How To Cultivate Magic Mushrooms
So, you've decided to grow your own shrooms! Congrats on your endeavor; it is both thrilling and gratifying. It will provide you with medicine and sacrament for as long as you continue to cultivate magic mushrooms. Growing mushrooms is at once very similar and very different from cultivating plants, but experienced gardeners should have no problem picking it up.
Shrooms of course grow naturally in the wild but can often be found growing on the dung of cows at dairy farms. Growing shrooms indoors in a non-natural environment requires a lot of care, attention and sterile environments. So you must take caution while attempting to cultivate magic mushrooms. People with experience in clean labs will do well here.
The first time I grew shrooms was in a corner of my living room. It's easy enough to find legitimate spores, as they can be legally sold as a novelty or botanical item. You don't venture into legally questionable waters until you actually grow and cultivate magic mushrooms. I learned to do this through trial and error, much patience, sharing knowledge with fellow growers, and a lot of reading online. (Go to https://mycotopia.net/ and shroomery.org for further reading).
Watching the shroom mycelium colonize my spawn jars and then pop up into glorious, penis-lookin fruits of the earth was one of the happiest moments of my life right next to getting high on your own crop. It's also an opportunity to sample fresh shrooms rather than dried, which is a significantly different and special experience.
Enough chit-chat, let's get to the nitty gritty. There are many, many methods of growing shrooms, but in this tek I will try to give you a foundation of knowledge so that you can adapt to any method or even invent your own. Each section with a technical explanation, followed by materials needed for the step, and then finally step-by-step instructions for people just looking to follow a recipe to cultivate magic mushrooms.
Important note: Whenever I say "sterilized this or that" always use a sterile technique e.g boiling/pressure cooking/flame or heat
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. Complete List Of Materials And Equipment Required To Cultivate Magic Mushrooms
- Glass Mason Jars OR spawn bags (Easily purchasable online)
- Vermiculite (found at any gardening store)
- Cococoir (found at any gardening store)
- Bird seed, oat seeds, rye seeds, or other grain
- Spoon
- Large metal mixing containers, one larger than the other.
- Large pot with lid or pressure cooker
- Clean water
- Aluminum foil
- Spores, spore syringe, live mushroom sample
- Micropore tape
- Large plastic bin
- Misting bottle
- OPTIONAL: Perlite or clay hydrating pebbles/stones. Humidity meter. Gypsum (highly recommended)
Step-By-Step Guide On How To Cultivate Magic Mushrooms
Stage 1: Spawning
The purpose of this stage is to safely grow the mushroom mycelium. The mushroom fruit you see in stores or popping out of the ground is just a fraction of the whole organism. Most of it resides underground and is a white matter called the mycelium. This is the body of the fungus, and the mushroom fruits sprout from it. Psilocybe fungus mycelium also contains psilocybin and psilocin. This is why truffles or knots of mycelium can still be eaten or used to brew tea.
Doing the spawning stage properly will ensure a good foundation for the rest of your growth. The most important part of this step is cleanliness. A dirty environment will lead to contamination by bacteria or other fungi, so sterilize all your surfaces and areas before and after each step.
- Wide-mouth glass mason jars or mushroom spawning bags (you can find this on Amazon)
- Bird seed, oat seed, rye seed, other grain or brown rice flour.
- Large pot w/ lid or pressure cooker
- Spore or source of mushrooms
- Micropore tape (You can buy this on Amazon or gardening stores may have it)
1. Acquire Your Spores From A Verified Source
For beginners, you can purchase a spore syringe from life sciences stores online that contain live Psilocybe cubensis spores suspended in a sugar solution. You can also create your own spore syringes by adding spores from a spore print (I will show you how to make one later) to a sterile sugar solution or by placing a piece of live P. cubensis on a petri dish with agar-agar. The fungus will colonize the agar-agar after a few days and you can crumble it up and use it in lieu of a spore syringe.
2. Choose Your Spawning Substrate
Now that you have your P. cubensis or other species/variant of shroom, you need something for it to grow in and feed on. If using purchased mushroom spawn bags, skip to step 4.
I used bird seed the first time I did this, but I don't recommend it. Bird seed is cheap but very dirty and requires a lot of cleaning. If you do this, wash the bird seed until water runs clear through it. I recommend wheat, oat, or rye fruits or seeds. Brown rice or brown rice flour mixed with vermiculite at a ratio of 1:2 is also a popular choice.
Hydrate your spawning media by soaking it in water and then squeezing as much water out as you can.
3. Sterilize Your Spawning Substrate
At this step, your fungus is very vulnerable to bacteria or other fungal invaders. By keeping a sterile environment, you ensure that the shroom has a safe place to grow without worrying about your substrate rotting.
Then fill your mason your jars full but not compacted and punch a few holes in the lid. Then tightly wrap the lids with aluminum foil.
Place them in the pressure cooker on top of a rack. Pour in water until it reaches a little up the side of the jar and then run the pressure cooker for 90 minutes, adding water as needed. If you’re sterilizing by boiling, do the same in a pot and boil for 90 minutes, adding water as needed.
4. Inoculate Your Substrate
This is the fun part! Once your jars have fully cooled, take them out of the pot and lift the aluminum so you can put the spore syringe into the hole you have punched. For every quart of media, use 2-3 ccs of spore solution. Try to squirt the solution evenly throughout the jar by using each of your holes in the lids. Then cover up your holes with micropore tape. Discard the aluminum. Sterilize your needle with a flame or alcohol wipe between before each injection.
If using spawning bags, these are already sterilized and have an injection port for inoculation. Squirt the spore solution around the bag, and you're done. You can cover the port with micropore tape.
5. Let It Grow
Mycelium grows best at a temperature around 75 to 80 F (24 to 28 C) so put it in a warm, dark spot where it can grow undisturbed by motion or light. After 1-3 weeks, you should see the mushroom cover the entire jar or spawn bag in a thick, white network. If you have a spawn bag, you can break up the substrate after about half of it is colonized. Squeeze the bag and mix it around without opening it. This will speed the process.
If you see any weird colors, anything other than WHITE anything slimy or sludgy or just any other bizarre features, then your jar or bag is kaput. It's been contaminated and needs to be thrown away. For this reason, I highly recommend doing several bags or jars at once to ensure you get at least a few clean spawns.
Stage 2: The Bulk Grow/Monotub
Congratulations, you've made it to the next stage. Now you can cultivate magic mushrooms immediately from cakes, and if you want to do that jump to Stage 3. But if you want to dramatically increase your yields, then follow this stage. It's the bulk growth of shrooms and it really increases the amount of mushrooms you can produce.
This stage is fundamentally the same as Stage 1 but it's a bit easier. This is partially because the mycelium in your spawn jars or bags are quite healthy and strong and should be able to fend off most viruses, bacteria or competing fungi. Even so, you should do your best to sterilize all your surfaces and equipment and keep a clean environment.
- large plastic tub
- Large metal dish or pot
- Large pot or pressure cooker
- Coco-coir
- Vermiculite
- Tape
- Drill or some method of poking holes in the tub
- OPTIONAL: Gypsum, large garbage bag
1. Prep Your Tub
You need your tub to be able to exchange air. So poke some holes in the side and then cover the holes with micropore tape. Sterilize the interior.
You can make a liner if you wish by cutting a plastic garbage bag that can rest on the bottom of the tub. You want the liner to come up the sides a bit, so you can fold the ends or just use a bag larger than the bottom of the tub. Sterilize the liner and the interior of the tub.
2. Prep Your Bulk Substrate
There are many recipes for bulk substrate. Some say to mix gypsum, vermiculite and coco-coir. Some say to mix coco-coir and dung. I have had success with just coco-coir by itself. Add each ingredient at a ratio of 1:1. So 1 part coco-coir, 1 part vermiculite. If using gypsum, it should be at a ratio of 10 parts other substrate, 1 part gypsum. A good amount of bulk substrate would be 1000 grams of coco-coir, 1000 grams of vermiculite, and 200 grams of gypsum. You can also go less or more depending on the size of your tub. Combine all of this in whatever vessel you will use to pasteurize or sterilize your bulk substrate.
3. Sterilize Baby!
The point of this is to just kill off anything living in your substrate so you can do it however you wish. The easiest way however, is to just dump boiling water into the substrate and leave it covered until cool. You can also pressure cook it. For every 1000 grams of substrate (using coco-coir) you can approximate about 3750 grams of water.
You want the substrate to be fully hydrated but water should not come pouring out if you squeeze it. Wet but not sopping, soggy wet.
Put your substrate in a pot and pour enough boiling water to fully hydrate it. Cover with a tight lid and leave it until it's cold.
4. Inoculate The Bulk Substrate
If you have used too much water in your previous step, you figure it out by squeezing your substrate with a sterile gloved hand. If water comes pouring out, then it's too wet. Squeeze out the water from your substrate and then put it into your sterilized tub.
Once all your bulk substrate is in the tub, take your fully colonized spawn and crumble it up in your hands while wearing sterile gloves. Mix the crumbles in with your bulk substrate.
OPTIONAL STEP: Cover the whole mix with sterilized vermiculite, and also leave a layer of sterilized vermiculite on the bottom of the tub before anything goes in. This helps control humidity and has a layer of protection for the mycelium to grow.
5. Let It Grow!
Leave your inoculated bulk substrate covered and in a warm place (75 to 80 °F or 25 to 27 °C) for a couple weeks until it's fully colonized. It will take 1 to 2 weeks. When it's about 80 to 100% you can move on to the next stage.
Stage 3: Fruiting And Harvesting
This is magic. This is when you get your actual shrooms. All your hard work to cultivate magic mushrooms has led up to this moment.
- Micropore tape
- Misting bottle
- Distilled water or sterile water
- Sharp blade
- Patience
1. Fruiting Straight From Spawn Jars
If you skipped Stage 2 and want to fruit straight from your spawn jars then you can! Pour a layer of sterilized vermiculite into the bottom of a large plastic tub, prepared with holes in the side that are covered with micropore tape (See Stage 2, Step 1). Then gently tap out your fungus from each jar. It should have formed into a solid cake. Space the cakes out on the vermiculite in your tub.
2. Fanning And Misting
This is the same if you're growing from cakes or from bulk substrate. Every day, fan your tab with the lid and then mist the sides of it with distilled water. The top of the tub should also now be exposed to light.
Your mushrooms will begin fruiting, as light and oxygen stimulate them to grow. They need a moist environment so just spray down the lid or sides of your tub lightly each day you fan.
You want to fan every day, ideally twice a day! Your mushrooms will begin growing. They look like dozens of little dicks popping up out of the ground. They will get bigger and bigger, and you will have tears in your eyes like a proud parent who had a successful attempt to cultivate magic mushrooms.
3. Harvest!
Eventually a veil will form under the mushroom cap. Keep a close eye on it. You want to harvest the mushroom right before or immediately after the veil breaks. Wish a sharp, sterile blade, cut the stem as close to your substrate as possible. Do not disturb the substrate.
Put your freshly harvested mushrooms in a dehydrator or dehydrate them somehow. You can blow a fan over them until they are dry if you don't have a dehydrator or pack them in a tupperware with silica beads or dry packs to absorb water. Once dry, you can store them however you would store dried shrooms.
Also put some mushrooms in the fridge to eat while they are fresh.
4. Continue Fanning And Misting
After you have harvested, don't stop fanning and misting. Your tub will likely produce a second flush or a second wave of mushrooms. Keep fanning and misting until new fruits pop out of the ground and grow to maturity. Harvest. Do it again and again until the substrate is totally spent.
You will see the substrate shrink as it loses water to the mushrooms. To get a better subsequent flushes, you can dunk the bulk substrate or your cakes by submerging it in sterile water for several hours (at least 6 but sometimes people go more.) There are some dunking solutions people use like 0.5% to 1% bleach or 2-3% hydrogen peroxide to lower the risk of contamination at this stage.
When the substrate has lost all its nutrients, you are done.
5. Make A Spore Print
Save a few fresh mushroom caps after the veil has broken. Place them with the cap up (the gills facing down) on a piece of aluminum foil. That is about 2x the length of the mushroom cap. Let them sit for a day or so, and then remove the caps.
You will see a print made of spores on the aluminum. These are live spores you can save and use for your next growth. Fold over the extra aluminum like a book and save in a jar or use immediately by combining it with sterile sugar + water. The solution will feed the spores and cause them to germinate so you have fresh mycelium to inject into your next growth.
6. Enjoy your shrooms.
CONGRATULATIONS! You have successfully learned how to cultivate magic mushrooms. You have just cultivated your first batch of shrooms.
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