Hi, forgive my ignorance. I'm currently growing some shrooms from an online grow kit. My question is this, is there any way to use the mushrooms once grown, to start my own mushroom colony?
One that I can re harvest over and over.

Thanks

There are plenty of ways of propagating mushrooms - spore prints and cloning being the main starting points. Try looking at some of the other threads in this section for ideas. Violet tek and pom tek seem quite popular at the moment.

Mushroom cultivation is both an art and a science (mycology).

Learn about sterile technique if you don't already know!

Good luck in your endeavours, diligence and sincerity will be rewarded.

You could purchase Paul Stamets "Let's grow mushrooms" video. Covers a lot of the basics and even what your asking about. It's a great tool if you're a beginner, such as myself. I'm having great success from most of what I've learned from the videos, and now I have the mycology bug. Very interesting to say the least.

Good luck Brainforest

Edit: that's Marc R. Keith not Paul Stamets....my bad!

Thanks

You can, via spore printing, however you will have to worry about senescence.

Senescence:
the condition or process of deterioration with age.
loss of a cell's power of division and growth.

In layman's terms: the mycelium culture can only be propogated from grow to grow for so long, depending on the culture (which is generally unknown and variable), before it weakens and becomes unusable. I've heard estimates of about 20 times, but I have no evidence that this number is true. You can defeat this by using master culture slants.

Master Culture Slant: similar to using petri dishes with agar to isolate a culture, you can use master culture slants, stored in your refrigerator to slow the growth of the mycelium you store in it, allowing you to reuse the "master" culture many many times--thus allowing you to continue growing a precious strain for many many years.

Spore Printing:
When the caps spread and begin to drop their spores, carefully cut one off and place it on a piece of tin foil inside a SAB (still air box) or inside a sealed mason jar. Sterility is of course still important during these steps. After the cap has finished dropping it's spores, seal the tin foil and store inside a plastic bag inside your refrigerator. You can then use these spores to create new grows, however you wish.