 35-40 degrees Fahrenheit. **If you are just looking for my PDA recipe it is all the way at the bottom.** Things you will need before we begin: Half pint wide mouth canning jars (ball elite collection series) USPS priority mail tyvek envelope (or equivalent for a filter disk) Drill or nail for making a hole in the mason jar lid 200g of raw unpeeled potatoes Karo light corn syrup Agar-Agar powder Cheesecloth (or suitable filter material) Marker or Pen Scissors or utility knife Pot for Boiling water Gram Scale for Weighing Agar Powder The most important thing you will need in this tek are the half pint wide mouth canning jars. These provide a lot of room for the mycelium to grow outwards, and are certainly superior to using regular jars. These are a little larger than most petri dishes that are recommended for the same purpose. Step One: Agar Dish Lid and Tyvek Filter Preparation The first thing we are going to do is prepare our lids, and filters. It is very important that the mycelium to have gas exchange during its life cycle. Your filter plays a critical part in keeping contaminants out while allowing the mycelium to breath. This filter is free at the United States Postal Service. They will even deliver them to your front door if you order them on their website. You can't really beat free. First, drill or nail a hole in the metal lids right in the center. You can add a self healing injection port (on top of the tyvek not on the metal lid) made out of regular silicone or red high temperature RTV silicone, whichever you prefer, if you want to. I will not be injecting spores or culture into these, so I am not making a SHIP in this tutorial. Next, make your filter disks by using one of the jar lids and your maker to make a circle on the tyvek envelope, and cut out the circle with your scissors. STEP TWO: Potato Infusion Preparation Slice about 200 grams of potatoes, leaving the skin on, and boil the sliced potatoes for 30 minutes, in one quart (liter) of water. You can use tap water or distilled water. The choice is yours. I used distilled water to boil the potatoes. Once the 30 minutes is up, stir the potatoes around in the water, and add a little if necessary. We want to get all the potato juice out of this. Strain your potato juice through cheesecloth (you can get this at walmart in the arts and crafts section. It is very cheap and works great for filtering stuff). Now we have our potato infusion with the chunks filtered out. Pour this potato infusion into a quart jar, and replace any lost water so that you have one quart of potato infusion. Add two tablespoons (about 30ml) of Karo light korn syrup (or equivalent) to the potato infusion. Mix this very well for at least 30 seconds. STEP THREE: Creation of Potato Dextrose Agar There are a couple of ways you could do this, but I'm going to show you the way I do it, and I have found over the years that this is the most accurate way, which also provides the most consistent results. With your gram scale measure 1g of agar powder, and pour it in you agar dish. Do this for each dish you are going to prepare. Pour 50ml of your potato infusion into each dish Put your lid and filter disk on, and secure the ring tightly. Pressure cook these dishes for 15 minutes at 15 PSI. You can also put a lid on your quart of potato infusion that does not have a hole in it and pressure cook the potato infusion to store it for later use. ***Allow the agar dishes to cool over night or until the pressure cooker is completely cool, so as to avoid any condensation build up.*** PAY VERY CLOSE ATTENTION to how much water I have in this pressure cooker. It only comes up to just below the insert that the dishes are sitting on. You do not want or need excess water that is touching these agar dishes. Again, let the agar dishes cool in the pressure cooker overnight or until the pressure cooker is completely cooled to avoid any condensation. I hope that you find this tek as useful as I do. Here is my actual agar recipe for anyone that just wants to use my PDA: Boil 200g sliced unpeeled potatoes for 30 minutes in 1 quart (liter) of distilled water Filter potato infusion with cheesecloth into quart jar, add water until you have 1 quart (liter) of potato infusion Add two tablespoons (about 30ml) of karo light corn syrup Add 20g agar agar powder pressure cook for 15 minutes at 15 psi allow to cool but not solidify, and pour into petri dishes. -
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By Furthur · Posted
How im sorta feeling this morning How im dealing with it Any questions, hahaha -
By LaughingBudda · Posted
My first try my jars didn't colonize for 6 weeks. All kinds of things went wrong. I tucked them away, bought 12 more jars from another source and THOSE FLEW! By the time I had 3 flushes my original 3 jars finally colonized and I added them to the fruiting chamber. My new motto is, if I see no growth, set em somewhere and forget about them because you just never know. Sent from my 2PS64 using Tapatalk -
By phishphan · Posted
Great find Tump. I'll never look at Dog Vomit Slime Mold in my mulch the same way again. It certainly seems like it has an ability to sense coming environmental changes and adapt to it. Amazing
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