Setting it up in your kitchen is not all that hard to do, but getting a sterile environment is really tricky and, especially for a beginner to test tube or flask culture, will take some learning. It would help to at least have taken a microbiology lab course at some time. We ran into a further problem -- the storage area under lights had too low a relative humidity and most of the dished eventually dried out. The guy I was working with had plenty of experience, but we were doing it in his basement. Retired folks have problems like that. I'm still trying to decide whether I want to try some of it myself or not. I did pick up a used glove box for a sterile transfer environment. Glove boxes are easier to get and keep sterile, but a lot less easy to work in than a laminar flow hood. I prefer twin scaling or bulb chipping. I've done this with Lycoris and with Haemanthus in the past. My yields were not much above 1 (one surviving bulblet per bulb cut up). There are apparently some tricks of technique to be learned even in simple twin-scaling. It looked really easy when I saw it at Hadeco in South Africa. In any case, practice on bulbs you can afford to lose! Jim Shields At 05:19 PM 9/9/2010 -0700, you wrote: >This is a very interesting topic, how many of you have tried this and been >successful? Honestly, I wouldn't have ever assumed it to be succesful >outside >of a sterile lab. > >Josh >IN ************************************************* Jim Shields USDA Zone 5 Shields Gardens, Ltd. P.O. Box 92 WWW: http://www.shieldsgardens.com/ Westfield, Indiana 46074, USA Tel. ++1-317-867-3344 or toll-free 1-866-449-3344 in USA