You don't need all that to take a big step up from the PF Tek. That shit is like a damn joke; a really bad joke on beginners who think it's the easiest way to grow.The most important, and expensive thing you need is a pressure cooker.
The pf tek says to use vermiculite and brown rice flower. Well in case you can't figure it out, vermiculite has no nutritional value to the mycelium and brown rice aint so great either. Read up on liquid cultures so you're not buying syringes just to knock up 12 jars. Once you have a thriving LC, instead of having a syringe full of spores, now you'll have a whole freakin' jar. Use this to inoculate rye berries or bird seed instead of verm/brf.
When that's colonized, there's a million things you can do with it. What I've been doing is mixing 2 fully colonized quart jars of bird seed with 5 pounds of horse poo (ordered from Tennessee stud. No odor. Nice and neat.) Instead of using a fruiting chamber, it all goes into a big, square, plastic container (my old fc) with a few holes drilled in it and stuffed with poly-fill. You don't need to fan it out, spray/ mist, nothing. Just leave it alone. This is what the kids call a mono-tub. Ever since I've started doing this, I have more fungus than I can give away.
www.shroomery.org is an invaluable source of information. Look up "mono-tub"
All that other stuff like agar is not necessary. It is if you want to clone a particular mushroom, but for noobs like us; liquid cultures, to bird seed, to horse shit, IMO, is the best way to go. I'll probably never try to grow any other way; I don't see any other way for me to grow that amount of shrooms in such a small space.
PF Tek = :thumbsdown: :bear: