The first pic is four plates from a multispore syringe innoculated onto PDA. The color variation is common, it is all mycelium, no contams in there. Multispore innoc. gives amazing variation on plates. Often times stones and fruits will form on the same plate with mycelium that is white, orange, some brown, and some even reddish! Transfers were made with the best fruiting isolate on PDA. The second picture is the tamp. isoate and you can see sclerotia forming in the third picture.
Next WBS (mostly millet) was inoculated with an agar of the isoalte and allowed to colonize. The millet was laid out in a tray (interestingly there weren't many sclerotia) The tray was only filled about 30% of the way. After the mycelium regenerated, a thin layer of ~50-50 was applied. After the casing showed some mycelial growth the tray was cold shocked for a week or two then fruited. No automation, just frequent hand fanning and spraying, they don't seem to mind the casing being nearly saturated. Tamps grow slowly, if i remember correctly the first flush took nearly 2 weeks to mature. As the flushes progress, the fruits get bigger and easier to print.
As for the casing layer you want maybe .25 inches for a 2-3 inch substrate layer. Also they seem to like the casing very damp, but not muddy. They seem to like it very humid, but at the same time, constant air exchange is crucial, more so than cubensis. If you are looking to get stones, they are not difficult. The major problem here seems to be substrate that is too wet. If you are going to try to fruit them, I would recommend allowing the jar to fully colonize, this tray was cased from an 8 month old colonised jar.
What I see happening is, the mycelium colonises the substrate, and gathers energy as it does. Once the mycelium hits a "barrier" or something non-nutritious, it begins forming sclerotia. In the beginning flushes, the fruits from this isolate have been extremely numerous! They digress in numbers throughout the flushes each producing fruits a bit larger than the last. And they print much better too! Very contam resistant! They flush about 7 times before contaminating. After all of the flushes were complete, there were many small stones collected from just below the casing layer. I like to macerate a stone between my front teeth, keeping it in my mouth and chewing it for 5 or 10 minutes. I love the metallic like taste from them. Most have found two grams of heavly bluing tampanensis to be EXTREMELY potent. On par with the stongest Copelandias, and probably like 3X cubensis.
**Side Note**It is possible to grow the stones on agar. It seems to be much more difficult to get older stones to revive on agar without contams. Here's how I did it. First they were placed in sterile distilled water to rehydrate them first. Then a good amount of h2o2 was added. Probably 10% of the total volume of liquid. this was in a 25mL vial. It was shaken periodically over a 24 hr period. continued to bubble for a long time. Pieces were laid on peroxidated PDYA, mostly mold grew over the next couple of days, but there was one good area that was quickly transferred to another plate to grow out.
