I use petri dishes. You could use glass jars, plastic food containers etc. The things I like about petri dishes are that they're small, sterile, and easy to see inside.
Using agar culture, you can germinate spores, or you can clone mushrooms from the wild, from the supermarket, or from mycelium.
If you get contaminants, you can carefully cut or scrape a piece of clean mycelium, and transfer it to a new agar plate. To clean up a culture, you may need to do this several times.
If you wait too long, or if your mycelium is exceptionally fast, you might get mushrooms forming on your petri dish, like these King Oysters, which are still fine for transferring to grain, little shrooms and all.
I will post a tutorial here soon, showing all the steps.
It really is easy if you follow the steps.
A simple recipe is as follows;
Boil 250mL of water. Add 1 teaspoon (~5gms) of agar powder, and 1 teaspoon of your chosen nutrient (malt powder, milo, vegemite...some people use dry dog food!).
Simmer until agar has dissolved.
I like to then pour the solution into a 375 mL beer bottle, and cover the top with foil.
Place in your pressure cooker and bring to 15 psi for 15 minutes.
If you don't have a Pressure Cooker, place your bottle in a pot of boiled water with some salt added (salt increases the boiling point of water). Make sure the water level is high enough to cover the liquid agar, but not high enough to enter the bottle. Simmer for 15 minutes.
Allow to cool. You can always remelt your agar solution if it has solidified.
If you wish to add Hydrogen peroxide, do so when the agar solution is less than 60 degrees C, but greater than 50 degrees C. This will offer some protection against spores and bacteria.
I mix it in with a thermometer.
Pour the solution into your petri dishes (or jam jars, take away food containers etc.)
Once the agar has set, you can inoculate with a wedge of mycelium from another petri dish culture, or with a piece of tissue cut from a live mushroom.
I store my agar cultures in ziplock sandwich bags.
You should see signs of growth within a few days.
