36fuckin5's bulk mushroom grow guide

Discussion in 'Magic Mushrooms' started by 36fuckin5, Nov 13, 2009.

  1. 36fuckin5

    36fuckin5 Alchemycologist

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    It's been a while since I wrote my guide and I've learned a thing or two since then. Or maybe even three. I lost count at two. Either way, here's an update on my old guide. Once again, this is just a compilation of other peoples' ideas with my twist on it. No materials or ingredients list. You just have to read.

    I wish I had pics for all of this, but I don't. You can Google pics of any step you need.

    I'm not including sterile procedure here yet, but you can find all kinds of info on it online in various places. By the end of this, I may do a post on it. Who knows? Not me, so definitely not you either. But here goes.

    One thing you're gonna need is spores. Without spores, you can't grow mushrooms. Psilocybe Cubensis does very well with this method, and will be the example, but this will work for other species as well.

    So order yourself a nice, clean, dark syringe of your favorite strain. Doesn't matter which strain, but Penis Envy will be a little harder to work with than others, so I'd stay away from it until you have experience.

    Glove Box

    First off, make a glove box. It'll save you so much hassle you wouldn't believe it. A glove box is basically just a big box in which you can create a still-air environment, or at least something very close. This is very, very simple to do and will save you lots of time fighting off contams. There's simply no reason not to have one.

    Get a big, clear plastic tub. The bigger the better, basically, as long as its clear. The ones with locking handles are best, but any will do. You will also need a couple of large plastic cups (like the King sized drinks from Burger King) and some long latex gloves, like the kind used for doing dishes. The longer the better.

    Flip it on its lid and measure out 2 arm holes. Make sure theyre placed so that you can reach the entire inside of the box. Trace around the lip of the cup at these spots and carefully cut them out. Take the cups and cut them down so that theyre about 2.5 inches long from the lip. Get the gloves and cut them off so that theyre as long as possible, but still have holes big enough to fit your entire hand through.

    Carefully stretch the gloves around the lip of the cups so that when youre looking at the top of the cup, the cuffs are coming out at you. Insert the cuffs into the glove box with the cuffs facing in. The lip of the cup should grab the hole, and the glove should start to make a seal. It may be hard to get in. Thats a good thing. Use some RTV sealant to seal the cuffs inside and out and you should be good to go in 24 hours.

    Before each use, spray it down with bleach water and leave sitting wet for 10 minutes or so. To get everything in it, simply put it all on the lid, spray it down, then put the bottom part of it on. The tub sits upside down while its in use. Make sure to still wear latex gloves and wash your hands with alcohol frequently. This type of glove box doesnt allow for the use of flame sterilization. You would either set your glove box on fire or burn holes in the cuffs.

    Liquid Culture

    So, you've got your spores, now you need to get them growing. Spores from a vendor are expensive, so we're gonna stretch them out a little by making a liquid culture (LC.) Your LC will make colonizaion lightning fast, too. So LCs are a good thing all around.

    [​IMG]

    You want to start by making your lids. This is a fun process. Get yourself a half-pint Mason jar, or some other small glass jar with a sealable lid. Punch 2 holes in the lid, about 1/8" diameter. The size doesn't have to be exact, but make sure it's workable. Once you have your holes, you wanna make some self-healing injection ports. This is easy as pie. Just get a tube of high-temp RTV sealant and put a big glob over each of the holes. It should stick up about 1/4" off the lid. Let it set for a couple hours, then do the same on the other side. Then let the whole thing dry for 24 hours. These ports are just fucking awesome, because you can inoculate through them and they seal themselves as you pull the syringe out. They don't allow for gas exchange, but we'll take care of that.

    Next, you're gonna need an airport syringe. Take an old 10 ml syringe and pull out the plunger. Wipe the inside with alcohol then fill it with polyfill. It doesn't have to be crammed in, but it should be good & snug so that it can filter the air. Wrap it in foil to be pressure cooked (PC).

    Now it's time to make the actual LC. Yay! In your jar, you want to mix a 4% solution by weight of Karo light corn syrup and organic honey in even proportions to distilled or spring water. NOT TAP WATER. You should never use tap water for anything. You just never know what's in it. Some people can get away with it, and if you want to experiment, it's on you. I just buy some. way you measure your solution is to put the empty Mason jar on a scale. Tare the scale, then fill it about halfway with water. Top it up to a number that's easy to work with (like 40 grams instead of 36) then put the water in a clean glass or something. Put the jar back on the scale and add your corn syrup and honey until you have 4% of the weight of water. So if you had 40 grams of water, add 1/2 gram of Karo and 1/2 gram of honey. If you only have one or the other, thats fine. Then pour
    your water back in the jar and mix well.

    Put the lid and band on and you're ready for the PC.

    Throw the LC jar and the airport syringe both in the PC. Add water according to the directions and PC at 10 PSI for 20-30 minutes. Now when I say 20-30 minutes, that doesn't mean from the time the burner gets turned on. That's at least 20 minutes from the time it reaches 10 PSI. Try not to let it go longer than 30 minutes, or caramelization is likely, which isn't a good thing, although it's not horrible if it caramelizes a little bit. If your PC only does 15 PSI, just PC for 15-20 minutes. It should be tinted fairly yellow, or crystal clear if you only used Karo. DO NOT OPEN OR VENT THE PC UNTIL IT DEPRESSURIZED. This will almost certainly crack your jars. There's no need to rush it. This slow process is speeding up everything else immensely. Let the jars cool to room temperature naturally. Dont try to throw them in the fridge. Patience is paramount in this hobby.

    Throw the LC and your airport in the glovebox along with your spore syringe. You've probably noticed that the lids on your jars are completely sealed. This is supposed to happen. Now, at this point, you can try to inoculate with spores, but the vacuum is gonna pull out your entire syringe if you're not careful. It's not that horrible, but it can throw off your sugar percentage. So we use an airport. All you do is unwrap the airport syringe, wipe the tip with alcohol and stick it into one of the holes. It'll equalize pressure and you can proceed. Leave the airport in while you inoculate. Use about 1 cc of spores per LC jar. Cap your spores back up, remove the airport and you're good.

    [​IMG]

    Throw them in the incubator (described in my next post) and incubate at 80 degrees F until you see a good little chunk of white, ropy mycellium at the bottom. At this point, you should gently swirl the LC to distribute the myc and help it grow faster. You can pull some of the LC out at this point and use it, as long as you have enough to get a good bit of myc in the syringe. Use the airport when drawing out LC and always do it in the glove box. It should be fully colonized within 2 weeks to one month from multispore. Even faster with a clone, but we'll get to that later. At full colonization, it can be thrown in the fridge and kept for months.
     
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  2. 36fuckin5

    36fuckin5 Alchemycologist

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    Grain spawn

    First, you need to prep your lids. I like pint wide-mouth jars, but just about any Mason jar will work. The wide-mouth are easier to clean, though. Take the lid and punch 2 holes in it, one in the center and one closer to the side. They should be about 2-3 mm in diameter. Take some high-temp RTV sealant and apply a good glob over one of the holes, like you did for the LC. Do it on both sides and let it cure for 24 hours. After your lid dries, you stuff the open hole fairly tightly with polyfill and load them.

    There are lots of different grains you can use, but we're gonna go with wild bird seed (WBS) this time. Other choices are popcorn, rye berries, wheat berries, milo, millet, rice, cardboard, the list goes on & on.

    First, load your jars about 1/4 to 1/3 full of WBS. Take note of the amount of WBS in the jar. Then add half that amount of water to the jar. For each pint, I do about 100 ml of WBS and about 50 ml of water. Put the lids and bands on, cover the tops with foil and PC for 90 minutes. After the PC comes back to atmospheric pressure, take the jars out and shake the shit out of them. They might look messy, but theyll be fine. I like to shake them every few hours for 24 hours. You can get by with only shaking them right out of the PC and once more 24 hours later, though.

    Once you have sterile grain, you take the jars into your clean glovebox and 'noc them up with either 1-2 CC of spore solution or 2-3 CC of LC. Shake them at 30% and 70% colonization. Once they're completely white, shake them one more time and wait 24 hours. If there are any contaminates, the myc won't recover and shouldn't be used. Now it's time to spawn them.

    Spawning to a bulk substrate

    So, for the bulk substrate, we're going to keep it very simple, since I'm assuming you're new to bulk if you're reading this. We're just gonna use coco coir. Coco coir is compressed coconut husk fibers. It's sold in bricks as reptile bedding in pet shops. It's fairly cheap, and a brick is a good bit of substrate. I get them in 3-packs for about $12. To get what you need off the brick, it's easiest to use a hammer and chisel (or flathead screwdriver) to chip off what you need. You can see how it's layered if you look at the side of the brick, try to chip off the layers.

    Put the coir in a big pot and pour just a little boiling water over it. Go slowly. You're going for field capacity. If it gets too wet, wait till it cools and squeeze it out by the handful into a bowl. Once your coir is at field capacity, add one crushed-up pill of B complex vitamins and field capacity vermiculite at about a 40% ratio to the coir, although this is very loose. If your mix is too wet, add a little dry vermiculite and mix again.

    Load some jars full of this mix and PC for 30 minutes. The lids can just be regular Mason jar lids, no holes needed, or LC lids. If you only have lids with holes, use a Polyfill filter.

    Once that's done, take the jars into the glovebox. Mix the spawn with the bulk substrate in a 2:1 bulk:spawn ratio in a small (shoebox-sized) plastic tub that has been lined with a black trash bag. Save a little bit of the bulk mix to add a 1/2" layer on the top. You don't want it to have myc showing through. Cover with foil and pinhole or 2 for gas exchange. Incubate until it's colonized. It should take less than a week.

    Fruiting chamber

    While you're waiting on colonization, you should go ahead and build your fruiting chamber (FC). This one is called the shotgun FC.

    Get a big (58 qt or so) clear plastic tub (with locking handles if possible.) Put a bunch of 1/8 inch holes on all six sides, about 15-20 per side. Add about 3-4 inches of moistened perlite to the bottom. Put the whole thing up on something so that its lifted at least 2 inches off the platform its sitting on and you're done.

    As long as the humidity in your house is 30% or more, this should provide its own fresh air and keep perfect humidity. It is very advisable to have the platform that its on at least 2 feet off the ground to lower the chance of contams. If you start to notice the condensation disappearing, you can open it and spray a fine mist of water over the whole thing. If the RH in your house is too low, you could get a humidifier for the room. They will make you more comfortable and save on your heating bill anyway.
     
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  3. 36fuckin5

    36fuckin5 Alchemycologist

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    Casing

    Once your tubs are 100% colonized, you can case them. Add 1/2" layer of field capacity vermiculite to the top of the substrate. Then immediately remove the foil and move them to the FC. Then you wait. As long as you don't see contams, your temps are between 65-75 and you have decent FAE and humidity, you should be able to harvest within 2.5 weeks with the slowest strains.

    Harvesting

    They're done when the veils break. Harvest any pins that are left after 2-3 days, or whenever 85% of the mushrooms or more have broken the veil. When you're picking them, you want to gently grab the base of the mushroom or cluster and twist. It should come out fairly easily. Don't pull, you'll tear up your sub more than necessary.

    Dunking

    After each flush, you should dunk & re-case. To dunk, you just fill the small tub with water and place another tub filled with water on top of it for 18-24 hours. Your substrate will shrink up a lot, especially if you have a decent flush, from using up all the water. The dunk will rehydrate it and it will expand a decent bit. Once the time is up, just pour off the water. If you gently hold the substrate back, the vermiculite casing should go with it. Add another casing layer that is not quite at field capacity and return to the FC.

    Drying

    Once you've harvested all your mushrooms, you need to dry them if you plan on keeping them for more than a few days. You should have a lot more than a few days's worth, even if you have a LOT of friends who like to trip. First, you should place them on a piece of cardboard in front of a fan for 24 hours. This will get them most of the way dry. Then put them in a plastic bag with most of the air removed for 24-48 hours. This basically cures them, distributing the rest of the moisture from the inside of the mushrooms. Then place them back in front of the fan until cracker-dry, usually less than 24 hours.
     
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  4. 36fuckin5

    36fuckin5 Alchemycologist

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    Making spore prints

    If youre planning on making prints, I suggest letting the caps go completely plane to get the biggest prints possible. As long as theyre still alive, theyre fine. First, get a plastic tub that will fit however many caps you want to put in it. Then get some foil and cut out squares that are a little bigger than your caps. Wipe the tub and each piece of foil with alcohol and put the lid on it.

    To pick the caps, youll poke each one through the center with a safety pin that has been wiped with alcohol. Wipe one piece of foil you plan on printing on again. Then wipe a sharp pair of scissors with alcohol and quickly cut the cap off as close to the gills as possible. Quickly transfer this cap to the piece of foil that you just cleaned. Youll have to wipe each piece of foil individually and let it dry before setting the cap on it to ensure clean prints.

    Put the lid on the tub, but dont snap it down, and place the whole thing in the glove box along with some print bags for 24-48 hours. After that time, clean up, put on some gloves and quickly bag all the prints. When youre done, label each one with a species name, strain name and a date.

    Making spore syringes

    PC about 70 ml of water in a small jar with 2 RTV ports.

    If its open-faced, take a clean syringe, the jar of sterile water, the print and an airport syringe into the glove box. Use the airport to release the vacuum on the jar of water, then draw the syringe full of sterile water. Crack the bag on the print, then inject all the water into it and seal it back up. Rub the spores off into the water using your fingers on the outside of the bag.

    If its folded, add a shot glass that has been wiped with alcohol and dried in the glove box and a sterile butterknife (pressure cook it in foil at 15 PSI for 20 minutes) to the glove box. Use the same procedure to draw up sterile water, but this time, shoot it into the shot glass. Use the knife to scrape all the spores off the print into the water. Then draw the spore water back up & shoot it back into the glass a few times to get the most spores that you can into the syringe. Once you have the super-dark spore syringe, just inject it back into the jar of water.

    Shake well and use an airport before drawing up spore solution. This is a super easy way to save ready-to-use spore water but not need a whole shitload of syringes.
     
  5. 36fuckin5

    36fuckin5 Alchemycologist

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    Reserved for future use
     
  6. 36fuckin5

    36fuckin5 Alchemycologist

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    Bump for updates.
     
  7. pr0ne420

    pr0ne420 Senior Member

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    Nice dude. Pics?
     
  8. nose

    nose Member

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    good job i would like to add to the casing section that using coco coir along with vermiculite produces better results for swim atleast!
     
  9. 36fuckin5

    36fuckin5 Alchemycologist

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    Sorry, no pics yet. I dont have a camera.

    Coir is NOT casing material. Look at the definition of a casing. It is supposed to be non-nutritious. Coir is nutritious. It is only to be used as a bulk substrate.

    If you want to add something to the casing, use sifted sphagnum peat moss and vermiculite with a little calcium carbonate to balance the pH.
     
  10. 36fuckin5

    36fuckin5 Alchemycologist

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    Wow, I got stickied! Fuck yeah!

    And lucky for you guys, I just got a new phone with a 2 mp camera in it. Ill have pics up sometime in the future.
     
  11. shermin

    shermin Bazooka Tooth

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    how can you grow that many mushrooms and not be able to afford a camera?!

    seeing pictures if this would almost be worth the price of ME buying YOU a camera :)
     
  12. 36fuckin5

    36fuckin5 Alchemycologist

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    It is strictly a not-for-profit hobby.

    Haha, just wait. I have some, just not the whole set yet.
     
  13. deleted

    deleted Visitor

    :cheers2:..
    my gf used to ask why the buds dont flip cash, "but there isnt no spending the cash we got on buds, baby".. "Oh".. :)
     
  14. matt2993

    matt2993 Member

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    Yeah this would definitely be great with pictures
     
  15. 36fuckin5

    36fuckin5 Alchemycologist

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    Pics arent happening. The board limits the number of pics in each post, and the limit is way too low for what I need.
     
  16. AlvisDwinDuscha

    AlvisDwinDuscha Member

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    anyone from new zealand ?
     
  17. hebrewnational00

    hebrewnational00 Senior Member

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    Great detailed guide!
    It may be a little hard to follow for beginners such as myself without pics. Thanks for the info though.
     
  18. deleted

    deleted Visitor

    theres no way to bump a sticky.. :p
     
  19. Ganjabeliever

    Ganjabeliever Advanced Knowledge

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    I just wanna see the mycellium and the mushrooms right before before harvest...
     
  20. deleted

    deleted Visitor

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