For the last few months I have thought long and hard about getting into DNA sequencing. Probably started when I entered my first mycoblitz this winter, getting samples ready to ship to the institution putting it on. Its become pretty cheap to send prepared samples off for sequencing in the last few years, some places offer rates like 5$/sample from time to time. My biggest obstacle is that I am not trained in any way and my knowledge of chemistry, biology and genetics is surface level at best. I also have a learning disability that is supposed to make math hard (discalculia, like dyslexia for numbers) but it actually makes a lot of things hard like telling left from right, mathematical concepts. So chemistry was always a difficult subject for me and I have always tried to avoid it, this has been limiting for me. In addition to taking some know-how, getting into DNA/PCR would cost a lot of money so I made myself a deal, if I can get a good hold on general and organic chem, biology and genetics then I'd reward myself with a centrifuge, a PCR machine, primers and whatever else I need to start sending my own samples off. I know some people wont get why I want to do this kind of work without a clear goal but really I don't know if I care to justify it anymore. When I started collecting and measuring spores it was just to do something with my microscope, its actually become a decent ID tool for me since then. Science for science sake is good enough for me.

I went to drop off some stuff at the waste-diversion/recycling centre, I walk in and there is a large box of science text books sitting there waiting for me. Almost every topic I would need to get started was in that box, once I have a grasp on the material I can start studying genetics more closely - I will have to buy a couple more books, though. I was so excited I think I yelped. I learn a lot better reading physical copies of books but buying text books was out of the question with the average cost being well over a hundred dollars each. I bought the whole box and it was 5$ all together. There is at least a grand worth of books there and most of them aren't super dated. I wont have a lot of time to study until work winds down in the fall and winter but very happy with my find and excited to start learning.

Wine cap spawn is happy and healthy, there are a few bags that could be further ahead but I am not incredibly worried about it. Still working on my presentation but its getting busy at work. I will finish it up tonight so I can rehearse the rest of the week. Went for a quick walk up on the mountain with the dog today. Thought I'd scope put a few lichen spots. One of the old forest service roads is being revamped which is unfortunate because I found so many good mushroom/lichen spots down it. Hopefully they dont completely clear cut everything. There are definitely other spots that need to be logged due to how shit a job they did planting it back in the 60's, who plants trees 1 ft apart from each other? It's a nightmare. In anycase, I will be frequenting that road this spring and summer. I found my first agate of the season in a gushing culvert near the start of this FSR, its not a bad size. May have to bring my rocking-loving friends out there to take a look.

Up on top of the mountain I managed to find some Gyromitras, probably G. esculenta as thats mostly what I find up there and it fits the bill, they were just smaller than I am used to seeing. I was suprised to find Gyros this early in the season. Collected a few samples of fallen lichens but did not stick around there too long because there are lots of moose in that area, they've got calves right now and didn't want to chance an encounter with my dog in dense brush. I hope I'll be able to get out again soon.

I am very pleased to say that my last blog post now looks silly, my spawn run is starting to show signs of growth. The mycelium isn't very strong yet but at least its something and I do not see any contamination yet. If its not fully colonized by the time I need to do my presentation the I will just let people know to wait until the whole thing has turned white, I won't be charging for them so I don't see this being an issue. Wine cap definitely does take some time to grow so I will remind myself of that for next time (or just offer up a Pleurotus variety :P). For now all I really need to worry about is my presentation which is at least started now. I'd like to at least get the whole thing drafted today so that I can rehearse for time management and make any changes as needed.

In other news, my house is in absolute shambles. We just installed new flooring and painted. All of my stuff is still in boxes. My mircoscope is at least accessible but I just don't have time to sit down and look at stuff. This is partially because I insist on having my DSLR hooked up to the trinocular so I can take photos and videos. Unfortunately I am just too busy right now. My grow room is also being neglected, I haven't really got any cultivation going on in there except some reishi blocks in the fruiting chamber and the wine cap spawn incubating. Warmer weather is on it's way so I need to buy some cultures that handle the heat. I have a jar of pink oyster LC but I'm not sure of its viability right now. Will need to purchase a heat tolerant lion's mane too. It won't be long before we need to figure out some sort of portable AC for the growroom. The Mycological Society of Fresno put out an awesome video of how to build a modular cooling unit for the fruiting chamber so excited to try that.

I have been growing mushrooms for over 5 years and with good success. I see a lot of beginners looking at something they've inoculated 2 days ago and wondering when it'll do something. Some species definitely don't take long to show progress but something like Hericium you might be waiting a couple weeks to see growth due to the wispy/thin appearance of the mycelium. It really just takes some time and, barring contamination, your spawn or substrate will get there eventually. Anyways, I'm sitting here, 2 days post inoculation, worrying about the wine cap spawn run.

I knew I had these inoculations to do and I knew I'd be starting with liquid culture so it was going to take a little longer. I just hate when spawn bags are so over grown you can hardly break them up but what I didn't account for was the slow growth rate of wine cap. I started my initial bag with LC (liquid culture) too late, it was barely started when I realized I wouldn't have spawn for the demo at Seedy Saturday. So I found a supplier in my province who sold wine cap sawdust spawn (meant to be put directly in the garden), and they could get it to me in a few days. My last blog post was me inoculating grain with that sawdust spawn. I've never use sawdust spawn to inoculate grain, the texture is very fine and now I'm having major doubts about whether or not this will work. They have 16 days to colonize and there's no visible growth (again, not necessarliy an issue, mycelium usually take a bit of time to recover). I really shouldn't have waited so long to do this and that is on me. I'm trying to take my own advice and not worry because 2 days really isn't enough time to tell. I just sort of feel like I'm in limbo here.

I'm going to try giving them a little warmth with a seed mat. I don't want to over do it but it might help the mycelium get cozy and start eating on those oats. I am an obsessive worrier so I really hope I look very silly in just a few days time.

A while ago our mycology group was asked to talk at the local Seedy Saturday so I thought I would give a talk on outdoor mushroom cultivation. I'm still putting together the presentation, I had planned to talk at length about citizen science and mycology in general but the actual cultivation portion kept feeling like an after thought so I've changed it to be be focused on the history of mushroom cultivation. Its great because I am learning all sorts of new things about the relationship between humans and mushrooms. I'm having a lot of trouble locating information on texts from the Tang dynasty that mention a method of cultivating wood ear mushrooms. Aside from that I've been having fun learning about mushrooms grown in caves all over the world. I am glad I picked a topic I didn't know much about in the first place.

As I type this up, I have two pressure cookers ticking away on the stove with 15 bags of oats inside. It's late and I need to go to bed but I have to get these grain bags ready for inoculation tomorrow. These will be given out at Seedy Saturday to folks who want to inoculate their gardens with Stropharia rugosoanulata (wine cap mushrooms), during my talk I will expain a bit about this species and how one might cultivate them in their back yards. I haven't decided if I want to charge for them. I probably won't and if I do it'll be 5$ or something. It takes a lot of time and I had to buy the starter culture but I really do just love teaching people about mushrooms. I really hope inoculations go well, I'm sort of putting all my eggs in one basket by only doing one spawn run.

Yesterday I gave some people from my mycology group a tour of a local park. There were about 6 participants so not very many but we all had a lot of fun doing it. Everyone brout their cameras and lots of photos have been posted to the group. I was really nervous about leading the group, its been probably a decade since I'd done any public speaking. No matter how much I rehearsed I never felt like I was getting my points across. When it actually came time to do the talking everything went very smoothly and I was able to remember everything I needed to say with out notes. The night before, I prepared some hand-scope photos of soralia/soredia as well as close ups of some Calicium. I will add a photo here but the others will go under the microscopy tab.

I really enjoyed myself and I am feeling better about the talk I'll be giving at the end of April on mycology in general. I would really like to do this again next year. I'm currently searching for a better site to host at, somewhere with lots of Cladonia.

I will be holding a little 'intro to lichen' class/nature walk at the end of this month. Not too many people signed up at this time but this will be my first time giving a talk like this so it might be nice to do with just a few people. I have collected a bunch of samples and now I am just working up the energy to get them all under the microscope so I have some pictures of soredia and apothecia to show the participants. I am hoping the trails will be mostly free of snow and ice by the time the lichen event happens. I found some sort of Calicium sp. today which is always a treat, I'm going to try and get some macro shots of it and maybe put that under the microscope as well. Found it on birch bark, I have previously only seen it growing on top of Chrysothix on spruce bark. Neat little lichen.

My partner and I just inoculated a bunch of grain with king stropharia in preparation for my talk at the gardening event and our cultivation demonstration we are holding at the end of May. I used 3 separate syringes so they can't all contaminate, can they?

I am back at work in the greenhouses, nice to be in the dirt again. I keep looking out at the garden and wondering when I'll have time to clean it up and get it prepped for this season. Still haven't started my seedlings yet but I've just got so much work to do in the grow room and (happily) wasting time out in the woods taking photos of mushrooms and lichens.

I've been asked by the folks putting on the Seedy Saturday to give a talk on mycology in April so I've got the presentation mostly finished, just need to rehearse. I will also be providing wine cap grainspawn so need to get that started as all I have is liquid culture and that takes quite some time to start. Fruiting chamber needs a big clean today and we also need to start our warm-season mushrooms up. I experiemented with some Pleurotus pulmonarius this winter so hoping that is as heat tolerant as folks say it can be. They grow great in the cold though, nice dark brown caps.

Took a walk in the forest again today. On the drive to the park I saw a massive colony of lichen on a boulder next to the highway so going to stop and take a few photos there tomorrow. Got some good pictures at the park, lots of Cladonia, Lobaria, Ramalina. Saw lots of little ear pick fungus, I'm fairly sure they're Auriscalpium vulgare but I could be wrong.

We took the poot for a walk in the forest today. We expected a lot of the snow to be gone but actually almost all of it was gone (at least in the portion we walked). I was hoping to find a bit of moss and maybe some cladonia so I took the camera. So much moss and so much Lichen. It was great, I spent half the time laying under the ground trying to get 'upskirt' type shots of the pixie cups. Everything was so green and so alive, usually there is a lot of snow pack until at least the end of March or later.

As we were leaving, my partner spotted some orange mushrooms off trail. Too brightly coloured to be Birch Polypore. It was a fresh, decently-sized flush of Phyllotopsis nidulans (at least I am 90% sure of the ID). The only thing that gives me pause is that it did not stink. Actually, it smelled kind of nice, sort of sweet like vanilla. I have heard people report a lack of stench before so I don't know that it invalidates my ID. Regardless, the cluster was stunning. I will add some photos to the gallery later.

Spring is still a ways away but I go back to work in the greenhouses in about a week. It'll be nice to see all the greenery again. I have not started my pepper seedlings for this year yet, normally they get started Feb. 1st so hopefully our crop doesnt suffer. We made lots of shelf stable hotsauce last fall, just in case. Lots of new varieties to try this season.

Our reishi blocks are starting to do something but I'm not sure what yet. This is our first year growing them. Looks like the start of antlers but I'll let them go a little longer just to see what happens. I think the blocks were inoculated at the end of November.