Product Name:
Mycology 101 Kit: Grow Mushrooms Easily with Free Classes shops Get everything you need to easily grow mushrooms at home!
This class will teach you how to take spores or cultures and turn them into mushrooms!
This is a comprehensive intro to mycology as a science and practice. We will cover fungal biology that helps truly understand this kingdom in new and novel ways. Whether you are simply myco-curious, a hobbiest mushroom grower, a researcher looking for new inspiration or work with fungi as a material, art form, etc — this course is for you.
We will go beyond the grow kit. We won't just fruit mushrooms. We will discuss the fascinating biology behind these cryptic beings and how to work with them.
We'll learn to to grow Bioluminescent mushrooms, living mushroom sculptures, and edible mushrooms. The class is made for beginners but lends its value to intermediate and even advanced cultivators. We will go over basic techniques for growing most fungi, identify full circle cultivation needs, discuss novel applications, and pose compelling questions.
Growing mushrooms can be easy, and this kit has all you need to accomplish that!
Instructor: Lera Niemackl
Mycology Basics
Day 1: Most of day one will be cover the fundamentals of fungal biology. What is a fungus? How are we similar? How are we different? Big questions, interesting answers. This will be followed by a demo for how to start fungal cultures from wild mushrooms, store bought mushrooms, spores, or purchased cultures.
Sterile technique and making a clean space
Vectors of contamination
Making agar plates
Cloning and propagating fungus
How to store cultures for the long term
How to Grow Mushrooms and Fungi
Day 2: Fungi and mushrooms respond readily to their environments. Today's class is going to be about various techniques you can use to influence the characteristics of your fungi.
Preparing sawdust brick substrates for inoculation
How to inoculate with grain spawn
Agar > grain spawn inoculations
An overview of alternative methods to growing fungi i.e. making liquid culture, sterilizing and pasteurizing substrate with a pressure cooker
Identifying and mitigating contamination
Becoming a Mycologist
Day 3: Where to go from here? Working with fungi for whatever purpose, especially beyond agriculture, is a new endeavor. We will discuss creative and precocious applications of fungi in the biotechnology world, and how you can participate at home. The demo will show best practices for how to move your sawdust bags into different vessels if you choose to fruit your mushrooms outside of the filter bags.
Long term storage of cultures and specimens
Makeshift fruiting chambers
Materials provided:
Dissection kit
Petri plates
MEA Agar with Kanamycin
Gloves
Glass bottle
Parafilm
Pre-sterilized grain spawn x4
Sawdust bricks x4
Filter bags x4
Masks
Zip ties
Liquid culture syringes including: Bioluminescent Panellus stipticus, Sculptural Ganoderma multipileum, and edible Pleurotus sp.
Materials NOT provided:
Isopropyl alcohol <70%
Paper towels shops
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