Restructured Guide On Growing Bulk Psilocybe Cubensis Mushrooms

This guide was created by "Unnamed User". It is a very good guide information-wise, but had many grammatical and organizational errors. This was simply due to the fact that the OP was busy and when he went back to edit, the editing period had passed. So I'm just going to edit and improve upon what he already wrote so we can all get the best experience from his original intentions. I will try to keep it as close to his grammatical personality as possible, with a few of my own changes throughout that may help with structure and flow for the guide. It won't be perfect, but good enough. Enjoy.


Introduction from Unnamed User:

I’m hoping this will be a complete and comprehensive guide on how to grow 3/4 of a pound of Psilocybe Cubensis mushrooms in under 3 months start to finish. This will also be a fairly involved crash course on growing Magic Mushrooms. I see some old outdated information on Cubensis mushrooms and thought I would help this community out with some newer methods.





Index

1. Construction of a glove box
2. Constructing Mason Jar Lids
3. Source of inoculation
A: Spore syringe from print
B: Liquid Culture (LC)

4. Spawn Choice
A: Grain Prep (rye and WBS)
B: Cakes
5. How to prepare a Monotub and pasteurize your coir substrate.





Terminology: Descriptions/definitions relating to Mycology and general background for basic understanding.






Trichoderma- fungi that are present in nearly all soils and other diverse habitats. In soil, they frequently are the most prevalent culturable fungi. Somewhat of a predatory fungi or contaminant as it will ruin your mycelia growth.





Glove Box, GB- in reference to mycology, it is a sealed protectively lined compartment having holes to which are attached gloves for use in handling sensitive materials inside the compartment.




Tyvek- is a brand of flashspun high-density polyethylene fibers, a synthetic material; It is often seen used as housewrap, a synthetic material used to protect buildings during construction. We will be using Tyvek as a filtering component on our lids.

Permatex 81160 High-Temp Red RTV Silicone Gasket- Will be referred to later as "RTV".
A product you can find on amazon that allows you to make any size/ shape gasket. It is formulated for hi-temp applications and heavy duty use, so it will be more than enough for our needs. It is much more reliable than standard gaskets that may come with mason jars, as this will resist cracking, shrinking and migrating. It has a temperature range of -65F to 650F. Can be used for Valve covers, oil pans, timing covers, water pumps, thermostat housings, transmission pans, and creating a protective seal on your mason jar lids for excellent Mycology hobbies.



Spore Syringe- A spore syringe is a mixture of sterile water and mushroom spores, contained in a syringe ready to be used for inoculation. Usually the spores in the syringe are from a "spore print".


Liquid Culture- Liquid culture consists of a sterilized nutritious solution, usually a mixture of water and various kinds of sugars, which has been inoculated with fungus spores or mycelium. Once colonized, liquid culture is used to inoculate PF jars or Grain Spawn.




Cakes- "substrate cake" A substrate cake is a form fitted block of substrate intended to be colonized by mushroom mycelium. Most commonly, a cake is made of brown rice flour and vermiculite as in the famous PF Tek, but a cake can be constructed of any material that mycelium can colonize and hold together.




Inoculation- This is the process of introducing spores or mycelium into a substrate.

Spore Print- the powdery deposit obtained by allowing spores of a fungal fruit body to fall onto a surface underneath. It is an important diagnostic character in most handbooks for identifying mushrooms. We can take these spores and add them to a syringe for inoculation.




Multispore- This simply is when you use many spores to inoculate. Each individual spore has its own genetic individualities when it comes to size, growth speed, Psilocybin potency etc. So a spore print/spore syringe is a multispore inoculation. Your yield will have fruiting bodies that can differ quite a bit from each other. However you can take a sample from an individual mushroom and turn it into a Liquid culture (cloning), and your entire yield will more or less be of identical quality.

[SIZE=11pt]Coir[/SIZE][SIZE=11pt]- a soil amendment that comes from the fibrous husk of a coconut.[/SIZE]

Monotub- The reason people like mono's is because they are "set and forget". Also known more for bulk production. You should make specific holes in your tub (which will later promote healthy humidity) and then tape them up until fruiting, at which point you want to stuff them with poly fill. You should also put your tub in a dark place with no airflow (most people put a it in a trash bag, just to be sure) which you will take it out of and expose it to light and some air flow to induce fruiting.

[SIZE=11pt]1. Creating a Still Air Box/Glove Box[/SIZE]​

A Still Air Box or Glove Box (SAB/GB) is a mycologist’s best friend. It will help prevent Trichoderma (this is a common soil contaminant that can ruin your batch). So to safeguard against this, we use the Glove Box. There are millions of particles of contaminants all through out the air just waiting to contaminate your jars and make them all sorts of funky colors. The principal behind a GB is that there is no moving air in in and all the mold and bacteria particles have settled on the ground. You are now working in an area that is virtually contaminant free. A GB is very easy to construct. Go out and get a Rubbermaid storage container. A clear one is better so you can see through (although it wont be extremely clear) but you can use a colored one and cut a hole in the top and cover with saran wrap ( Just make sure the saran wrap doesn’t get punctured). Cut 2 holes in the sides of your GB big enough that you can stick your hand thru and that is pretty much it. Personally I would use sterilized latex gloves when using the box so you have even less chance for contamination. To prepare your GB for use, sterilize it with soapy water with a ratio of 1:10--bleach: water. Or you can just use the aerosol form of Lysol. Wait 5 minutes and go to work. If using Lysol wait at least 10 minutes for it to air out. You don't want to spark your lighter and blow yourself up.

[SIZE=11pt]2. Constructing Lids[/SIZE]​

Items needed:

-mason jar lids
-1/4 inch and 3/8 inch drill bits
-drill
-RTV high temp silicone gasket silicone or any silicone rated above 280F (Purchase here)
-Tyvek ( a brand of flash-spun high-density polyethylene fibers, a synthetic material used to protect buildings during construction.)
*You can get Tyvek from USPS envelopes or you can buy construction Tyvek here. When using the Tyvek, inspect the piece you will be using. Make sure you find no holes or rips on it.

-Cut a ¼ inch hole in between the middle of the jar and the lip of it.
-Drill the 3/8 hole across from it. Take RTV and use it to glue a Tyvek quarter sized piece over the 3/8 inch hole.
-Use the RTV to fill in the ¼ inch hole with globs sticking out both sides of it. Your lids should look like this.



In this picture I only used Tyvek on one side, however I normally use it on both sides. The other material on lids pictured here is synthetic filter material designed for mycology. Tyvek works fine and is free for Americans at their post office (or here on Amazon).

[SIZE=11pt]3. Source of Inoculation[/SIZE]​

*Now to inoculate your cakes or jars you are going to need a source of inoculation. I am going to go into 2 different methods of inoculation. No matter what you are going to need a spore print or a syringe

[SIZE=11pt]A. Spore Syringe From Print[/SIZE]
[SIZE=11pt]B. Liquid Culture[/SIZE]





How to make a syringe


Items you will need inside your Glove Box:

-Spore print
-Shot glass(Make sure you clean it out well with bleach and water)
-Scalpel or knife something metal to scrape the spores off of the print
-Lighter
-Syringe filled with clean sterile water

Put a pot of water to boil on the stove. Once boiling suck water into the syringe and expel it into the sink. Do this 5-6 times to make sure the syringe is clean and the water doesn’t become contaminated by the inside of the syringe itself. After you're sure the syringe is good to go, leave the water in the syringe to cool. You now have sterile water in a syringe. Place all items into your Glove Box. First open your print so that you will be able to get at the spores. Flame sterilize your scraping tool. Hold the tip of the lighter flame to your metal instrument until it is glowing red hot. Re-sterilize your shot glass with an alcohol wipe. Scrape a small portion of spores into your shot glass. The less spores in your syringe is better. Less genetic competition. Heat the needle tip red hot and slowly expel the water in your syringe into your shot glass with spores. Be careful when you first depress the plunger. I’ve pushed too hard and water and spores go everywhere. Stir the mix up with the needle tip and suck it back into your syringe. Let your syringe sit for 24 hours to re-hydrate the spores.





How to make a Liquid Culture(LC)

LC (Liquid Culture) is a great way to have a lot of inoculate ready. It also has the added benefit of growth showing within 24 hours.

Items needed for a Liquid Culture:

-500 or 600 ML of water
-Source of sugar
-A: Karo 1 tablespoon
-B: Extra Light Malt Extract or Light Malt Extract (ELME/LME) 1 gram
-C: Turbinado sugar also referred to as Sugar in the Raw (SITR). You can get free 5g packets from Starbucks, 10g total needed
-Mason jar
-Lid as built above
-Piece of glass or marble

If using karo or SITR use 500 ML of water if using ELME use 600 ml of water. Pour water into the mason jars. You may make 2 if not using quart mason jars. Add marble or piece of glass. This will help break apart the mycelium as in grows in the LC. PC the LC for 20 min at 15 PSI. Inoculate with 1 ml of spore solution from a spore syringe. Let this grow until nice and thick with white mycelium. Just because a Liquid Culture looks clean, doesn’t mean it is. Make sure to shoot one test jar to test the LC. Make sure it grows nice and healthy without contaminants. Once you have a clean tested LC you can store this for years in your fridge.


So you have the choice of using the LC or 1 ML of Multi Spore(MS) solution from your syringe for every jar. There are several other methods of inoculation but I am just going to stick with these two forms for now. I can give a crash course on agar, GLC or G2G if the need arises.









4. Spawn Choices

A: Grain Prep
This is the same for Rye or Wild Bird Seed(WBS) with one exception for the boil. Rye I simmer for 20 minutes. Wbs I just bring to a boil and turn off. Measure out your grain. Either rye or WBS I try 2 cups per quart. Depending on how much moisture is present it will swell to different volumes. Just A good starting point is 2 cups per quart. Pour the dry grain into a bucket and fill 1/3 over with boiling water. Let this sit for 1.5 hours or more and it will swell up. Strain out the water and put into a large pot and cover the grain with water and some. Bring to a boil. If you are doing WBS turn off the stove and remove from the element once it reaches a boil. If doing rye turn the heat down and simmer for 20 minutes. Strain the hot grain into a colander and let sit for an hour but mixing it up every 5-10 minutes. Load your jars with your prepared grain 2/3 rds full. Cover your lids with aluminum foil and Pressure Cook(PC) for 1.5 hours at 15 PSI

B: Cakes
If you have never grown mushrooms before I would suggest using CAKES. Grain is a little more advanced. To continue on with this tek you will need 20-30 fully colonized cakes to use as spawn. You will not need a Pressure Cooker (PC) to do cakes. Things you will need though.


Directions

-Take the Vermiculite, Brown Rice Flour, and 300ml of Water and combine them in a mixing container. Mix them all thoroughly until the mixture is uniform.
[SIZE=10.5pt]-Fill your Mason Jar until there is 1/2inch-1inch empty space at the top.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=10.5pt]-[/SIZE][SIZE=10.5pt]Wipe the band completely free of any moisture or vermiculite/BRF mix. If there is any leftover, it can become a possible vector of contamination.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=10.5pt]-[/SIZE][SIZE=10.5pt]Pierce 4 ¼ inch holes at four points close to the band of the lid.[/SIZE]




How to Sterilize Cakes


-Cover the jars with 1-4 layers of aluminum foil.
-Take a large pot and somehow elevate the bottom of the pot. I use jar bands, but you can use many layers of aluminum foil a tea towel. The goal is to prevent the jars from coming into direct contact with the pot.
-Elevate jars from direct contact and fill the pot 3-4 inches with water.
-Get the water boiling nicely and put on a tight fitting lid and put the heat on medium. -Keep the jars in the boiling steam for 1.5 hours. Make sure to keep checking to make sure it doesn’t run dry on you.
-After 1.5 hours turn off the heat and empty the water out. Let the jars cool down.



How to inoculate the cakes

-Once the jars are cool put them into your Glove Box. While in the GB use your lighter to get your needle tip red hot (you can also wipe the needle with an alcohol wipe, wait one minute, and then sterilize again with the lighter).
-Take the aluminum foil off of the lids and put the needle into one of the four ¼ inch holes and squirt ¼ml into each hole against the glass. *If you’re using LC I would use 1 ml per hole.
-Repeat until you have inoculated all four holes in all of your jars.
***Make sure to re-sterilize your needle after every jar to prevent cross contamination.

In 1-10 days you will start to see growth. I’ve had cakes take anywhere from 8 days to 45 days to fully colonize. Leave your cakes receiving ambient light and at room temperature.








5. How to prepare your Monotub and pasteurize your coir



Items needed:

-5-10 liter spawn jars of Cubensis spawn. 3-6 actual liters of spawn if you're using bags.

*Mushies don't need a lot of light and the best light for shrooms is a 6500k light above and off to the side of your tub

-50-75 liter Rubbermaid tote. Clear is best but you can cut the top out and tape saran wrap to allow light. Polyfill--AKA pillow stuffing
-Duct Tape
-Trash bag
-Something you can use to cut 5cm holes on your new monotub. You can heat a knife(can be messy and permanently discolor the knife), or use a drill bit that can cut decent holes. Whatever gets the job done.
-Tomato paste that can be heated on the stove.
-650g of dry coir.
* Note: a lot of coir bought at hydro stores have been infected with Trichoderma, which is absolutely no good. You need to get coir without Trichoderma in it or sterilize it to ensure there is none left.
-2 Liters of vermiculite
-20 liter bucket
[SIZE=10.5pt]-OPTIONAL- 1/2 cup of gypsum. You can obtain gypsum by taking a piece of drywall and beating it with a hammer and removing the paper. Just make sure the drywall doesn’t have green tape on it cause that means anti-fungal. No good for Shrooms. Or you can buy some organic gardening quality from [/SIZE][SIZE=11pt]here[/SIZE][SIZE=10.5pt] in pellet form. Just crush them into a powder.[/SIZE]





Prepare the tubs



[SIZE=10.5pt]1. Cut holes in the Monotub.[/SIZE]
You need to cut six 5cm hole in your monotub. The placement of your holes depend on your sub depth.
Then two 5cm holes on the long sides of the tub about 2-3 cm above the top of your substrate depth.
One 5cm hole on each end about 5 cm from the top of the tub.

*We are going to use a 9-10 cm sub depth so the center of your 5 cm holes on the sides is going to be about 12-13 cm from the bottom of the tub. These holes allow CO2 to exit the tub.

You want the top of your holes about 2-5 cm from the top of the tub. This is for the 1 hole on each end of your tub. This hole is to allow Fresh Air Exchange to enter your mono and push the CO2 laden air at the bottom of your tub out.


[SIZE=10.5pt]2. Trash bag liner.[/SIZE]
Take the new trash bag and open it up in your tub to create a liner for it. Taping the bag about 12 cm up the side of the tub.

Your monotub is complete.




How to prepare your substrate

-Put 4 liters of water on the stove to boil.
-Break up your dry coir(650g) into smaller pieces
-Place coir and 2 liters of verm and 1/2 cup of gypsum into the bucket(the gypsum is completely optional).
-Pour 4 liters of boiling water into the bucket and give it a good stir.
-Cover with a lid or something and let sit for 45 minutes to an hour.
-Stir the mixture up and let sit 4-6 hours until cool.

*The more spawn you use (remember you want it spaced out), the faster your tub will colonize. I like to use 7 liter jars of spawn or 4.5 liters of actual spawn. You could use 15-30 cakes as your spawn if you wanted to. Take the cakes and put them into brand new big freezer bags and break them apart.

-Tape up all the holes you cut with packing tape.
-Take your cooled coir/verm mixture and dump it into the tub. Leave aside about 4 cups and dump all the rest into your tub. You will use the 4 cups to cover your spawn/sub mix so that you cover any exposed grains/spawn.
-Mix your spawn in and with clean hands or gloves mix up the spawn and substrate.
-Take the remaining coir/verm mix and cover up all exposed spawn. Exposed spawn leads to Trichoderma.

*Leave your mono at room temp receiving ambient light. In several days you should start to see mycelium pop thru the surface. In about 10-14 days depending on the amount of spawn you used you will see the mono fully colonized. Once your tub is fully colonized you want to let it consolidate for 5 days or until you see pins whichever comes first.

Take the tape off the holes and place in polyfill into your tub. This is where "dialing" in your tub comes into play. What you want is to be able to spray the whole mono tub until it is quite glistening with water but no pooling is occurring and within 12-16 hours the sub is dry again. This is a properly dialed in tub. To achieve this you have to either put more polyfill in the holes or remove poly until you have got your tub "dialed" in. You want to have your fan in the room but not pointed at your tub.

Within 3-7 days you should see pins. With a 55 liter mono I get 7-9 oz dry first flush and 3-6 second then toss them cause space is at a premium and 3rd and 4rth flushes are usually really lame. I usually get wall to wall pins on the first flush and much bigger Shrooms second.

Fanning and misting is beneficial to tubs but not necessary with a properly dialed in tub.




From day of inoculation to .75 lb crop 10 weeks (not enough storage allowed for more pics, so see the OP for yield pics)
http://i52.tinypic.com/149v2ab.jpg

 

You have gone to a lot of work and research but there are much easier methods, less expensive and much better. I started experimenting in the 90's because I was looking for a chronic pain solution which I never found. I did Isolate and father the B+, the Treasure Coast cubensis, several other excellent strains of cubes and found Pan tropicalis which is even admitted now by the jealous egotistical people in this field which is something I still don't understand. I never wanted to vend but wished to share the excellent strains with the world. I gave free spores for months to 3
newbies wanting to become spore vendors and never made a dime. The deal was credit me with the isolation. Only one kept the agreement and that was hawkseye.com he listened and learned and still has the purest strains to the masters there are. i have checked hundreds of spores and some are not even what they say or so degraded they are like the PF "PUKE" shroom. I can tell and teach you how to produce 1/4 LB dried per day with minimum effort if you care to learn. It just takes a good pressure cooker with pressure and temp gauge. Quart jars, Birdseed, Plastic shipping tape, shoebox sized plastic containers, large store sized plastic containers and florescent light. I have been diagnosed with Lung cancer and have 12-18 months. I would love to share what i know with the right apprentice. email me if interested. It's all true believe it or not. Be careful about the other teks lighting. UV will wash out all the active ingredients in a matter of a couple hours. Be in no hurry to colonize as the active ingredients don't even produce measurable amounts for 30 days. I'm relocating to Costa Rica but email is all you need. I was one of jerry's kids and miss him terribly......Mr.g

 

First off nice rewrite of my tek.

Realmrg. Contact me