Growing mushrooms for dummies

[Fabolous]

so i am guessing this is all the shit i need to start my frist grow????

i mean is this the shit that will make me trip lol, i am such a noob at this stuff LoL

[endo..jay]

here is exactly what you need

A sporeprint from a strain of psychedelic mushrooms.
(make sure it's the real thing, and that it's not contaminated with anything! Dust, for example.)
A pressure cooker, any size, but preferably one with 17 qt. (liquid) capacity.
(this is the most expensive item, but it's a necessity. Borrow, rent, buy, or steal one.)
12 (or more) new canning jars, 1 quart size, pref. wide mouthed, with lids.
A box/bag of brown rice -- NOT white rice. Long grain/wild rice might also be a good growing medium -- maybe even better than regular brown rice, although I'm not positive about this. I once used a half-and-half mix of brown rice and Long grain wild rice which worked fine. However, a possible disadvantage to using the long grain/wild rice is that any contaminants such as dark-colored molds will be more difficult to spot in the growing medium.
Something to scrape the spores off the print into the jar.
You want something like a stiff metal wire with a handle, so you can heat the end red hot in a flame to sterilize it without burning your fingers. I find that a probe from a Biology dissection kit works wonderfully.
A flame source. An alcohol lamp is not hard to make out of a small jar filled with rubbing alcohol, with a cotton ball as a wick. I suppose you could just use a lighter, but i prefer making an alcohol lamp -- just make sure you don't burn your place down!!
A clean place to store your jars -- should have a relatively constant temp.
(the optimum temperature for starting the 'shrooms is 86 F, but I have found room temperature to work fairly well). Closet shelves are fine, in my experience. You want a place that's pretty dust/bug free, but you don't want the storage area to be airtight, as shrooms do have to breathe just like any other living organism. Many books recommend making some kind of superclean box to store the jars in, but I've never bothered with that. Most sources of information on growing 'shrooms (this one, too) stress that everything be AS STERILE AS POSSIBLE. However, if you do have to cut a few corners you should still be successful if you just USE YOUR HEAD!
which leads me to the....
optional materials: germ-killing soap for washing hands, alcohol for sterilizing hands, etc., surgical gloves, dust masks, hair-nets, an air-filtering machine (Pollenex?), a couple 1 gallon jugs of distilled water, a spray bottle, bleach. (As you can see, this is all stuff which will help to make things a bit more sterile -- definitely recommended!)

[Fabolous]

thx alot, for the info.. ill try my best in use it in my fav.

[endo..jay]

thx alot, for the info.. ill try my best in use it in my fav.

yea no prob anything to help

any questions please feel free to im me

[RastaKaze]

jay, my process is mostly similar to yours, although I don't find the pressure cooker completely neccesary. When I'm sterilizing substrates I simply put the jars in a pot (2 pots, 6 jars in each pot) filled about halfway up with water and several small holes to release pressure when I bring it to a boil. After several the substrate is sterilized and cooled, ready for spores...

i purchase all my equiptment from everyonedoesit.com :thumbsup:

[Mindzeyecreationz]

yeah--I have never used a pressure cooker either for shrooms, just a pan with hot near completely boiling water for an hour -first I apck the jars with brown rice (wild rice is fine) and vermiculite and i use 1/2 pint jars with 2 cc's spore solution each jar. I pack the jars very lightly for faster colonization.

[Doobie Snax]

If anyone deals shrooms in nottingham and is relatively well established on this site, email me, i'm interested. No Mail order, i'm only interested in meeting face to face.
DS.

[endo..jay]

i just find that a pressure cooker makes for more sterile equipment, i said its nessicary but its really not but its the way that i was taught