From the left to the right (in the attached photo): two jars of Pleurotus ostreatus spores (now mycelium) growing in grain, two jars of P. ostreatus liquid culture cloned from agar, and two jars of Pleurotus pulmonarius liquid culture cloned from agar.
I also have five agar plates I inoculated with a different collection of P. ostreatus spores, but there's no visible growth yet--so I'll leave those out.
The P. pulmonarius was cloned from a fruiting body growing on a commercial grower's spent block that was salvaged from their waste pile. It's actually a pretty happy, and fast-growing variety. It seems that it hasn't reached senescence yet.
The P. ostreatus LC was cloned from a several-generations old sample that was initially from a liquid culture bought through amazon. It hasn't performed super well--which is why I've taken it to spore in two different experiments. I may end up disposing of this LC, but I'll probably store it in the fridge while I work on isolating some new strains from the spore experiments. Hopefully I'll win the P. ostreatus lottery...
All of this is just done in a simple Still Air Box, it's just a hobby for now. Some day I want to assemble a proper lab with a FFU/LFH, but that day is not today!
Anyone else culturing anything fun?
Well, for a redneck FFU I would probably just be shooting from the hip--because I'd be building the fan from scratch--meaning it would be easier to build then measure the airflow rate of the custom fan, and then modify the design of the fan or modify the filter size until I get something good.
As far as resources, this seems to be on-point if you want to just buy the parts outright in a less redneck manner: https://learn.freshcap.com/growing/keeping-it-clean-how-to-design-and-build-a-laminar-flow-hood/