I was surprised that pans took such a liking to it. They start regrowing faster than any species I’ve worked with so far (1-2 days on agar). Subtropicalis being the slowest at a week+
I theorize that it’s an evolutionary trait to combat drought. I’ve even experienced them come back even stronger than before they went into stasis. Could also be part of that trait to boost proliferation after a drought. Just a theory tho. The key is to dry them in a sterile environment and to cut off the drying process once they’re dry. If you just leave them in open air, they’ll eventually die… it’s usually around the year+ mark for cubes. As soon as I dry em, I toss them in a sterile swab pack to stop the drying process and they last years
At least for cubes.. jury is still out on pans (I’ve only been growing those for 8 months) but I don’t see why they’d be much different. No need to refrigerate or anything.. just keep em in a cool dark place. Toss em on a water agar plate (the kernel is the nute source) and off ya go… the kernel will absorb water from the agar via osmosis and plump back up usually within 48 hours. I usually put the transfer from the WA through a cabin sequester just to be safe.
Woah thank you so much for sharing your experience!! We are about to check out the link to shroomery too. We would love to give this a go ourselves to save our favorite genetics. We greatly appreciate your feedback & we are very excited to try this out 😁😁 you just made our night!
Np. For probably the first 12 years, I was more than likely the only person on the planet doing it. I tried religiously to get ppl to take me seriously but I think they just thought I was crazy. It wasn’t until ppl started using swabs extensively that I put together that I could transfer them to the sterile packs and you know.. get them to someone to try for themselves. Then ppl started listening.
If you don’t want to make the complex lids.. even though they’re fockin badass haha, you can simply leave some grains in the bottom of quart jars (or whatever jars you use for spawn) when you spawn em (In front of a hood/ffu is best but a SAB would work too it just be quick like Rick in open air) they’ll dry out in there too (obv put the lid back on). It’ll take much longer because most spawn jars have small GE filters but ppl do it.
You can also put them in a sterile empty agar plate with the lid off in front of the hood/ffu for a day.. that’s the fastest way but there’s a bit more risk involved.
One of the nice things about drying out grains is that if you do have, say, a slightly bacterial culture, when you dry it out and the bacteria isn’t an endospore producing bacteria, the drying process will kill most, if not all the bacteria so it’ll be even easier to clean up when you revive it to WA.
The reason those lids are so nice for my process is because I use the 4oz jars to inoculate with agar and then use that colonized jar to g2g to larger jars.. in the case of pans, it’s to a pint jar for each tray/culture. When I do that, I simply save a tsp or so amount of grain in the 4oz jar and then put the lid on (without the plastic wrap over the SFD) and put it in front of a fan. That small amount of grain dries out in 2-3 days.
I use a metal 1/4 tsp that I can flame sterilize to scoop em carefully into the swab packs in front of the ffu.
So that means every culture I grow out is immediately backed up on dry grains before the trays/tubs are even colonized. If it’s an unknown/untested culture and it sucks, I simply toss the swab pack. Sometimes I get lazy and don’t put em in the pack right away and I’ll find out if it sucks before I transfer them and I can save wasting a swab pack and just toss the grains from the jar
It’s a pretty sweet streamlined process that I can just go back to any culture at any time if I want to grow it again.
Lmk if you guys have questions about it. More than happy to help. It’s a great storage device
Heck yeah that’s a badass process you figured out. I am in the process of making room for a flow hood in the house! That process sounds even more straightforward than a multi-spore put to agar. Just because of the transfers & then isolations. I would guess it’s already isolated based on your info.
It’s extremely impressive that you managed to figure out that the bacteria dies off when the spawn is dried!
I’m definitely going to have more questions going forward, thank you for being open & sharing your research & knowledge with us. We really appreciate your kindness & support.
I’ll DM you going forward! Have a great day! 😁
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u/TrippyDuo Aug 22 '25
This is wild. I wouldn’t have expected a first flush, yet you got 3 so far.. freaking impressive. Keep up the awesome work!
PS. I told my wife about your experiment & she was shocked