Adventures in Flasking

[Dorchid]

I figured I’d take a stab at flasking some seed as I grow mushrooms and have the gear and experience working with invitro culture and aseptic technique. The Odcdm. was selfed on March 18 and took 8 months for the capsule to mature. Seed extraction and flasking were all carried out in front of a large laminar flow "hood". Unfortunately, I didn't catch the capsule before it dehisced and didn't have any media on hand, so stored the capsule in an envelope in my still air box for a few days while waiting on the media to arrive. I cleaned up the seed in a H2O2 with a dab of soap as a surfactant (forgot to order Tween20). This was carried out in a syringe for 10 min (I followed the method on the herebutnot video). Not super pumped on this technique but we'll see what happends. I made up some flasks with pint mason jars and plastic lids modified with a hole and polyfill to serve as a gas exchange filter and PhytoTech P723 Orchid Seed Sowing Media. The media was supplemented with 5% coconut water per PhytoTech, though I just used store-bought VitaCoco. I didn't adjust pH or treat the media in any other way. Media was pre-poured and sterilized for 40 min in flask. Each flask was sown with 3 drops of the H2O2 solution containing seeds and will be stored in my tent with roughly 12/12 light cycle, ~75F and 75-80% RH. Hopefully, germination will occur in the next month or so...I'll keep this post updated as things progress or fail. Please leave any questions or comments.