GROW MUSHROOMS! Cheap and easy at home!

[SoldadoDeDrogas]

Here it is finally!
I hope you haven't been waiting for me to reinvent the wheel, because this method has been around longer than me!
This is called the "PF Tek" after innovations from a home mycologist by the name of Psilocybe Fanaticus. This is the first method I tried. It worked the first time. I have never had to try another way. It is perfectly suitable for personal use and for a few friends. Down the road, we will show you how to innovate further, for less work, better yields and self sustainability.
So, without further obstruction, here we go:

Materials needed:

A dozen ball mason jars - 1/4 pint widemouth if possible, regular mouth is OK. Widemouth is only necessary for the 1/2 pint jars otherwise you gotta break them to get your cake out. They take longer to colonize and risk contamination so I stick with the 1/4 pints.
Organic brown rice flour. Buy organic brown rice and grind it into powder in your blender.
Vermiculite. Get a bag from the garden section.
Mushroom spores. The good ones. If you don't know where to get them I can help.
Other items: Mixing bowl, spoon. Paper towels. IPA alcohol (to disinfect). Measuring cup.
~ Pressure cooker. ~ I have done it successfully with a normal boiling pot, just need to make sure to cook longer. The point of all this is that it is centered around growing bacteria. We need to make sure we grow the right one. So we kill everything in our growing medium inside the pressure cooker, and then insert the desired bacteria (our spores)
This is essentially the outline of the procedure and what we are attempting to accomplish with this.
Further down the road we will need a terrarium - a rubbermaid tote bin with the cover will work just fine.
We will need a bag of perlite to coat the bottom of the terrarium. With added water it will release slowly thus keeping our terrarium at suitable humidity. The cakes sit on top and spit out shrooms just fine.
....That is about it. Let's go !

1) In a mixing bowl, we add 2/3 cups vermiculite, 1/4 cup brown rice flour and 1/4 cup water for every TWO 1/4 pint jars we plan to innoculate. So FIVE scoops of each would be enough for FIVE - 1/2 pint jars or TEN - 1/4 pint jars. So prepare accordingly. When you add it all together and mix it up it should look something like this:

2) We are going to lightly pack the jar with the growing medium up to about this part where the cap twists on. Pack everything in as neatly and clean as you can, but LOOSELY! Then wipe that lip with your IPA and paper towel to get any residue off the glass and make sure there is no bacteria. (The cooker does the sterilizing so we don't have to get crazy about the "germs" - we just wanna make sure it is nice and clean above that point.

3) After we wipe and disinfect the lip of the jar, we then fill the rest in with a layer of just vermiculite. This will insulate the grow medium from potential outside contamination, keep moisture in etc. We then put our lid back on (As you can see we flip the cover upside down and punched two holes in the cover to inject the spores through) After we cover them with lids, have your assistant (if you have one) cover them with a piece of aluminum foil and place them in your pressure cooker.

4) You cook your jars for about an hour or two. I like to make sure they have a solid 30 minutes under optimal temp and pressure - when the top on the cooker is whistling and spinning that is when I begin counting. Let it cool down and condense. When you can open it, line up your jars, take the foil off and get ready to innoculate them. MAKE SURE THE JARS HAVE COOLED TO ROOM TEMP before innoculating them. A good spore syringe should be clear liquid with no other funk in there. Only the little specs you can see in the photo, which are our spores.

5) After we have cooked and made sure our jars of growing medium are free from any other living things and contaminates, we are prepared to insert our desired organism to go forth, multiply, and be fruitful. The key here is that we want to get out needle tip past the layer of vermiculite we used to insulate the medium, to the inside surface of the jar on the glass. So when we inject our spores, the growing medium does not soak it up, but rather, it spreads all over the inside surface of the jar and grows inward towards the center. We do not want to inject the spores into the center of the jar. The strategy is that we are flooding out the possible area where any unwanted bacteria might grow with our desired spore so that any unwanted contamination doesn't have a snowballs chance in hell to even get a foothold. It is desirable that our mushroom spores immediately occupy all the real-estate in our jars.

7) As carefully and as cleanly as possible, inject all of your jars. Quickly and without contaminating them. Cover them back with foil. It is good practice to number them in order so you can know where you contaminated. Place then in a box in a warm dark place for the next few weeks, that they may be left undisturbed to colonize their jars. The 1/4 pint jars take about a month or less from start to finish to produce fruit. Usually about 2-3 weeks to colonize after injecting the spores. Then another week or two to "birth" into the terrarium or "fruiting chamber" and for the first flush of mushrooms to be collected.

And with that, this is the end of PART 1. We put all this together and put it on the back burner for a few weeks and go off and do some other things. While we are waiting for these to colonize, let's go grow some weed! I will be back with PART 2 soon! Thank you everybody for your support and patience! Feel free to ask me for help. Any suggestions or anything are always welcome. I love to learn and I want to share and help, thus I teach and pass on the torch.
Good luck and take care for now!

 

[SoldadoDeDrogas]

I wanted to add that with a full spore syringe. Usually about 10cc's. I will innoculate a dozen 1/4 pint jars more or less. I can fit FOURTEEN 1/4 pint jars in my pressure cooker so that is typically the batch size I aim for. I will usually use about 1 cc per jar, which is about .5 of a cc per injection port. If I have 14 jars I will stretch it, to get them all innoculated of course. So keep that in mind when you go to inject your spores.

Another note I wanted to mention is that you can purchase everything you need for probably $100 more or less. You might already have some of these things, but if you don't, I mean really.... a pressure cooker, canning jars, vermiculite, rice, a tote bin and perlite. Everything is at walmart. You'll figure it out.

If anyone has questions or anything, say them here so we can discuss it for everybody's benefit. I might be forgetting a few hints or tricks or pieces of wisdom from experience or something, so if I think of it, I will make a mention of it. In a few weeks, I will make the part two. I will show you how the jars colonized and what it looks like. You see how they should not look from the post on my profile wall... but basically, if they don't look like how they should look, then something is wrong. They should be nice and white and fuzzy. We'll show you how to tell when they are ready to be birthed into the fruiting chamber and how to get our shrooms and then we can do it all over again. Then this next time we won't have to start from a spore syringe. We can start selecting our fruits and cloning particular ones for their traits, such as the larger stemmed, faster growing ones. You won't have to keep purchasing spores and risking anyone finding out about your hobby.

 

[jessiepinkman420]

I was wondering if you could talk more on how to cook the jars with just a boiling pot if i didnt want to go out and get it or just do a smaller test batch. I was also wondering what the optimal temp and pressure is and how to tell beside with the pressure cooker lid and how to tell if you just used the pot, other than that this was very helpfull to a beginner and answered a lot of my questions!

 

[SoldadoDeDrogas]

I am not an expert by any means. I've only done it once or twice without the cooker. I have had success, but I have also failed. So I can't offer much in the way of that other than it can be done. The PC is probably the best way to ensure your jars will be clean. That is why people usually insist on it. For $40 or whatever it is at a dept store, it is worth the time and effort, you will see, how putting it all into a jar just for it to be a mess you had to pay to make and wait for it, really starts to irk you. Kinda like spending a whole season growing weed just to have em all come out as males. Doing these jars is one of my most undesired activities, hence why it has taken me 4 months to do it since I got the spores again.

I would say just cook them on high flame (but not so it is boiling over). Get it to steam and keep a lid on for an hour or two. I don't know how exactly I did it, I certainly didn't have a method or science to it. An alternative might be to broil them in the oven, in a pot, to create that ambient heat atmosphere. The pressure is the key to doing this fast and clean, really, just spend the money - if there is anything you shouldn't be cheap or skip, this is it. That is the problem - there is no way to tell. You just boil it for 3 hours on high and take your chances. This is why, again, I stresss the pressure pot. 30 mins, no guessing, no issues. Hell, I'm gonna get another one soon, so I can use two pilots on the stove and do two batches at once.

 

[jessiepinkman420]

thanks for the reply, I didn't grasp how much of a necessity it was so ill get one lol

 

[SoldadoDeDrogas]

No problemo
Yea, I mean, it can be done without it. If it lets you complete a batch that would other wise be a waste of your time and money it pays for itself right there. I don't get too crazy about it myself. As I mentioned, anything you do or don't do before cooking isn't really important when you have the cooker. When you go to innoculate your jars after you've put them through with the cooker, that is the part where you especially need to make sure you are being especially clean. And the after, while they are being colonized, as Osmo says, try not to disturb them. Don't play with or disturb them. Just common sense stuff. The jars should be stuffed tightly enough with material that nothing is going to come loose and rattle around or fall out anyway.

 

[Osmosis Vanderwaal]

Most people call it BRF tek, as an alternative toPf tek. This is where 99% of people cut their teeth on mushroom growing, and BRF is a lot more versatile than you give it credit for I've made many many BRF logs in autoclavable mycobags. The really ingenious parts of BRF tek are 1. The whole grain brown rice Since it's whole grain, still has the bran, which is where the nutrition comes from. The real secret is though, that rice grows in a paddy. a swamp basically. Even in the hottest weatherthe environment is humid The reason that is iimportant is becaise many bacteria respond to high heat and dry conditions by producing endospores, which are ultra heat resistant and tough. Wheat rye, grass seed chia seeds, basically all cereal grains suffer a high bacterial load because they grow in the middle of the field in direct sunlight and high temperatures in the summer. This is why you don't have to pressure cook BRF cakes. The standard of pressure cookers is 15psi (above ambient, basically 2 atmospheres) at 15 psi above ambient, water boild at 250f instead of 212f. 13 minutes of exposure to 250f is neccissary to deactivate bacterial endospores. When you are ready to upgrade BRF tek is ready too. coffee (not full strength) is a great source of nitrogen(in place of water) and you can go collect those old cow turds, which is the natural environment for Psilocybe cubensis , also for Panaeolus bisporud and tropicalis which are very potent cultivatable speciesThe cow turd idds indole, to your substrate. There was a fairly contriversial experiment, I think Johahn Gartz performed it. He fed synthetic Diethyltryptamines into the substrate of several species of psilocybian mushroom and NN. diethyltryptamine was biometabolized into 4-ho-diethyltryptamine and 4-HO-diethyltryptamine phosphate (not dimethyl) whtch Gartz conteded proved the precursor biosynthesis of extracellular tryptamines (it could have been Gaston Guzman, this was 20 years ago) If you want a chemical 4-hydroxylated Psilocybe cubensis is your guy.
One more thing someone should say, sort, Iafter sanitizing the jars, Don't shake invert knock around upturn or anything of thef you do, the vermiculate will move and expose the nutritious substrate and you'll be lucky to grow anything besides Trichoderma hazarnarium (which is a very common green spored mold that you often encounter) or Pseudomonas sp. the most common bacterial contaminant

 

[SoldadoDeDrogas]

I love you Frit, but help me point out and underline for everyone how to get started and caught up to higher levels of knowledge and understanding. This is the opposite direction I want to go in at the moment, it is digressive, complicated and WAY beyond the scope. I'm trying to teach blind deaf and dumb cavemen how to grow mushrooms as easily as possible.

 

[Osmosis Vanderwaal]

Shit man, look at all the information in that post! I'm not trying to be a know it all or anything, I am a collector of information, and there are others. They will read that couple paragraphs, and there's 20 facts there, EXPLODING with little nuggets. My first mushroom grows were pf cakes, it took me 3 tries before I was successful.. Your write up isexactly the same as the first one I tried. What you are lacking is a still air box from a tupperwear, and a few paragraphs about fingernails, breathing on yor stuff. Making a small area that is sanitized right before working (bathroom or closet or just plastic sheets hung up) "Aseptic culture technique" Practically nothing is really sterile, so aseptic lowers the bar a little, but this is the weak point for everyone because mold spores and bacteriaare inviible to the naked eye, so you kind of need a ruitine. You dont flame sterilize the needle and then wipe it with an alcohol wipe, the flame is way more powerful at disinfecting. . You don't wipe your ass and then take a shit (I don't anyway)thats why you need a routine

 

[SoldadoDeDrogas]

Sorry buddy, I am not trying to say "YOU DID ____" or anything. We all have our own techniques and habits and shit. Not any one is perfect or wrong. I was hoping to avoid all of this but the disclaimer and foreword would be longer than the actual tek if I payed it forward. As I said, that isn't the point. This post is already getting trashed and obscured with nothing to do with actually growing the shrooms.

The idea was simply to be "Forget everything you think you know and do this, and you *should* succeed - if anything you will understand the process of what you are trying to accomplish and can adjust." In other words, if you don't succeed your first grow, you will atleast know and understand how to do it and have experienced the process. Next time it should be a piece of cake. Don't worry about breathing on the fuckers. (At what point do you need to worry about breathing on it, anyway?) You are welcome to make your own thread with adaptations and explanations with everything you never wanted to know. The point of this was for people who wanted to grow their own shrooms to do it and get on with their life.

I've never had fingernails or breathing cause an issue. The hopeful grower will understand the importance of hygiene and sanitary preparation and maintenance, if they don't going into this, they will after their first contaminated batch. They can waste their time if they like, I won't waste mine and everyone elses writing a few paragraphs about fingernails' when trying to grow a specific microscopic organism. Pretty much anything about the jars before you cook them is irrelevent. Wiping the lip of the jar with alcohol to remove any residue is probably the only important step other than the vermiculite layer to insulate. After they're cooked, that is when you need to worry about being clean. Wash your hands. Use gloves. Don't touch anything. Inject the spores. After they colonize, you really can't fuck it up unless that is your intent. Birth them with the right conditions and they will flush.

I don't want to make this more complicated by talking about things that someone trying to learn this doesn't need to know right away. All the WHAT IFS and shit can wait to cross when we get to that bridge.
This is what I mean, "just fucking do it". Yea you might not get it your first time, big deal. Anybody trying to do this shit shouldn't be expecting to be an expert on their first time around. You shouldn't have to be prepared for everything that might come up. Again, just do it - it's not a volatile chemical reaction, have some balls. The only thing you should be expecting is that you will pay your dues like the rest of us. You have to earn this knowledge and skill. I don't want any would be growers to get discouraged because of something they don't even need to worry about. And now I am getting redundant and everything. So, please, let us not saturate our hopeful growers with advanced tips and preventative measures for which they have no concept of and use for yet.

Let us show them how to get their cakes colonized and fruiting as inexpensive, effortlessly and as quick as possible.

 

[SoldadoDeDrogas]

@Osmosis Vanderwaal is probably one of the more knowledgable and experienced mycologists I've met from what I can gather.
I am nobody - just some kid that learned to do the PF Tek from erowid 20 years ago. Never had to change. That is my message.
The idea for this post was to leave out all the complicated fuckery and nonsense. As with all of my tutorial posts, my aim is to teach you, assuming you have NO IDEA or a very small one, of what you are doing and trying to get started with. My aim is to introduce it to you and get you to do this on your own in least amount of time and effort.

I CAN'T DO IT FOR YOU THOUGH!
Remember! --- YOU --- have to have some kind of initiative and effort. I can't make you thirsty for knowledge and make "8" make sense to you. I can try to show you things you didn't know were so easy and simple that you CAN do it yourself -- IF -- you want to and BELIEVE it can be done. I can't make "8" make sense but I can do my best to try to explain 2x4 or 4+4 or 12-4 or however many ways and whatever it takes to get there. You have to atleast TRY to make an effort to solve it or you will not LEARN ANYTHING.

If we are going to sit around and say we can't grow mushrooms cause we didn't spend $10,000 or 10 years researching on Johahn Gartz and Gaston Guzman expert research, or we bought the wrong reagents and not 4-HO-diethyltryptamine phosphate (not dimethyl) If you want a chemical 4-hydroxylated bla bla bla bla... WTF are you talking about, man ?

If you want your intellectual masturbation, you know where to find it. Me, I can't be bothered. This isn't about flexing whatever I think I know up on my mycological high horse. What the hell is all of that worth when we just wanna grow some mushrooms and get on with it? Right? I am trying to SIMPLIFY all of this and make it as easy and understandable as possible. Not DAUNT you into paralysis about where to even get started? Who to listen to? Come on man. TRY SOMETHING, EVEN IF ITS WRONG.
JUST START SOMEWHERE! GROW SOMETHING!
If it doesn't work, take it back to the drawing board and try again!

 

[SoldadoDeDrogas]

Check it out folks. Inside the green area I circled, you can see that white spot. That is what we want to see. This means our spores took hold and are colonizing. It is a little white moist fuzzy spot. It is going to grow throughout the entire jar over the next week or two. We want to keep it warm, dark and humid. My closet is usually a consistent 75F/23C but it does get warmer or colder depending. Just try to find a spot that is consistent with suitable conidions. I don't know ideal conditions for growing cubes, they aren't hard to find, I just don't bother concerning myself with optimizing all the details. They will grow anyway, just not as fast or as big or whatever, but it doesn't make enough of a difference anyhow, so, I don't give a shit. As long as I get a harvest, with this method, I have more than I can eat for personal use. If you wanna stress all that, go for it. As I said, I'm just gonna show you how it is done as simple as possible to get you going.