Spore: a manual for the mycelial arts

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#1

Introduction to spore

I’ve started working on a cultivation manual to serve as a reference guide for the collectives and individuals taking part in the Hyphal Fusion Network. The basic idea is to assemble a collection of well-established techniques and substrate recipes for cultivating mycelium; one which is to-the-point, searchable and printable - without unnecessary information.

This will be very helpful for me personally, since I often find myself having to page through books in order to look up sterilisation times or substrate ingredient ratios. My hope is that it will also help by creating a shared knowledge base for developing and communicating the results of our various cultivation experiments.

Technical Details

I’m compiling the manual in the form of a Git Book using mdBook. The source for the work-in-progress book can be found here. I’m thinking it might be nice to host an online instance at spore.hyphalfusion.network or manual.hyphalfusion.network once the first draft is complete.

Some advantages of using a Git Book:

  • Contents written in Markdown
  • Can be hosted online
  • Can be hosted locally
  • Can be printed or saved to PDF
  • Easy to edit and add to without technical knowledge beyond Git basics
  • Themes can be created and customised

Here’s an example of what the agar section might look like (with the ‘ayu’ theme):

Screenshot of a GitBook-style digital book with blue-gray background and silver text. There is content on the right and a contents menu on the left. The main window pane has several paragraphs describing the use of agar in fungal cultivation, with a description and sections for preparation instructions and recipes. The contents menu includes sections on cultivation equipment, substrate recipes and treatments.
Screenshot of a GitBook-style digital book with blue-gray background and silver text. There is content on the right and a contents menu on the left. The main window pane has several paragraphs describing the use of agar in fungal cultivation, with a description and sections for preparation instructions and recipes. The contents menu includes sections on cultivation equipment, substrate recipes and treatments.1366×768 162 KB

Contents

This is the basic content outline I’m starting with. I have a tendency to get carried away with details so I’m keeping things basic for now:

  • Introduction
  • Equipment
    • Pressure Cooker
    • Containers
    • Still Air Box
  • Substrate
    • Recipes
      • Agar
      • Liquid Culture
      • Grain
      • Bulk
    • Supplements
    • Treatment
      • Pasteurisation
      • Sterilisation
      • Tyndallisation

That’s it for now. I’m happy to discuss this and would love to hear if you have any suggestions along the way :slight_smile:

3 Likes
#2

Hi glyph,
I think that’s super useful and will cover a lot of questions new users will have about the various processes and materials.
+1 from me!
Tim

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