Attempting to Harvest Wild Yeast...

[JLump]

First post! Hi there. As the title says I am attempting to harvest some wild yeast. It really started because I got the equipment(test tubes, agar and the like) to start a yeast bank and I figure I might as well try my hand at this. Even if I fail I'm sure I'll learn a tremendous amount about the most interesting ingredient in beer, YEAST! Anyway I need some advice about the next step here.

Here is what I've got going on:
(7/1, four days ago): 750ml of 1.02 starter w/ some yeast nutrient and lemon juice spread out over 7 jars

At this point all the jars have some mold. There is also what looks like yeast at the bottom but I think that is residue from the lemon juice I added to lower the ph. The gravity has not changed by any noticeable amount. Oh yea, 2 of the jars have crab apple, 2 have wild grapes, 2 have some sort of evergreen berry and one I simply left outside under the apple tree over night, uncovered. I also have all the lids loose with the gasket side of the lid flipped up.

I guess I'm just wondering if there are any glaring mistakes I'm making. Little discouraged about there not being a gravity change after four days. How long should I give it? If I do see activity, should I up it to another starter or should I try to isolate it on agar? What sort of success rate are people getting out there? How much should I worry about the mold? I picked the apple, wild grape, and evergreen berry because they all had a very noticeable film/dusting of white power on the outside which I assumed was yeast. Am I right in assuming this?

Anyway as far as my brewing goes, this is really just a side project. However, the thought of brewing something from yeast in my backyard makes me giddy!

 

[JLump]

Took a sample out of the jar that I left under the tree overnight and ran it through my super hi-tech centrifuge, aka squirrel cage blower with test tube mount. Looked at it under the scope and saw long strands which must be the mold and what is certainly yeast! Last picture is at 1000x.

 

[JLump]

Update on my wild yeast harvest. I ended up taking some samples from my jars and putting them on five different petri dishes. Each dish corresponding to a jar that used a different method to obtain yeast. FYI the jar that I simply left outside over night gave me the only dish that didn't have mold, but that very well could be that I am a noob at this and my process is bad. Anyway, just for fun I looked at one of the dishes that looked like it had a SMALL amount of mold under the scope and saw something interesting. The last picture is clearly mold, you can see the spores. The first picture shows what I guess are colonies of yeast with "branches" extending out of them. Could this just be mold? Pellicle?