How to use your liquid culture syring

What's included?

  • individually sealed 10ml liquid culture of your chosen species
  • A sterilising wipe
  • 70% isopropyl wipe
  • A luer lock needle and cap

What else will I need that's not included?

  • A sterile/clean area to work, ideally in front of a laminar flow hood or in a still air box
  • Sterile grain bag with injection port
  • Sterile/Pasteurised substrate for when your grain is fully colonised and ready to start the next step

What should I be aware of?

Cleanliness and sterility is key!

While all of our liquid cultures are healthy and contamination free when leaving us, contaminants can enter as soon as you open the seal or even when injecting you liquid culture into grain. This is why we stress you should ideally work in front of a laminar flow hood or at least in a still air box to minimise your risk of contamination, just watch the first video you come across on Youtube when searching this subject.

Given the right conditions, mushrooms grow very easily, but it can be tricky to implement the 'right conditions' so every care should be taken to minimise risk of contamination

We test all of out liquid cultures regularly by adding to an agar plate to check for contamination, we do this to ensure you get the healthiest LC's.

If you're not going to be using your LC's for a while, keep them in the seal pack and pop them in the fridge to stop the mycelium from growing and clogging up the syringe.

Try to use within 4-6 weeks

DO NOT FREEZE

Step 1

Clean everything including yourself and your clothes

This is one of the main causes of contamination. you want to be clean, cleaned clothes and a clean workspace, any germs or bacteria will fight your mycelium to colonise the grain first, you need to give the mycelium as much help as possible.

  • You're clean
  • You're clothes are clean
  • workspace clean

You're ready to start

Step 2

Inoculate your grain or expand your liquid culture

  • Put your gloves and mask on
  • Use the provided sterilising wipe to clean your gloved hands and your workspace
  • Use the supplied 70% isopropyl wipe to clean the injection port (either on sterile grain bag or lid of prepared LC base liquid)
  • Carefully attach the needle and remove the lid to your liquid culture syringe being extra careful not to tough anything with it, speed is important here
  • flame sterilise the tip of the needle until red (DO NOT blow to cool down *this will introduce contamination* Simply squirt/discard a little LC out through the needle, this will cool it down
  • Inject 2-3ml of liquid culture into the grain via the injection port of grain bag or all 10ml into your prepare LC base liquid

Step 3

its time to let your mycelium grow!

  • Place in a warm, dark area (ideally 20-24C)
  • If making grain spawn keep your bag upright with the filter unobstructed to allow air flow.
  • Leave it alone, this is the boring bit. You just need to wait for the mycelium to do its thing and grow

How long?

You should start to see growth in around 7-14 days if the conditions are right.

Don't worry if it takes longer.

Even if its been 3-4 weeks, as long as your liquid culture is good and there's no signs of contamination, the mycelium should still grow

Step 4

It's growing lovely

Now the mycelium is growing nicely throughout the grain or LC liquid, the mycelium is white and healthy.

If making grain spawn: Once the mycelium is roughly 20-25% colonised throughout the grain you can mix up the grain and shake it around a little, this will distribute the mycelium around the uncolonized grain and help speed up the remainder of the process.

Pop it back in the warm area to colonise fully.

Step 5

It's fully colonised

Is it really fully colonised? How do I know?

  • If you're expanding the liquid culture into a base liquid, the mycelium should look healthy, mostly translucent white (not grey/green), wispy thread-like strands.

You can now put your expanded LC in the fridge for later use or use immediately to inoculate grain

  • If making grain spawn, the grain should be completely covered by white mycelium, the block will likely be very firm as the mycelium has worked its way through and in between each grain.

Now your grain is fully colonised its ready to put into your sterile/pasteurised substrate bags so you can start the fruiting process, check out our substrate 'How To...' guide to find out what to do next...

Skip all of the faff

If you don't like the idea of making your own grain spawn from liquid culture or simply don't have the environment to do it, we can take all of the stress out of the process for you, you'll find fully colonised grain spawn in our shop!

we do make this to order so please allow 2-4 weeks for dispatch