Hyphaenation's-Cardboard-Cloning-Machine
Overview
I came up with this way of cloning by reading up in the archives and vaults. Its a hybrid of a bunch of ideas I learned here so its really not that original but I thought i'd share it. It works especially well on fast growing edibles like Oyster mushrooms and their allies.
Essentially what we are doing is taking a piece of mushroom tissue and growing it in between two layers of moist cardboard in a jar. Then later continuing the culture on wbs or grain of your choice.
What You Need
Clone-chunk material of mushroom
Scissors
Cardboard (thick corrugated)
Glass jars (with breathable lid)
Felt marker
Vermiculite
Grain of your choice
Stage One
Make sure your cardboard is clean and of the thick, corrugated variety. Cut a working piece like above and start tracing the bottom of a 1/2 pint jar onto the cardboard. Hug the glass nice and tight. Fill your cardboard with as many circles as you can get and keep them close together for ease of cutting.
When your done marvel at your work and then proceed to cut out all the circles. Use the inside of the marker line when you cut. You can re-trim later. Check each circle to see that it snuggly fits to the bottom of your 1/2 pint jar.
Now you are ready to soak the circles in hot water. I take freshly boiled water and let it cool down a touch, then I add the circles in a wire strainer to the water. Putting a small plate on top submerges all of them.
You don't have to soak them for very long as they will be PC'd later. Just enough to get the glues loosened so you can peel off the outside piece of paper on both sides.
After about 15 minutes you can take the basket out and let it drain. Now you are ready to take each disk and peel the flat outside paper off. It falls right off by barely looking at it so its not hard. Stack each corrugated inner piece ,minus the outside layer on to a plate. I like to stack 4 layers on top of each other and then make a new pile.
Next comes the vermiculite. Load each jar with a small amount of verm to catch any extra moisture (optional). On top of that you put 2 circles of cardboard , both fit into each others grooves. The next circle is also a double fit into itself , but it is rotated so the grooves run the opposite way as the set you placed in the jar. This is to make it easier to pry it up later ...
The second set of circles that you place in are put in standing against the jar glass, not laying down. This is so you can flip them down after the piece of clone material is placed in , post PC'ing.
Now you assemble all your jars like such and make sure the cardboard disk set up on the side is stable. Put on the breathable lids. Cover with tinfoil and PC for 60 minutes at 15 psi. Remove and cool.
Stage Two
Take your mushroom clone material , cooled cardboard jars and other accessories into your glovebox. Use typical clean techniques learned here to take an inner clone tissue sample and place it inside each jar on top of the lower cardboard disk. Thanks to Banzai I now know that smaller , cut up chunks of clone stalk actually do worse than more intact pieces. Keep the pieces an inch long and either ripped in half (don't cut) , or whole. You can peel back the skin surface if you wish.
You can also do what I call "fuzzing" the mycelium on the clone chunk by cleaning it up and placing it in a small baggy with a small amount of air inside. Close the baggy and wait 24 to 48 hours. You should start to see fuzzy , healthy mycelium after 24 or less. Now your clone chunk is in a great position to leap off into the cardboard.
Flip each upper disk down over the clone chunks/lower cardboard circles, using a clean spoon. It fits nice and snug. you can pat it down in place also.
Return lid on jar and mark for species/strain.
When your done the lot they can be placed in a clean , dark growing environment. Keep temps below 83 F. You will see very fast growth.
If need be you can mist inside the jar , but try to avoid it. The cardboard is so damp to begin with that you should'nt need to mist. If done inside a glovebox with clean water it can work if you get a bit dry.
You should start to see growth in a matter of a day or two and it gets faster from there, especially with Oysters.
When the surface of the cardboard is colonized with nice white mycelium then you are ready for stage 3.
Stage Three
Prepare a batch of wbs (wild bird seed), or the grain or your choice in your favorite manner learned here at Mycotopia. Soak it , strain it, pressure cook it in jars , let cool....
When your wbs is ready and cooled take jars of it into your glovebox. Also bring your cloning machine jars in there. Open each cloning jar one at a time and skillfully dump the wbs out into the waiting clone machine jar. It will pour nice because you shook your wbs jars after they were PC'd. Fill each one up about 3/4 full and tamp slightly to settle the grain.
When all the jars are done make sure their lids are on nice and place them back in the dark warm place they were for further colonization.
The wbs will colonize very quickly at optimal conditions. Especially when you already have a fluffy, healthy bed of mycelium below it.
Options
Once the wbs is fully colonized you are ready to do some spawning of bulk substrate or you can further your material by doing a G2G (grain-to-grain) transfer. Simply transfer a small bit of the colonized wbs from your cloning jar into a pc'd jar containing the grain of your choice.
Conclusion
This is a very fast way of cloning a mushroom. Oysters are lightning fast when done in this fashion.
If you get some really nice specimins that you want to clone cardboard can be an easy and fun way of doing it.
Enjoy
H
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Edited by hyphaenation, 27 January 2015 - 09:01 PM.
