Grow time is getting ever and ever closer. My spore syringes should arrive today. If not today, surely tomorrow.

I have almost everything I need already here at home. Just need to get two plastic clear snap/secure lid totes of appropriate size: One for fruiting chamber, one for inoculation chamber. Need a pack of latex gloves, some 70%+ (will try to find 90%+) isopropyl alcohol, spring water, brown rice flour, and perlite. My grandmother had a full case of 1/2 pint wide-mouth Kerr glass jars for canning with metal lids to give me. My uncle gave me a big thing of vermiculite. Just need perlite. Should be able to get everything else I need from friends having stuff laying around or other neighbors/family. I already have a good light source to stimulate in vitro pinning of the colonized jars from the Dollar Store. They have these $1 LED push lights that have 3 super bright "daylight" wavelength LEDs on them. Can be attached to the fruiting chamber and/or a shelf above the jars, only need 3AAA batteries and last forever on even cheapo batteries. Have lots of cheap AAA batteries from dollar store, too, as well as Energizer rechargeables. Mushrooms only need a small amount of light for a few minutes each day minimum, but for in vitro pinning the goal is to expose those 6 jars to constant light.

I plan to do 2 methods for my first attempt. I have 12 jars, so I plan to prepare substrate, sterilize, and inoculate all 12 with one syringe, grow 6 purely in vitro with Hippie’s "Neglect TEK", and them move the other 6 into the fruiting chamber after dunk and roll and birthing. This way, I should have SOME success one way or another. The in vitro grow jars will be left alone after I fully clean and sterilize the closet. The fruiting chamber will be placed somewhere else with better environment for free air exchanged (FAE). In vitro grow will have a lower yield, but that half will be ultra low maintenance and they will never be removed from the in vitro chamber apart from fanning jars after full colonization and pinning to provide for FAE, so there is much lower risk of contamination. Fruiting chamber may grow larger fruits with higher yield, but greater chance of contamination, so I feel splitting them 1/2 way will help the most. I’m only growing for personal use and for the enjoyment and the challenge, though, so whatever I get I will be happy with.

If I fail, I have another spore syringe to try again, and getting more is easy and cheap. I can also reuse everything I failed with after full sterilization for another try in the future. Until syringes get here I only know that one strain is B+: Famed for large fruits, tolerates nearly all climates, is very forgiving, and can grow successfully in vitro as well as in fruiting chamber. No idea what the other syringe will be just yet until it arrives.

For the last month I’ve been reading books, going to the library, doing research, watching videos, reading and searching online, and I am 95% certain I know what I’m about to get myself into.

Glass jars should arrive here before the month is out. This leaves me the full month of September with perfect temperatures for colonization and fruiting. Even October here, in the area I plan to grow in, will yield perfect stable temperatures for colonization and fruiting.

I’m excited. 🙂 Within 2 weeks I will have everything I need to begin. It also helps that I have always been a huge geek/book nerd and had a big mycology kick I went on in my younger days where I was obsessed with mycology. Even identified and picked and cooked some local edible mushrooms around here and took spore prints to help identify them, so I have a head start on a lot of this stuff.

Only trickier thing I may not do this time is to take spore prints from mature caps in sterile environment to make my own spore syringes to inocolate new cakes, but since I can wash cakes from fruiting chamber and in vitro to get at least 2 to 4 more crops I should be good to go.

The amount of research and prep I’ve put into this… Man. At least I feel prepared. 🙂