Guide for growing Magic mushrooms

Theres a method called the PF tek, that you can find very easily on youtube.
This method is widely preferred by people who are just starting out.
Pros of this method : Easy to perform, would yeild sooner.
Cons of this method : Theres a good chance your grow is going to get
contaminated, Low yeild.
I am not going to explain the PF tek as there are many videos on the net that
can explain it much better than me. However there arent any appropriate
videos on how to germinate spores on agar medium, and then use the
mycelium to inoculate substrates;which is the way to go if you really wanna
learn about growing mushrooms.

Pros of starting with agar : you can visually select the fastest growing
mycelium, you can easily spot contamination on a petriplate. Once you have
found yourself a mycelium with strong fruiting potential, you could store that
culture for years using it for all of your grows. Agar is the shit, if you really
wanna be good at growing. More mushrooms ofc.
Cons: takes more time, about 20-30 days more than what PF tek would take.

So lets get started!

MAKING AGAR PLATES
So its called agar but its not just agar. I use homemade PDA[potato dextrose
agar]. You can buy ready made PDA or MEA[malt extract agar] online or from
chemicals vendor. They are expensive af. Making homemade PDA costs less
than a hundred bucks.
All you need is some potatoes,honey and china grass[ kitchen agar].
I use roughly
-500 ml drinking water

-Potato broth [ boiling 200g un peeled, sliced, potatoes in water for 20

minutes, then taking only the broth]

-2 - 3 spoonfulls of honey/glucose

-5 grams china grass

NOTE: The total drinking water and broth water, must together make up 500
ml. Not more.Just use some of your original 500 ml drinking water to make
the broth and youre good.

I feel its not neccessary to be precise in adding these ingredients, but dont
add too much of anything. You can double check the measurements on
shroomery.org if you are paranoid about messing up.
Ok so now youve got all your PDA ingredients together in a container.

The potato, the container, the agar are all carriers on contaminants.Micro
organisms are everywhere. You have to sterilize them to make them
completely free of any other microbes.

Sterilization is done with a pressure cooker. The PDA is cooked for 30

minutes. while you are sterilizing PDA,you also want to put in any tools that
you will be using so that they also get sterilized. [tools like syringes,petri
plates]. Its helpful to cover your tools with aluminium foil. Because the time it
takes to take out your tools from cooker and put them in the platform, is
enough to introduce a number of microbes.
WARNING: Over sterilization can cause honey to caramelize, better use
glucose.

Now your agar medium is ready. It must now be aseptially poured into petri
plates and allowed to solidify.But microbes are everywhere, how to pour them
into another holder without introducing some contaminations? You need a still
air box, Or you can use the sterilized syringe to suck up the agar, and squirt it
into petri plates, with minimal air contact.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGDUNB3w1aU
tis is how you use an SAB
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pn6LIKxeDq0
If you have a syringe you can pour the agar, even without a SAB. Flame the
syringe needle till red hot.Open your PDA container lid only 10% put your
syringe in suck it up, quickly closing the lid back.Flame it again before
injecting into petris. Repeat for all petris and flame sterilize between every
step. [<-this is what I do, pouring inside SAB is hard because the steam from
hot agar condenses on the SAB sides, making it hard to see whats going on
inside]

So now you have your agar inside the petri plates. It must solidify now. DO
NOT move or shake the plates after pouring, untill it solidifies. After this step
your agar plate is ready to be inoculated.

INOCULATING YOUR SPORES:

All steps from here on must be done inside a Still air box. To avoid
contamination.

Its always better to inoculate agar plates from a spore print than from a spore
syringe. Syringes are messy and cause unexpected problems. To perform the
inoculation you will need
-Still air box
-wind proof lighter [ to flame sterilize tools]

-99% ethanol [to clean all surfaces,careful where you point your lighter]

-Inoculation loop [ this is your magic wand basically, can be bought local]
-your agar petri plates.

-Gloves

PROCEDURE
-perform this in a clean room, on a clean platform, make sure all windows are
closed.
- clean the SAB completely, with disinfectants, and 99% ethanol.

-Clean all tools that you will be using inside the SAB.
-Keep all the ingredients/tools inside the SAB at once, and close it off.
[the principle of the method is to keep all other micro organisms away, a
single microbe can spoil your whole set up]

-With a half capfull of ethanol wipe your gloves and your forearms. Insert your
hands inside the SAB. everytime you take your hands out, wipe your hands
with ethanol, before going in.
-Spore prints are usually folded aluminium foils, open them carefully and
keep them on the SAB floor.
- Take up your loop, light it till its red hot, get the whole loop wire and not just
the end.Wait about 15-20 seconds till loop has colled down. [make sure its
cool, by checking what time it takes to cool down, you dont wanna kill your
spores before landing them on agar]

-after the loop is cool, gently brush the loop on the spore print, as if you were
scraping something off a surface.
-Immidiately grab an agar petriplate, open it only enough to insert the loop,
and draw 3 equidistant lines on the agar surface. Do not put pressure the
loop, even the slightest push will cause agar to break open. Its not really a
problem if agar breaks, but its just not desirable.Close the petri plate and
thats it.
- make 3-4 such petriplates, in case one fails/contaminates.
-Incubate the plates for a 5-10 days in a dark airtight plastic box.[they dont
need light right now]
-If the spores germinated successfully it should look something like this

PIC

-After incubation, any kind of growth that is not "sporadic" looking^, not
white in color, indicates that you can throw away your petri plates, as you
have not been able to maintain sterile conditions and your culture medium is
contaminated.

But if you do find the white sporadic growth on your plate you have been
successful in germinating the spores.Now you need to do ISOLATION.

ISOLATION/SUBCULTURING
So you added a thousand spores into agar, its only natural that tens/hundreds
of mycelium will emerge from them. One of them maybe a slow/fast
colonizer. Another maybe a Prolific fruiter or not. each resulting mycelium will
have its own set of individual genes. You need to isolate a single mycelium
which exhibits good colonization speed.

This is why isolation is important. By doing a PF tek you add thousands of

spores and the many resulting mycelium fight for surface area of the
substrate. Theres just many individual mycelium in there, and they are

fruiting as they wish. Doesnt give the best results.

So this is your "Multispore agar plate", from which spores germinated. Each
perfect circle is basically an individual mycelium. They maybe overlapped 2x
3x, in odd shapes. Its hard to tell visually.
Requirements:
MS agar plate
Sterile agar plate
Loop/scalpel
Lighter/Ethanol
SAB
Gloves

Procedure:
- Clean SAB and all tools. Keep them inside.

-Make your loop/scalpel red hot, cool it down completely.[you can cool your
scalpel by dipping it into sterile agar plate also, since scalpels will take longer
to cool]
-Nick out a small peice of white mycelium from the MS plate[Try not to grab
the underlying agar] and immidiately put it into the other sterile agar plate.
-Make 4-5 such isolations on different agar plates.
-Incubate in a dark clean place.

The small peice you nicked out, might be having more than one mycelium
again. in which case itll grow into look like two circles overlapping.This is due
to the difference in their colonization speed.

In this case you must isolate it again, trying to take only one of those circles
into a new plate. pick the one that has travelled most from the point of
inoculation.

If its in a perfect circle, it probably means that you have isolated a single
mycelium.
pick the fastest growing isolate and get ready to make grain spawn.

Grain spawn:
Its a carrier of mycelium. Any whole grain can be used to make grain spawn,
but some are hard to break apart. Best ones to use are sorghum,wheat and
rye! I dont have to explain it in detail like i did with making agar plates. You
have plenty of information on making grain transfers in youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNXqvBP34Z8 grain preparation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieqjuZeNEYc agar to grain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdpUXu5_L9I grain to grain

You can make 'n' kilos of grain spawn with one single isolate :) as long as you
have what it takes to fruit them all
And before you use your grain spawn, it must be completely colonized.
something like this

PIC

Fruiting substrate
Grain spawns cannot fruit by themselves. They need a fruiting substrate.
There are many combinations of substrates that are in use. I use the
"Damion5050 tek" because i find it easiest and effective.
https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/11916595 Heres a
link to the actual tek.
If you are having trouble with the measurements of "one brick coir" and "2
quarts vermiculite" Just remember its coir: verm in 80:20 ratio. Add 3-4 %of
gypsum in there ( I do too).
It takes 15-20 days more for the the grains to completely colonize the fruiting
substrate again. After the fruiting sub is colonized they are ready to be kept
in the fruiting chamber.

Fruiting chamber

Fruiting must be done at 25-28 celcius, and Relative humidity >80% at all
times. Its okay to deviate from these optimum parameters. It should still be
able to fruit, with less yeild as the cost. Its impossible for you to maintain
80% RH in your room at all times, without getting the walls and the floor
wet[ruining your room]. thats why you need a fruiting chamber [FC].

FC is basically a transparent plastic box, that allows light to enter, that allows
fresh air exchange[through holes in the box], maintains a high humidity
climate inside[through perlite].
Monotubs and SGFC[shotgun fruiting chamber] are the most used. SGFC's
are more convinient and have flixibility in usage. I would always choose to
make an SGFC over a mono.
Mono guide [easier to make]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmmALOtuqKY
SGFC guide
https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/20195542

I think thats about all you need to do, to grow mushrooms.

Here are my tips
-Use Shroomery.org . It has so much information and decades of data. The
trusted cultivators have always given me great advice. Some of them are
commercial edible mushroom growers, they do not entertain potheads who
post 10 questions a day on the forum. Use the search function to see if the
question has been already asked/answered. TCs hate such people and they
will ignore your post. Also r/mushroomgrowers is a nice place to talk
mushrooms.
-Cleanliness is key. If you are scratching your head thinking why you failed, its
probably because you dont wash your hands after scratching your head :p
Close every oppurtunity that micro organisms have, of getting in your work
space.
-if your agar plate is contaminated put it in a small container, pressure cook it
and then you can wash and re-use the plate. Contaminations are a health
hazard for those around them, so be responsible.
-A little patience and some observational skills, aaaand youre set :D

Happy growing...