Kungpow’s Start to Finish Easy Bulk Mushroom Method

**Please note that this guide is to be used where the cultivation of psilocybe cubensis is legal. Depending on local and federal laws the practices contained in this document may be illegal. I do not accept any responsibility or condone individuals who cultivate psilocybe cubensis mushrooms illegally

Hey guys I thought it would be a good idea to post guide for my entire method of growing. I have found that most of the information that is found on OMCs is very cluttered and you have to do a good amount of searching looking for a tek for each phase of growing. This guide will let you know how I do things from start to finish and hopefully this will help a lot of new comers that feel they are over loaded with information. Just doing this guide by itself will give you anywhere from ½ lb of mush to 2 lbs of mush dry per tub. So if you are only growing for yourself then doing this once will give you enough of mushrooms to last for quite a long time.

This guide has been broken into different sections. Each of these sections is the tek that I use for each part of the process. Trust me I have spent many hours sitting in front of the computer reading all of the teks I could get my hands on to see what would work for me. I would suggest that you read the guide completely a few times before you start the process so you know what is going to be happening and where you want to be.

All of the techniques used in this guide are from previously written teks on the shroomery. So I would like to thank those wonderful people for providing all of the information needed to cultivate our little friends.

This guide does not have any pictures but as I get more I will add them. I will make sure to take pictures of each process so you can get some kind of idea what is going on visually.

To start I will make an inventory list so you know of all the supplies needed for this. Everything besides the pressure cooker shouldn’t cost any more that $200. That is the max amount. The following supplies are not in any kind of order. I just wrote them as I thought of them.

Supplies Needed:

• Spore Syringe of your favorite strain of Psilocybe Cubensis

• One package of Quart sized canning jars.

• Pressure Cooker – Any size will do but the bigger the cooker the more you can sterilize at a time. Look at flea markets and thrift stores for a good deal. My dad picked up an All American at a flea market for $15. What a lucky bastard.

• Wild Bird Seed – try to get a brand that has a smaller amount of sunflower seeds as those are useless for us.

• Poly Fill – This can be found at wally world in the craft section.

• Tyvek – there are many sources for this stuff. My favorite is the US Postal Service because it is free. You can order them from the USPS website and they will be delivered to your house for free. The only problem with this method is it takes 6 weeks to get them. Or you can just try to take some from the Post Office. They will be the White priority envelopes. Be careful though because they won’t like you taking so many. You can also find this at Home Depot as house wrap. It’s the stuff they put under the siding.

• Lighter or Alcohol Lamp - I prefer the alcohol lamp because it burns cleaner. But a standard lighter will work just find.

• Isopropyl Alcohol – try to get the highest concentration you can find.

• Lysol Spray Disinfectant

• Bleach

• 2-Plastic totes that are the same size and a solid color. Black would be the best. So no light can get through.

• Aquarium Heater – make sure it is fully submersible

• Temperature Controller for Reptile Terrariums

• 10 lbs of Pasteurized Horse Manure – you can either pasteurize your own or order it off of the Internet. Since I don’t pasteurize myself I will not include this in the tek. Just search for it on the internet and you will find some info. If you want to order there are a few places on the net you can order from. Check some shroomery sponsors. I know of a place but I don’t want to disclose a non shroomery vendor so please pm me if you would like to know.

• Drill with 1” drill bit

• Hammer
• Nail – pick a decent size nail as we are going to use this to poke holes in our jar lids

• 74 qt Plastic Tote that is translucent. These will be our fruiting environments.

• Thermometer

• Vermiculite – this can be found at most garden centers. Sometimes it might be difficult to find depending on where you live and what time of the year it is. If worse comes to worst just order it from the internet

• Coco Coir – This is shredded coconut husk. Pet supply stores usually have this near the reptile section. It is used as bedding.

• Tin Foil




Cleanliness

The major difference between success and failure in the mycology world is cleanliness. I have found that things work a lot better if you keep your house good and clean. I can’t stress cleanliness enough. Before each time you work it is best to completely sterilize your work area with Lysol disinfectant spray and bleach. I also like to take a shower and put on fresh clothing because walking around all day you are sure to pick up some kind of mold spores. Some people like to use latex gloves but I don’t believe it is necessary as long as you wash your hands with anti-bacterial soap. When you wash them do it like you’re working in food service or medicine, make sure to get under your nails and up to your elbows. I also like to make sure that the heat or air conditioning isn’t on while I’m working so no unsterilized air finds its way into my work area, now on to the teks.


Incubator (TiT – Tub in Tub)

Before we can begin colonizing anything with mycelium we need a place that has a higher temperature. Mycelium colonizes best between 84-86 degrees F. Since mycelium generates its own heat also it is best to keep the air in the incubator at 82. This gives us some safe room so the mycelium doesn’t get too hot. If the mycelium gets too hot it will start putting out waste product and provide an easier place for bacterial contaminants to survive.

If you can find a place in your house that stays at about 82 degrees all the time then you can just go ahead and use this for incubation. Make sure that light can’t get to the area, as we need darkness for mycelium to grow.

If you’re like me you won’t be able to find a place so suitable in your house so the next best thing is to make a place suitable. This is where the incubator comes in. The incubator in this tek is maintenance free because of the thermo controller. You can find these in pet shops or on the Internet for around $20.

1. First we are going to need those two solid colored tubs that you bought. Put some water in the bottom of one with a little bit of bleach to keep it from molding.

2. Now take the fish tank heater and stick it to the bottom with the provided mounting device. Turn the heater on high once you have it in the water. Do not turn it on out of the water, as this will break it. Make sure that the heater doesn’t touch the bottom or top tub as this will melt them and get water where we don’t want it to be.

3. Put the other tub into the tub with the water in it.

4. Hook up your thermo controller according to the direction provided and place the sensor in the middle of the tub with a thermometer.

5. Test different settings for a few days until you get the desired 82 degree temperature. Now your incubator is all set for some jars.




Preparing Spawn

Now we are getting into the good stuff. Spawn is what we use to colonize our bulk substrate in which this case is horse manure. Here is the method for using a wild bird seed based grain spawn. Using grain is far superior to the PF tek method because your jars can colonize much faster. Using a liquid culture to knock up the jars you can expect for you jars to be fully colonized in about 2 weeks. With PF jars it would always take at least a month for my jars to colonize.

1. First we need to wash the grain of anti-fungal chemicals and pesticides. Take a quart jar and fill it almost half way with grain then dump it into a large colander. It is best to have one of the metal screen ones so the grain doesn’t fall through the holes. Put as many jars of grain in as you can fit in your pressure cooker.

2. Empty the grain into a large pot. I like to use my pressure cooker for this because I don’t really have any other pots in the house that are big enough. Add water until you have a couple inches of water over the top of the grain.

3. You will notice that the sunflower seeds are floating to the top along with some other floaters. We will want to dispose of these since they have no nutritional value and would be a waste of space. I just slowly pour off the top into the colander then toss them in the garbage.

4. Empty your pot of grain into the colander and rinse again.

5. Repeat steps 2 and 3 again.

6. Repeat this process until most of the sunflower seeds are gone. I usually get them with 2-3 runs.

7. Once all of the sunflower seeds are out of our grain place the grain back into the pot and fill with water until it is about 2 inches above the grain.

8. Cover and let sit for 12 - 24 hours. This gives time for the mold spores within the grain to germinate making them easier to kill in the sterilization process. When you come back your water will have a brown color to it and will smell slightly fermented. This is how it is supposed to be so don’t worry about it.

9. Dump this into the colander rinse then place back into pot.

10. The next step in the process is to get the grain to hold as much water as it can. We do this by simmering the grain. Put the pot on the stove on medium heat and wait until you see steam rising off of the water. Keep it this temperature until about 5% of the grains have exploded. It is hard to eye it at first but you will get a hold of it. I have noticed that this usually takes about 20 minutes. Do not let boil as this will ruin the grains. If you catch it boiling for a minute just turn the heat down and you will be fine.

11. Once you’re done simmering dump the contents of the pot back into the colander, rinse with cold water, and let drain for 30 minutes. I like to place a cloth or paper towel over the colander so the top grains don’t dry out.

12. While you are waiting lets prepare the jars.

13. First you need to take the hammer and nail and poke one hole in each lid.

14. Stuff these holes with poly fill but make sure that you don’t over stuff as this will result in bent needles.

15. Now cut your tyvek into squares that will cover the top of the jar.

16. Once you are done preparing your jars it is time to load them up. Since the grain has expanded you will end up having to fill a little over half of the jar. My jars are usually about 2/3 full.

17. Place the tyvek over the top of each jar, then the lid, and tighten the ring on to your jar.

18. Cover each jar with tin foil so water can’t get in while you are pressure cooking and place the jars in the pressure cooker. If I am reusing syringes and needles I like to place them in the pressure cooker to kill 2 birds with one stone.

19. Put a couple inches of water in the pressure cooker and cook for 1 hr @ 15 psi.

20. After the pressure cooker has depressurized take the jars out and shake them to redistribute the grain. This provides a more even water content.

21. Let the jars cool in a clean place over night. If you inoculate when they are too hot it will kill the spores and you won’t get any growth. If it seems that your jars are not colonizing at all this is probably the problem.


Now is a good time to order the horse manure. Sometimes it can take a while for them to deliver if business is good. So I like to give them 3 weeks or so. If you don’t have the poo by time your jars are done just put them in a cool dark place until it gets there. Your jars will last a few months like that. There are many places to buy poo, but some places are worse than others. I would check the shroomery vendor forum and try to find a good product through other people.


Inoculation of Grain Spawn

Now the grains are ready to be knocked up with the spore syringe. This process is quite easy and hard to screw up as long as you keep a sterile work area.

1. Get everything ready in your work area so you don’t have to travel outside of the sterile area to obtain anything. This means you will need the following supplies
• Bleach Water
• Lysol Spray
• Lighter / Alcohol Lamp
• Sterilized Jars of Grain
• Syringe with needle
• Liquid Culture
• Alcohol
• Cotton Swabs or Paper Towel
• Spore Syringe

2. Sterilize your work area. Use the bleach water mixture for hard surfaces and the Lysol spray for the air.

3. Prepare a few cotton swaps or pieces of paper towel with alcohol.

4. Flame sterilize the needle of your syringe then wipe with the alcohol swab.

5. Make sure the tip of the needle does not touch anything after sterilization.

6. Now take the syringe out and place about 2-4 cc’s of spore solution into the poly fill hole in each jar making sure to clean with an alcohol swab after every injection.

7. Now do this for all of your jars.

8. It is now time to place all of those jars in the incubator and wait.

Within 7 days you should see the first signs of growth. You will start seeing little patches of white. If you see the whiteness then you’re doing a good job.

Make sure that there are no other colors growing in the jar. A green color is the sign of trich, which means that this jar is totally fucked. I usually toss out the whole jar and get new ones if there has been a contaminant in them. I don’t like taking the chance of doing all the work to clean them just for my next grow to get contaminated. Jars are cheap and it is worth the extra money. There are other contaminants that are fungal as well as bacterial. I am not going to get into those here. If you see anything other than white is best to go to the shroomery and look for information on contaminants. If you only see white then you are doing a fantastic job.

After the jars are about 33% colonized it is time to shake them. Sometimes it is hard to get them to break up so it is best to have something like a roll of duct tape to hit the jar on. Once you have shaken them all up it is back to the waiting game. Check on them every 3 or 4 days until they are fully colonized.



The Mono Tub

Now that we have some fully colonized jars it is time to spawn those jars to another bulk substrate. This new substrate can hold more moisture and nutrients, which provide a much better place for the mushroom mycelium to thrive. So to begin we need to prepare our fruiting container.

Preparation of Mono Tub:

Here we are going to use those translucent tubs that you bought. You can use any size tub just as long as it is tall enough to allow at least 8” between the bottom set of holes and the top. I will elaborate on this more in the procedure.

1. First we need to drill the holes used for ventilation. For this a drill with a 1” drill bit is necessary.

2. Lets start with the bottom set first. Drill 3 holes on each long side and 1 hole on each short side about 4”-5” above the bottom of the tub. Now drill holes directly above those holes as close as you can to the top of the container. Look below at the diagram for further reference.

3. Now take some of the poly fill and stuff all of those holes. Stuff them so air can still get through. I just pack them until the poly fill is in there just slightly snug.

4. Once you have the holes stuffed it is time to sterilize the inside of the tub. Make sure to sterilize your work area before you begin. Pour a little bit of alcohol in the bottom and wipe the entire interior of the tub. Don’t forget to wipe the inside of the lid also. Now you can go ahead and put the lid on and let it dry out.

5. The inside of the tub now needs to be lined with tinfoil. Cut two pieces of tinfoil long enough to fit in the bottom of your tub with about 10” extra.

6. Tape these two pieces together and sterilize both sides with alcohol.

7. Now press this into the bottom of your tub so that the edge of the tinfoil comes up to the holes on each side. This may take a little bit of practice. If you rip a few piece of tinfoil just make a new bottom. Tinfoil increases your pinset because it blocks light from hitting the side of the substrate. Tinfoil is also nice because it likes to stick to the substrate as it shrinks. This greatly reduces side pinning after the first flush.

The mono tub terrarium is now ready to be used. So lets talk about mixing our substrate. This process is fairly simple, but again make sure your area is STERILIZED.



Spawning to Bulk Substrate:

I am sure that you have received your horse manure by now whether you ordered it online or collected it yourself. You might as well grab that because you are going to need it. You’re also going to want 3-6 fully colonized jars. The more you put in the substrate the faster it is going to colonize. I will do two tubs with 12 jars. Sometimes you loose a few jars so it doesn’t matter if you have the full 6 jars. I have done it with 3 plenty of times and still had colonization times of about 7 days.

1. Grab your manure.

2. Dump this into your tub. It should come almost to the bottom set of holes in your tub. If it is too much take some out and note that next time you make a tub you should set the holes a little higher. If it is not enough poo don’t worry about it and just make a note again. But this time move them lower. 5” inches is about how thick the substrate should be if you used the 74qt tubs like I mentioned in the inventory list.

*** Whenever you are not actually working in the tub keep the lid on. This saves from contaminants. Also each time you open the lid spray the air in your work space with disinfectant.***

3. Now shake all of your jars to break up the spawn just like you did while they were colonizing.

4. Mix all but one or two jars into the substrate and make sure that it is evenly dispersed.

5. Now level out the whole thing and take those other one or two jars and sprinkle them on top. This helps the top layer of the manure colonize the fastest and helps block contaminants.

6. Once you have this completed it is time to put the top on and put it in the dark. I like to put it in the closet with a blanket wrapped around it so no light will ever get in.

Now we are back to the waiting game. Don’t check it for 5 days. The more you check the more chance there is for failure. At the end of the five days check and see if it is completely colonized. If not wait 3 more days and check on it again. Do this until it is fully colonized. In most cases it is done by the 5 day mark. But it should most definitely be done by the 8 day mark.



Mixing the casing:

This part of the guide goes over casing our newly colonized bulk substrate. This is another process that is fairly simple as long as you take your time to make sure things are clean. The casing material that I like to use is a 40/60 coco coir mixture.

1. First lets measure out how much coir we want. We want the cocoa coir to vermiculite mixture to be 2:3. Try to eyeball how much casing you are going to need with a little bit extra for patching.

2. Add the vermiculite. So lets say we used 4 cups of coir that means we need 6 cups of vermiculite.

3. Mix these together until everything looks evenly dispersed.

4. Now we need to hydrate the mixture. Distilled water works best, as it doesn’t have any chemicals in it. Add water to the mixture slowly while mixing. We want to hydrate to field capacity. The best way to do this is to get a handful of the casing and squeeze it. When you squeeze it you want a few drops of water to come out. You don’t want a waterfall just a few drops and your fine.

5. Load this into jars and put the standard cannning jar lids on them.

6. Pressure cook this at 15 psi for 30 minutes. After pressure cooking let cool to room temp. I usually do my pressure cooking in the evening then let it sit overnight.



Applying the casing:

Now that your bag of casing mix has cooled to room temperature it is time to apply this to the top of the casing. Try to get about ½” of casing material across the whole tub. This is pretty tricky to do but I am sure you will find a way. I like to sterilize some jar rings and place those on my substrate. An even casing layer is very important, because this allows the mycelium to colonize the whole thing at the same rate. I will get into this more when we talk about colonization.

You should have some leftover casing material when you are finished. Throw this into a sterilized tubberware bowl and keep it for later. I believe this is all of the information you need on applying the casing. There really isn’t much more to say.



Colonization of the Casing:

Once you have applied the casing layer it is time to wait again. Wrap it in a blanket and put it in the closet for about 4 days. After the four days check on it and see if any mycelium is poking through anywhere.

The goal here is to get the mycelium poking through the casing layer evenly throughout the whole casing. This is how you achieve an optimum pinset. This will take time to get down. Don’t worry if you put it out too early the most that will happen is you won’t get as many mushrooms, but I am sure you will still get plenty. I believe the worst yield I have had from a 5lb tub is 3 ounces.

The thing you really want to stay away from is over colonization of the casing layer. This is called overlay. This can delay your pinning time and cause a really bad pinset. You have overlay if the casing material looks like the fully colonized substrate below. You don’t want it to be fully white you just want white poking through. There are ways to fix this but I have never had overlay. If you need help with overlay search it on the shroomery.

If the mycelium is coming through nice and even you are good to go and you can initiate pinning. If you have patches here in there take some of that casing mix that you saved and sprinkle it over the area then wait a few more days. Keep doing this until the mycelium has evenly came through the casing layer. Also each time you check keep an eye out for your casing looking dry. If it starts to look dry mist it with a spray bottle.
We are finally to the part that you’ve been waiting for. Fruits. This is where the whole process comes together and we finally get to see something happen from our hard work. Fruiting with a mono tub is super easy and is why I chose this method.

All you need to do to initiate pinning is to set your tub in an open room with the ambient temp around 68-74 degrees F. You can use lights but I don’t see any reason when sunlight is free. If you do choose to use lights any type of light will work so you don’t have to worry about buying expensive lighting fixtures and bulbs. Very little light is needed so as long as some ambient light reaches the tubs you are fine.

I also like to keep a small fan on in the room to help the mushrooms get fresh air. Just a small desk fan sitting somewhere in the room will work just fine. Don’t point the fan directly at the tub, as this will cause it to dry out. If it does dry out just take a water bottle and mist it down until it looks saturated again.

After about 5 days you will see the mycelium start to knot up. This is hyphael knotting and is a good sign. This knotting is a sign that pins are about to form. A few days after the knots you will start to see little pin heads stick up from the casing layer. This is your first look at your new babies.

The pins will continue to grow for the next week. Mushrooms double in size every day. It seems they grow very slow at first, but after they reach an inch they really take off. Just let them grow until the veil is starting to break from the cap. This is the ideal time to pick because they have reached maturity but haven’t dropped spores yet. Spores are just a mess and there are rumors that they can add to stomach discomfort. If you do get some spores on your mushrooms don’t worry about it. There have been times where all of the tops of my mushrooms are black from the spore dust.

When you pick your fruits it is best to use a twisting motion. This helps reduce the amount of casing material that comes up with the mushrooms. Once you have picked all of the mature mushrooms off of the substrate go ahead and take care of all the little ones too. These are not going to mature and are known as aborts. All they will do is end up rotting and cause contamination. So get rid of all of them.


Drying

There are many methods used for drying from desiccants to low temperature food dehydrators. I like to use the simplest of all methods. This is the fan method. I just place my freshly picked mushrooms on a large tray and put them in front of a fan on high setting for a couple days. Most of the smaller mushrooms will be dry in a day. If you live somewhere with high humidity you might have use desiccants to get them fully dry.
Desiccants can be found easily at any of the big box stores (home depot, lowes, etc.) The brand that I have used it damp rid. To use this take a tubberware container big enough for you mushrooms and put an inch or two of desiccant on the bottom. Put some kind of rack over that to keep the mushies from touching it and let it sit for a few days. By then you will have very nice cracker dry mushrooms. Just make sure that your mushrooms do not touch the desiccant. The desiccant can get sort of gooey if it is full of water.

You can also use a food dehydrator. The only problem with these is that the heat is usually too high. So make sure it has a variable heat control because you will want this on the lowest setting.



Dunking

Dunking is the process of submerging your substrate in water to re-hydrate your substrate. Mushrooms are 90% water so the more water that is available to them in the substrate the bigger they are going to be.

To do this just take the polyfil out of your holes and add water until the substrate starts to float. Take another tub and put it on top so it pushes the substrate down. You may need to add some kinds of weight. After the 12 hours dump the water out, replace the old tinfoil with new tinfoil, add some more casing material, put new polyfil in the holes and put back into fruiting.

Within another 7 days you will see pins starting to form again. This is your second flush. While the second flush isn’t going to have as many mushrooms as the first, the mushrooms this time around are going to be bigger.

After you harvest your second flush you can keep dunking and getting new flushes until you get a contamination. I usually keep my flushes to a max of three because after that they aren’t really worth the extra work.



Spore Prints

Taking spore prints allows us to have spores for future use. Spore prints are very easy to collect. It is very important to keep a clean work area for this. This is the very source of many contamination problems. It is best to use a glove box for this, but it is possible without it. If you would like more information on glove boxes to another search at the shroomery and I am sure you will find all the information you will ever need.

1. First we need to collect our specimens. It is best to get mushrooms that look the healthiest and biggest. Pick these mushrooms just after the veil breaks.

2. Take a sanitized sharp knife and cut the stem off as close to the cap as possible.

3. Prepare tinfoil rectangles big enough that you can put the cap on it and have enough tinfoil to fold over on itself

4. Sanitize these tinfoil squares and place the mushroom caps with the gills down on them.

5. Now set the tin foil squares on a towel.

6. Put something over this like a glass or a bowl and let it set for a few days. Make sure to have part of the glass on the towel. This provides fresh air and reduces the chance of your mushroom cap rotting.

7. After a day or two you can remove the covering and take the mushroom off of the tinfoil.

8. On the tinfoil you should see a purple or black outline of the mushroom cap and it’s gills. This is your spore print.

9. Fold the extra tinfoil over to cover it up, label it, and place the print in a dark dry area for future use. Spores are very tough and will last for years in these conditions. I like to place my spore prints in a book.



Conclusion

Now it is time to enjoy your fruits and see how well you did. If potency isn’t quite what you were expecting there are plenty of things that can attribute to this and we could get in a very long debate over the topic. If you’re interested in increasing potency you are going to need to isolate a substrain from your multispore. I don’t have any experience in this so I will not include it in this guide.

I would suggest continue looking at other teks to try and improve on this one. I believe that all of the teks included in this guide are pretty easy to do. I know this guide is pretty lengthy but at least you don’t have to search for all of this information.

While enjoying your fruits please do so responsibly. Do not drive while you are in any altered state and have a good time.

**Please note that this guide is to be used where the cultivation of psilocybe cubensis is legal. Please look at your local and federal laws to determine if this an illegal practice.

Sticky? :]

I will slowly add pics. I am in the process of starting a whole grow start to finish. So I will add the pics as I get them. I believe trav will be adding this to the wiki. He seemed quite interested when I told him about it like a month ago.

biggles

With pictures, this will be the greatest tek I've ever known.

It's good you numbered the steps, this way it will be easy to refer to them later on (I imagine they will be extended with commentary as various questions arise).

Awesome job kungpow. Haven't read all the way through it but if I was going to do a mushroom grow this would be the tek I would use. Thanks!

This is totally outdated information. Cubensis mycelium colonizes best between 75-83 F degrees, anything over that and it starts to slow down. When you take in account that mycelium is thermogenic, you should keep colonizing mycelium in a temperature of 70-78 F.

TiT incubators are unnecessary unless you live in the arctic. They usually cause problems, due to the stale air causing contaminations. I always colonize at room temperature and have never had problems this way.



4 cc:s is way too much spore solution for a single jar, whatever the size. Too many spores in one jar is counterproductive: the more spores you introduce to a single substrate, the more dikaryons will develop, and the more dikaryons the higher chance that some of them are incompatible and thus cannot join to become a single organism. Then you will have several dominant strains living in the same substrate, with none of them getting the full benefit of the nutrition contained in the substrate.

1-1.5cc of clear spore solution (if you can see spores in your spore solution, you need to dilute it) is enough for any jar. Adding more spores will not speed up colonization.

Also, did you say anything about pasteurizing the bulk substrate? If you make your own bulk substrate (which is one thing you need to learn if you're serious about growing, buying pre-made substrates is a huge waste of money) you need to pasteurize your bulk substrates. If you don't do this you will most certainly run in to contaminations.

nice easy tek kungpow

like dread said, you definitely want to pasteurise your bulk substrate, its easy if you have the pressure cooker, just a change in temp from sterilising and slightly longer, forgot the actual temp, be sure to use just enough water for stamet's field consistency, and use oven bags to seal in water and nutrients.


for the pimped fruit chamber you want clay pebbles to wick condensation back into the atmosphere to retain humidity [excellent for pinning]
together with a small ultrasonic humidifier hooked up to a reptile humidistat to deliver fresh, humid air automatically

cheap stuff, so worth the upgrade, good luck growing some massive shrooms

p.s. for incubation, I would recommend simply using a reptile heat mat [thermostat controlled] rather than involve water
p.s.s for potentiation, see the net hype about injecting DMT [yay] and other trytamines into psilocybe substrates, and the magic that happens
p.s.s.s check out extraction teks and turn your bulk crop into one bottle of Psilocin Elixir

Injecting DMT to substrate does not potentiate mushrooms. The mycelium can not efficiently utilize DMT as a precursor for psilocin.

Tryptamine HCl is the only precursor which has actually been shown to significantly raise potency when introduced to the substrate.



Again... for incubation, I would recommend simply room temperature.

Reptile heat mats are lousy for incubation. They dry your substrate.

kung POWW!!!

Thanks for the input and I will be sure to adjust my setup and see the difference. I will definitely try less spore solution. I also use liquid cultures sometimes, but I thought I would leave that out for simplicity.

I personally buy my bulk substrate because it is easier for me. I have pasteurized horse manure in the past, but I do not have the time to do that myself anymore. I have a close friend that I buy pre pasteurized manure for pretty cheap. If I need to spend an extra 20 bucks to save me time on a quarter pound of mushrooms than I am fine with that. If anyone wants to make their own bulk substrate just search for it on any of the mycology sites and I am sure you will find a quick and easy tek.

What is great about this tek is that it is very low maintenance. The fruiting chamber for this is great. YOu do not need anything extra. Just throw your spawn and manure in a tub with holes in it and cover it for a while. Case then cover till myc pops up. Then let it sit in a room until it is time to pick. No humidifiers, perlite, or stones needed. The casing layer provides the perfect moisture you need for primordial formation. If you are going to be doing large quantities of these tubs it is more efficient to leave the casing layer off. The difference it makes in yield is no enough when comparing the time and money put into the casing layer.

If anyone has any questions please don't hesitate to ask.

~Peace Out

Why cover? It's better to get the mycelium used to the circadian rhythm right from the start. Cubensis mycelium doesn't need darkness for colonization. The same light cycle you use for fruiting is the best.

Contrary to popular belief, light alone will not trigger premature pinning. Light, humidity and 100% colonization are the major pinning triggers. Light is only a secondary one.

This is not they way I have grown. If you could show me the source where you received that info from that would be great. I know some people put their casings out right after and some don't. I personally like to cover as you can get a more even pinset this way.

From the work that i've done in mycology light is a very large factor when it comes to pinning. Again show me some sources.

~Peace

I say Dread needs his own mush thread. You have a lot of good info.

Dread. thanks for the info man. It is true that you learn something new every day. I will try this in the future. I myself do not use casings anymore as I don't believe it is necessary when growing large quantities of mushrooms. Just another step to introduce contams and increase the amount of time needed to grow our little mushroom friends.

Is there anyone that's going to try it out soon? I am sure you will have good results. Please take anything posted in this thread in to consideration. As I am not the all knowing mushroom god.

I should be starting back up soon here in the near future. I think I might actually prepare some grain this weekend. Get things rolling.

Again thanks for the info dread.

~Peace Out

I have always colonized in normal light cycle. It works fine, the mycelium colonizes just as fast. And even the light cycle isn't that important. Just make sure it's not 24h light, they need some darkness, even if it's only 1-2h a day.

I have also never used casing layers. I agree with you, they are totally unnecessary for cubensis, and are just one more source of contamination. Especially when you use bulk substrates. The bulk substrate holds so much moisture that casing layers become obsolete.

Offering your mushrooms the ideal conditions to grow is the key to good yields. The mushrooms want to grow. They want nothing but to grow, and they will do so unless you keep them from doing so. By offering ideal conditions to your mushrooms you will also make sure your mushrooms feel loved, and they will love you back when it's time to taste the harvest

Ideal conditions being: air exchange 4-5 times per hour, 99% humidity, 12/12h cycle of light at 6500K colour temperature.

Nice Tek Kungpow, read the whole thing really easy to follow. I know i'd like to see an updated version and with some diagrams /pics.




well said Dread !
they will be the words in my head when it comes to growing!

I'd also absolutely LOVE some pics kungpow, when you get the chance. Great guide here, will most likely be using it when I take a (valiant) stab at cultivation at the end of this year.

Well it looks like I am going to be starting some tubs in the not so distant future. I will try to get a lot of pics this time around. So that way I can add to this and make you guys happy. I lost my job on friday so I will have a lot more time to work on my mycology skills and to hang with you guys.

~Peace Out