Hi
Hope you got something useful from the Kew meeting.
I also have this book. Growing fungi is a good way to learn about their growth and development as you can watch them on a daily basis. It is quite straightforward to grow many species at home if you are prepared to take the trouble to provide a sterile environment, otherwise you will soon get frustrated when your cultures fail due to contamination from airborne spores and bacteria.
I have successfully grown several species. I start them off on Oat agar (Boiled oats mixed with agar), some species such as Spharobolus stilatus will fruit on the Oat agar, but for many others I transfer to sterilized wheat grain, some species will fruit on this, but for lignicolous species I transfer to sterilized wood chip or sawdust (you should be able to get plenty of that).
For the lager fungi it is best to start with a small piece of tissue from inside the cap of a fresh specimen.
If you do want to try cultivating fungi at home, the minimum things you will need are:
Somewhere warm (I use my airing cupboard)
Glass Petri dishes
Box of porridge oats
Agar powder
Large Pressure Cooker
Clean air cabinet (see below)
Wheat grains
Pressure cooker resistant containers with push on lids (do not use screw on lids in a pressure cooker or they may explode) I use plastic Chinese take-away containers most types just stand the temperature.
Home made clean air cabinet
The first thing is to find some suitable cheap replaceable filters, try looking at vacuum cleaner or respirator filters. You will also need a fan. I found one from an old central heating boiler (the ones shaped like an Ammonite).
There is an example of a cabinet in the Paul Stamets book.
Professional cabinets are called laminar flow cabinets as they are designed not to blow the air towards the operator; this is for safety when working with infection or harmful organisms. However if you are only going to work with harmless fungi, it is easier to build a cabinet that blows the filtered air from the back to the front. This way you can work under a lid made of Perspex.
The box on the side covers the fan. The fan creates a positive preasure in the rear compartment pushing the air through the filters to the working area, filtering out the fungi spores and bacteria.
Peter
Linear Mode
