>>1160918Mycology anon here.
There are a number of ways you can clone wild specimens, each with varying success rates, cost/prep, and incubation time. It also depends on the species you have chosen. Pic related is SRA running on cardboard. Easy cloning technique
Agar is the ideal for cloning, and you can get pretty much anything (even some mycorrhizal species) to take on agar for long-term storage and utility with little difficulty. It does require that you perform with sterile technique, something that requires a decent investment in materials, and either a book, or the ability to do effective online research. The simplest setup you can get is a still-air box (SAB) which can be made pretty easily out of a large rubbermaid container on a tabletop. Success rates can be hit or miss. No matter what for agar work you'll need a pressure cooker (PC), which has a pretty variable price range, but most are affordable. With those two items you can get started pretty easily, but the learning curve is steep, and you'll have a lot of failure initially before you ever succeed, assuming you have no labwork experience.
For folks who want to just casually grow with little investment, I recommend tissue culture methods that don't involve agar, such as "cardboard cloning" or tissue slurries.
First off, how informed are you already on the concepts of mycelium and basic cultivation? Give me a rundown so I know what level to start at.
>>1160953You can't really make "block" kits with cloning methods that don't involve agar, or sterile technique at some point in the process. Unless you are making un-supplemented kits, which are likely to stall out from lack of nitrogen.
