easiest way to grow mushrooms

you would think all shit would be sufficient for fungus growth. :/ thats like asking blind people if they dream.... we need someone to waste their spores- I mean, use their spores on dog shit. We shall see!

 

buying a kit is definitely NOT the cheapest way to grow mushrooms, and you won't get any hands on experience. The only stores I went to were Wal-Mart, Star Nursery (any plant store will do), and Petco/Petsmart (plus the spores online).

i might as well post my mushrooms grow log from last year.. here ya go

1. Mushroom Basics - Understanding the life form your about to grow

==Terms you need to know==
Mycelium -
Colonization - Process of the mycelium taking over the substrate to use for food.
Incubation - Providing optimal colonization conditions, speeding up growth.
Substrate -
fruiting - the process of the mycelium making the mushrooms
mycelium - the white stuff that colonized the substrate and when no substrate is left, starts to fruit the fun-guys

Mushrooms thrive in the dark, and only need about 2-6 hours of light a day, and that is just so they know where to grow towards, they receive no energy or benefit from light but they require it to start growing mushies once they've colonized the substrate.
Mushrooms need oxygen just like humans.
Mushrooms are 90% water and require drying.
Its important to note that mushrooms spores die at temperatures around 95 degrees or higher, they also must be refrigerated. dont even think about ordering the spores in the summer, fucking vegas.

The optimum temperature for incubation is 83-86 degrees.
The optimum temperature for fruiting is 74-78 degrees, or room temp.


Supplies and where they are found:
~1 Pressure cooker - buy one from me or cheap lol, already assembled.

~1/2 pint or 1 pint jars (wide mouth only) - *Walmart or Grocery stores

~perlite, used for humidification - gardenings stores

~vermiculite - gardening stores, should be a rediculous amount in gabe and mikes garage

~brown rice flour - can be found at health food stores, I got mine from Wild Oats market

~Spore syringe - www.ralphstersspores.com for money orders only, www.sporeworks.com for credit cards

~A big Rubbermaid tub(s) that allow no light to come through the sides or bottom, and a clear top. the big like 70 gallon ones. any container this size will work, and DIY is always better if it saves you some bucks.

~Rubber gloves for sterile purposes, or disposable plastic ones.

~Coco-Coir, sometimes sold as "earth-bed", comes in brown bricks and is found at pet stores. its compressed coconut fiber.

~Fish tank heater and 2 small rubbermaid tubs, for incubating. incubating GREATLY reduces colonization times of your jars, basically the time from injecting spores into the jar to the mycelium (1st stage of mushrooms, the fungus part) taking over the substrate and becoming completly white. Optimal temperature is 83-86 degrees but its better to try not to go past 86, so 84-85 degrees is best. You fill 1 tub with some water, just enough for the 2nd tub to float nicely on top without water spilled out the sides, and you put a fishtank heater on the bottom to warm the water up, which in turn warms up the above tub and whatever contents you decide to put in it.

~Food dehydrator for drying, you can also dry them most of the way with a fan but you will need dessicant (white rock stuff that absorbs moisture) to dry them the rest of the way. if using dessicant you will need a dessicant chamber, which is basically a bowl or small tub with dessicant on the bottom, and a screen over that for the mushrooms to sit on.

~Pure honey (dont need that much)

~Micropore tape (medical tape, the kind that allows air to go through or breathes)

~1/4, 1/2, and 1 cup measuring cups


==Beginner's Guide to Growing Mushrooms: PF Cakes==
: Main Supplies : Reason : Where to find
:-----------------------------------:--------------------:----------------------------------------------------------
: Spore Syringe : Seeds : www.sporeworks.com or www.ralphstersspores.com
: Pressure Cooker [PC] : Sterilization : Got mine from www.amazon.com for $120
: Wide Mouth 1/2 Pint Canning Jars* : Misc : Wal-Mart, Grocery stores
: Large tub (Rubbermaid)** : Fruiting Chamber : Wal-Mart, or find a tub to use and clean it
: Vermiculite [Verm] : Holds Moisture : Home Depot has giant bags for around $20
: Brown Rice Flour [BRF]*** : Nutrients : Online Mycology Store, got mine from www.mycosupply.com
: Perlite : Maintains Humidity : Star Nursery
: Spray Bottle : Maintains Humidity : Wal-Mart
: Lysol or Oust : Air Cleaner : Wal-Mart
: Latex Gloves : Sterile : Wal-Mart
: Mixing Bowl : Mix BRF+Verm : Wal-Mart
: Measuring Cup : Proper Ratios : Wal-Mart
: Duct Tape : Misc : Wal-Mart
: Tin Foil : Misc : Wal-Mart
: Nail : Poke Holes in lids : Anywhere
: White Vinegar : Add before PC'ing : Anywhere (prevents calcium build-up in the PC)

* Regular 1/2 Pint Jars work too.
** Any big container can be used really, but light has to be able to go through the lid, and the sides should block out light especially if your growing in bulk. But for a PF cake terrarium a clear tub would work just as fine.
*** If you don't want to order Brown Rice Flour online you can go to Albertsons and buy Long Grain Brown Rice and grind it up
in a coffee grinder.

--Making the Jars--

Poke 4 holes in each lid of each jar, right on where the flat part of the lid ends and starts to go up. this isso you can inject spores in each hole later on.
Get a large mixing bowl and a large area to work on, and youll probably want to lay down some newspaper or something for easy cleanup.
The ratio is as follows:
1/2 cup vermiculite
1/4 cup brown rice flour
1/4 cup water
double these ratios if your using Pint jars

total for 11 jars (1 for liquid culture)
5.5 cups verm
2 3/4 cups brf
2 3/4 cups water

so if your doing 12x 1/2 pint jars, mix in 6 cups Verm, 3 cups BRF, and 3 cups water.
Mix the dry ingredients first.
Put the mixture into the jars, do not pack the mixture down at all it needs to be airy. leave about a half inch of room on top, and fill it with straight vermiculite. this serves as a filter for contaminants. Slap the lids on. Now after this pressure cook all the jars at 15psi for 45minutes. Let them cool overnight.

--Injecting the Spores--
When doing this, you want to be in a very clean room, and spraying with lysol beforehand helps but dont go crazy with it. Make sure the window is closed, noone else is there, have clean clothes on and clean hands.

Get a lighter and sterilize the needle of the spore syringe by heating it until its red hot at the end, then squirt a tiny amount of spores or mycelium out to cool it off. now immediately inject 1/4cc of solution into each hole. try not to inject too much, my first time i accidently squirted about half a syringe into a jar lol. all you need is about 1cc per jar total. spread evenly in 4 holes it colonizes quicker. Do not worry about taping the holes as the mycelium needs air, and the vermiculite layer should keep out most bacteria and stuffs.

The incubation period is the longest part. It can take up to a month or longer for the jars to incubate. Once the mycelium has colonized all of the substrate and has started to form tiny pins, it will take 3-5 days for fully grown mushrooms to form.

---

--Liquid Mycelium Culture--

Making a liquid culture - getting the most out of your spores
If your growin alot, or even a little but indefinitly, DO THIS it will save you HELLA money. take a pint jar and fill it with water. now add a very small amount of pure honey, about 5% in ratio to all the water in there. mix is up by shaking it around. poke a hole in the top of the jar with a nail. you can microwave it to sterilize it or pressure cook it (10psi for 15 minutes, any longer and the honey carmelizes). personally i always pressure cooked it, as pressure cooking is a sure-fire way to kill all endospores and bacteria that may fuck your shit up. after its sterilized, let it cool down overnight as heat kills spores, and inject 1cc-2cc's of spore solution into it. put micropore tape over the hole. let it sit in a dark spot for about a week, but check on it every day and shake it around alot. within a week youll see a bunch of shit floating around, you can now take a syringe and suck it up, and inject it into jars just like you would with spores. also, since the spores are already germinated, your injecting mycelium, reducing colonization by 3-5 days!

--Bulk Growing--

If your doing bulk tubs you will need polyfill (100% polyester) and some calcium carbonate as a PF buffer (dont NEED necessarily but it helps). With the polyfill, you cut holes in the side of the tub (4-8 quarter to half dollar sized holes) and stuff them with polyfill, allowing the mushrooms to breathe and get gas exchange. You will not need perlite if your doing bulk tubs.


For a bulk tub, after the jars are colonized and ready, take them out and put in a big ziploc bag, being careful not to let contamination in. seal it as quickly as possible, and crumble the cakes up real good and evenly. Pour a thin layer of wet vermiculite on the bottom evenly. Then put your crumbled cake peices over it. Then put a mixture of coco-coir and vermiculite on top, and leave in the dark until you see small patches of white on top.

For the Coco-Coir/Verm casing layer
get a knife and cut some peices of coco-coir off and put in a large mixing bowl. boil some water and add it into the bowl, which will expand the coconut fiber and form a muddy mixture. now add about 40% vermiculite, which will act to absorb water and act as filler for the casing layer. also add about 5% calcium carbonate, as a PH buffer.
70%coir/30%vermiculite to 60%coir/40% vermiculite

You should pick them as soon as the cap tears away from the stem, for maximum potency, or you can let them grow a little bigger for maximum weight (for sellin ). Dont let them mature for too long, because they will drop spores everywhere (dark purple stuff) and it makes a mess.

Perlite is used for cakes, you get it wet and use a strainer to get the excess water out so its moist, not soaked, and apply a 1/2 inch to an inch thick layer on the bottom of the tub. H202 (Hydrogen Peroxide) can be added to decrease the risk of contamination in the perlite. The perlite is small very porous volcanic rock that evaporates the water, creating a humid environment. With cakes, you will need to open the top lid of the tub 2-4 times a day for about 10-20 seconds and 'fan' out the carbon dioxide created by the fungus, as they breathe like us.

---Glossary

~ Abort - A mushroom that for some reason ceases to grow and never reaches maturity. Small but more potent.

~ Bacteria - Unicellular microorganisms that may cause contamination in culture work. Grain spawn is very easily contaminated with bacteria. On the other hand there are some bacteria that are needed for the fruiting of agaricus. These are present in the casing soil

~ Carbon dioxide - CO2. Formed during respiration, combustion, and organic decomposition. Mushrooms breathe just like we do, and require gas exchange to grow. If the CO2 built up it would stunt their growth.

~ Casing - Some mushrooms need a covering layer of soil with a specific microflora for Fruiting. Casing materials include peat, coco coir and vermiculite; additives include calcium carbonate (hydrated lime) and crushed oystershells.

~ Colonization - The period of the mushroom cultivation starting at Inoculation during which the mycelium grows through the Substrate until it is totally permeated and overgrown.

~ Endospore - A metabolically dormant state by which some bacteria become more resistant to heat, chemicals, and other adverse conditions. Given the proper conditions, they will reactivate (germinate) and begin to multiply. Many bacterial endospores cannot be destroyed at boiling temperatures. This is important to mycologists because grains contain a high number of dormant endospores, though rice often contains few to none; thus, many grains must be pressure cooked to achieve sterilization, whereas brown rice flour may simply be boiled (not recommended).

~ FC - A Fruiting Chamber is an enclosed space with high humidity and fresh air exchange where mushrooms may fruit under proper conditions.

~ Fungus - A group of organisms that includes mushrooms and molds. These organisms decompose organic material, returning nutrients to the soil.

~ Germination - The spreading of hyphae from a spore (comparable to a plant seed sprouting its first root).

~ Inoculation - Introduction of spores or spawn into substrate. Basically injecting spores from a syringe into a jar.

~ Incubation - The period after inoculation (preferably at 82-84 degrees fahrenheit) during which the Mycelium grows vegetatively. Anywhere from 72-84 degrees is fine really, just dont go over 85 degrees.

~ Liquid culture [LC] - An LC of mycelium suspended in a nutritious liquid, for use as an inoculant. For example, you could inject 1cc of spores into an LC and they would germinate and grow off of the honey. You can then take a clean empty syringe and suck the mycelium into it, then inject into jars. By doing this you not only multiply the amount of shrooms you canmake but you speed up colonization time by 3-5 days skipping germination.

~ Mycelium - The portion of the mushroom that grows underground. Plants have roots; mushrooms have mycelium. Mycelium networks can be huge. The largest living thing in the world is a single underground mycelium complex.

~ Perlite - Perlite is a very light mineral, often found next to the vermiculite in gardening stores. It has millions of microscopic pores, which when it gets damp, allow it to 'breathe' lots of water into the air, aiding in humidification, which is beneficial to fruiting.

~ Pinhead - A term to describe a very young mushroom, so-named for the pin-sized developing cap.

~ Pressure cooker - A pot with a tight lid in which things can be cooked quickly with steam under higher pressure. The reason for it is that at 15 PSI (pound per square inch) pressure the water boils at a higher temperature (250°F, 121°C) than at ambient pressure.(212°F, 100°C). In mushroom cultivation used to thoroughly sterilize substrates and agar media. The only 100% sure way to sterilize grains.

~ Psilocybin [O-phosphoryl-4-hydroxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine]- Hallucinogenic organic compound found in some mushrooms. Mushroom potency decreases slowly over time, but Psilocybin is slow to degrade over time, and can stay active in dried mushrooms for a year, maybe two. It is converted into Psilocin when ingested.
~ Psilocin [4-hydroxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine] = Hallucinogenic organic compound found in some mushrooms. Psilocin degrades at a much faster rate than Psilocybin, making fresh mushrooms the most potent. Within a week about 50% or more of the Psilocin has degraded. It is interesting that both have DMT at the end of their chemical names.

~ Rice cake - Many of the growing methods involve making a 'cake' of brown rice flour( BRF ), vermiculite and water, and injecting it with mushroom spores.

~ Spawn - Culture of mycelium on grain, sawdust, etc., used to inoculate the final substrate, or bulk. For example, colonized jars can be crumbled up and 'spawned' to substrate with a ratio of 1:3, multiplying the amount of nutrients and moisture to allow for bigger and more amounts of mushrooms. You can learn that later after you've grown mushrooms straight off of the cakes.

~ Bulk Substrate - Whatever you're spawning the mushrooms to. The reason for doing this is to multiply the amount of nutrients and moisture available to the mushrooms. Must be pasteurized.

~ Spore print - A collection of spores taken from a mushroom cap, often collected on sterile card stock, aluminum foil, or some other flat surface.
~ Spore syringe - A solution of spores collected in a syringe, usually scraped from a spore print under sterile conditions.

~ Spores - Means of sexual reproduction for mushrooms and many other fungi. Comparable to a plant seed, save that spores combined sexually with one another after germination; there are no "male" and "female" spores as with seeds and pollen or sperm and eggs, but compatability is complicated. Spores are microscopic, and any visible clump of spores is in fact a collection of many thousands or millions of spores.

~ Sterilization - Completely destroying all micro organisms present, by heat (autoclave, pressure cooker). Spawn substrate always has to be sterilized prior to inoculation.

~ Pasteurization - Heat treatment applied to a Bulk Substrate to destroy unwanted organisms but keeping a reduced concentration of favorable ones alive. The temperature range is 60°C to 80°C(140°F-175°F). The treatment is very different from sterilization, which aims at destroying all organisms in the substrate. Must be heated at least 1 hour, but not over 2 hours.

~ TiT - "Tub in Tub", refers to an incubator consisting of 2 plastic tubs and an aquarium heater.

~ Veil - When a mushroom is growing, the edges of the cap are joined to the stem. As the mushroom grows larger, the cap spreads and the edges tear away, often leaving a very thin veil of material hanging from the stem.

~ Vermiculite - A highly absorbent material made from puffed mica. Used in rice cakes to hold water, and to stop the cake being too sticky. The mycelium likes room to breathe and grow.

~ WBS - Wild bird seed. Millet-based birdseed; used as Spawn and Substrate in mushroom cultivation. Birdseed will colonize twice as fast as BRF cakes and produce 2-4x as much spawn, but is only used for bulk growing. I wouldn't use it as a substrate.

~ Yield - Total weight of a harvest.

 

oh yea total yield after I was finished growing was 8.7 ounces dry, in other words a half a pound and 20 grams

 

MeatWagon thank you a ton! That really helps out man, love you

 

np, thats been sitting in a .txt file on my comp for a year lol. i wrote it originally for a friend who was going to grow of course he didn't even try after he saw all the stuff he would have to buy lol.