@David Rice so spore prints and spore swabs are better than spore syringes? I received 4 spore syringes when I was expecting swabs. It seems nearly impossible to get anything onto agar plates. Out of 20 plates it looks like I have possibly 2 with any kind of mycelium growth and after 10 days they are only about 10mm diameter. All the other plates either have 1 or 2 yellow yeast dots, or slime, and 1 has a good size trich growth… If I decide to try and expand the balance of the spores in the spore syringes, is it better to continue with agar plates or expand in liquid culture solution, and then once there is positive mycelium growth, isolate it onto agar plates and make sure that it has no contamination???

@David Rice the problem I found with spores in liquid is the volume of liquid to spore. When they send the spores in a 10ml syringe, the amount of water is too much for Agar. Is there a safe way to reduce it? Or would it be best to place into a Liquid Culture jar and grow out and then clean with Agar

Hi @David Rice Are you sterilising or pasteurising the castings layer? Or just the substrate