The first time I grew shrooms was in 1996. I amanged to get a lovely person from the US to send me a sporeprint for microscopic analysis of the spores. Some of these spores needed to be germinated on petri plates (to help me learn about spores) and then transferred to rice media and then fruited (to make sure the spores I was looking at were the Psilocybe cubensis strain I was told they were).
Naturally, one of the hallmark identifiers of the Psilocybe and related magic mushroom strains is the presence of the hallucinogenic substance psilocybin. The most effective way to confirm your identification of these mushrooms is to consume a few. If they do have a psychedelic effect, this confirms your identification. I was able to successfully conclude my experiment – the spores I had acquired were indeed those of Psilocybe cubensis. Science is a good thing.
Growing mushrooms this way is however very fiddly, and the world and our understanding of it has advanced a lot since 1996. If you were to wish to learn a bit more about the cultivation of magic mushrooms, you can now cut your teeth in this art by buying off the shelf kits that nearly completely guarantee you a crop of mushrooms if you follow the instructions correctly.
Before we get into how to use a Psilocybe grow kit, lets have a quite overview of how these mushrooms work, and how they grow in nature. This understanding then allows us to move swiftly into deciding which gro-kit suits us, and how to get going with our growing.
What are magic mushrooms?
There are many species of mushrooms that produce compounds that can influence how our, and other animals brains work. The Psilocybe family of mushrooms – which include a number of genera, that all produce psilocybin, are some of the safest magic mushrooms on the planet. There are other species of mushrooms, such as certain Amanitas, that produce mind altering substances, but consuming large doses of these can be fatal.
It is very difficult to poison yourself with Psilocybe mushrooms – you may give yourself a fright, discover a new dimension/s, but you will not poison yourself. These mushrooms are safe in terms of the fact they cannot kill you physically. They can change you however, so be aware of that – you may find that parts of your psyche can die – often parts that are unhealthy – but parts of your body will not.
Psilocybe mushrooms tend to mainly grow in compost and manure – a few are able to degrade wood as well. If you go to any area where Psilocybes grow on manure and watch the manure producers (cows, rhinos, elephant, etc) you will see that these animals often eat the magic mushrooms.
I assume they then gain insights into life, and a while later they will make more manure – that is full of spores and ready to produce a new cycle of mushrooms.
I have watched Rhinos graze on Psilocybe natalensis that grows on their manure heaps in my area. Shortly after this I was chased by a Rhino that had been eating magic mushrooms. It was a very intense Rhino and I guess maybe it saw something even more terrifying than a human being.
How do we replicate natural growing conditions to produce our own magic mushrooms?
The easiest way to do this is to create a medium of growth that the mushrooms will appreciate.
This is normally some sort of carbohydrate with a bit of cellulose and some vermiculite and pearlite to provide aeration, and a bit of lime to keep the pH high and inhibit bacterial contamination. We will then mimic the activity of the Rhino or Cow – by mixing some spores into the growth media.
The missing ingredient to allow germination is water and warmth. In a grow kit, you normally need to add a bit of water and then place your kit in a warm place. I have found that the simplest warm place is actually behind your fridge – refrigerators remove heat from the inside of the unit and put it outside – this means that if you go to the back of your fridge you can find a nice warm zone near the compressor that is a perfect mushroom growing zone.
It takes two to three weeks for the mushrooms in the kit to grow – as they grow they produce mycelium – a white network of fungal growth. The mycelium consumes the nutrients in the growth medium, and as this process nears completion, the mushroom begins to look at the fact that it will soon starve – and hence it produces mushrooms – mushrooms contain spores, and the mushroom naturally hopes that these spores will be taken to a new environment with new growth media for them to grow on.
The fruiting process requires high humidity, and a little bit of light. The rest of the process requires no llight, but does require warmth.
How to start growing magic mushrooms?
For your first few grows my recommendation is to buy a pre-optimised kit. If you have a look at these kits, we have selected a few very robust strains for you to gain experience with.
Golden Teachers
My recommendation would be to start with Golden Teachers. These are a very robust strain, they fruit easily, and they contain within their magical little mushroom souls a lot of insights that you can avail yourself to. I suspect this is why they have their name. If you decide to confirm that the strain you have grown is indeed psychedelic by performing an organoleptic analysis, I would suggest trying 5-7 grams wet weight of these mushrooms mixed into orange juice or lemon juice with honey. When they are fresh, organoleptic analysis can be quite rapid and intense. You can work out higher doses later once you have figured out what works for you.
I have always found Teachers lose quite a bit of potency on drying, hence for a dry analysis you would be looking more towards the 1-2 gram range for a mildly educational experience. Anything more than that can become quite intense and should not be tried until you know how to deal with these things.
Cambodians
This is a strong little mushroom. It grows very fast, and it produces intense mushrooms. I enjoy growing these, and have grown quite a few over the years.
For me personally, I find that this mushroom does not give me the insights that Teachers do, but if you were to be taking a microdose of this mushroom – 0,5g dry or less, it seems to make you feel light and creative, and helps to reduce those existential anxiety issues that are quite easy to allow into our souls at this uncertain point in human history.
I have noticed that Cambodians when I do grow them, seem to be more popular with the ladies than the guys. From my observations, if you are female and looking for a first grow, this is the mushroom for you. For guys, maybe try Teachers of Mazapatecs first. If you are looking for a good microdose mushroom, you cannot go wrong with Cambodians.
Mazapatecs
This is a strong mushroom. My personal experience with this mushroom is it is far more intense experience than the Teachers. I have however found that this strain is a lot more fiddly to grow and fruit in my area.
It needs a warm, constant heat environment. You can achieve this using a heat mat, such as those used by snake keepers, or, in my case I just put a fish tank heater in a big bottle of water and place the grow in a plastic container with a cover.
This does however create conditions that can be attractive to fungus gnats and the dreaded green Trichoderma fungus. Try them out and see – maybe they will work better in your area than mine. When I have managed to grow these, the effects are intense. This is not a Sunday mushroom if you need to work on Monday. This is a Friday mushroom if you need to work on Monday.
Thai
I have actually never grown this one. A friend of mine has and we definitely found the produce to be enjoyable. He as a complete novice and either through beginners luck, or through the kit being good quality produced a crop that gave three flushes.
Typically, the first fruiting of Magic Mushrooms tends to produce a lot of small mushrooms. The second and if you are lucky third flushes produce bigger and fewer mushrooms in number. My friend managed to get three full flushes of Thai mushrooms from his kit. I was rather impressed and a little jealous as with 26 years of experience growing mushrooms I sometimes don’t get to the third flush!!
Wishing you a happy growing experience! And remember – just follow the instructions!
