How to Grow Magic Mushrooms

Brunt Dana
6 min readMar 5, 2021

The Infallible Starter Guide to Cultivate Magic Mushrooms

Life on this planet, as we all know, couldn’t go on without the quiet fungi. Millions of years ago, they played an important part in the formation of oxygen in the atmosphere by extracting phosphorous from the stones and giving it to plants to make photosynthesis possible. In other words, if not for fungi, you would have never been born.

Also, mushrooms helps with the decomposition of almost everything. Without them, no life would be possible Earth, and it would be a sterile ball orbiting the Sun.

And Mushrooms affect your life so deeply in an important way that you would probably never notice.

Mushrooms and The Food We Eat

You had no idea, but mushrooms are an important part of your diet. They are the succulent, spore-generator, fruit-like part of fungi. Usually, mushrooms grow over land and are just a tiny part of the bigger organism that lives under it, rooting its way throughout the earth and living together with the stems of the plants.

For sure you are aware that mushrooms can be consumed and they should be because they have a myriad of health profits.

Morel, chanterelle, shiitake, and truffles are seen as luxuries. But you are not only consuming fungi through mushrooms. Varieties of the family Penicillium curdle many different cheeses.

They ferment as well the grains and grapes to make the beer and wine we love, and they give us the yeast that makes the bread expand.

Saccharomyces cerevisiae, or what we call bread yeast, is a fundamental material for baking natural bread, an aliment that’s always been a basis for human living for centuries.

Fungi and Our Health

Mushrooms can help defeat cancer

A research made by the Journal of Experimental Biology and Medicine discovered that all the common fungi species cuts down breast cancer cells by an amazing 33%. But mushrooms don’t only kill cancer cells in the breast but also in the stomach and pancreas.

They promote immunity and provide vitamins

Beta-glucan and lentinan are two elements discovered in mushrooms that reinforce your defenses. Besides, they are very important vitamins — a lot of mushroom species have important amounts of vitamin D, and crimini mushrooms is full of B12, so they are a great alternative for vegans because B12 is is a important animal protein.

Fungi in Medical Use

Red yeast rice was one of the first fungi to be officially used in medicine. It was used in China about 800 AD. Fermenting rise with Monascus purpura, or yeast, generates a medicinal active compound.

Today, thousands of people counter their severe diseases around the world with fungi based medicines. The pharmaceutical power of fungal components has been widely known for decades.

Maybe the most powerful yet questioned fungi variety is psilocybin mushrooms, whose beneficial properties have been applied for a long time.

In his book, “How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence,” Michael Pollan goes further up to the origins of these medicines.

Pollan wrote that these psychoactive drugs were earlier of common use and legally applied in the US to counter mental problems like anxiety, depression or addictions. Pollan states that, “During the whole decade of the 50s and early 60s, most of the psychiatric centers considered LSD and psilocybin the cure of all ills.”

What can Magic Mushrooms Do For Your Mind

Psilocybin mushroom, also called magic mushroom is a hallucinogen that changes perception, mood, and a lot of different mental functioning by using its power on your brain’s cortex. The medicine enables certain receptors named 5-HT2A (2ARs) that are usually activated by serotonin.

This tsunami of mental alterations of your brain makes you perceive the magic of everything that surrounds you. Your conscious will level up. You will become more sensitive and see the colors more shiny and hear, taste, and smell more deeply. And you will set your mind in here and now.

These good changes remain long after the medicine leaves your body. Patients described an important decrease of anxiety and melancholy after the first intake.

They even say they went through a “spiritual change,” which caused a long term transformation in their awareness. After using the drug, patients said it helped them set their minds on the present, and they had a better understanding about the connection between everything.

So, if you have some kind of mental disorder, or you feel the need of a spiritual awakening and silent the steady harmony in your mind, psilocybin mushrooms can be your choice. You might be already wondering how to get them.

Cultivate Them

So, now that you are aware of the huge goods fungi and mushrooms offer, wanna grow them? This system works for most mushroom varieties, but let’s put our eye on the cultivation of the psilocybin or magic mushroom.

Today, you can go to jail for growing psilocybin in most countries. However, many medical investigators are working hard to demonstrate the psychiatric and medical benefits of psychedelics like psilocybin, and we can hope they will become legal in some time. By now you can find out how to grow them while you wait until you can use them. I know you don’t even think of doing illegal thinks.

Right now you must want to know how much time this procedure takes. Thanks for asking. This is the estimated time:

Spore inoculation and germination — about a 7 days

From germination to the whole covering of the cake — from 14 to 28 days.

Beginning of the mushroom growing — about 28 days.

After a month or less, the cake starts to look blue, and the growing process is over.

Finally, the development takes from 28 to 42 days from spore inoculation to the mature mushroom.

You need the following:

First Phase —

1 Sterilized jar with a substrate for each cubic centimeter of mushroom spores for the inoculation. You could use a big jar as well with brown rice flour or the essence you want to use for the inoculation. But the sterilization procedure is much harder.

Latex gloves

Napkins

Facial mask (you might have a lot of these due to coronavirus)

Rubbing alcohol

A spore syringe with mushroom spores. You can buy them on internet but take into account that many sellers don’t ship to certain states of the US. Ask before buying. Anyway, you will find a good seller of syringes willing to help you.

Hypodermic needle, if your syringe comes without it.

A burner

Lysol or other sterilizing spray

Second Phase —

Spray bottle

A transparent plastic tub with a cover, which you will use as a fruiting box

Make 4 or 5 holes of half an inch on all sides of your fruiting box for air circulation.

A good place where sun shines hard

Thermometer and hygrometer

Vermiculite or Perlite, they are not the same but both work

3% hydrogen peroxide

Four factors will decide whether you harvest the fruit of your hard work or not:

Hygiene

Humidity

Light

Temperature

I’ll tell you about these four factors as we proceed:

First Phase

First step of mushroom growing is when you build what is called birthing cake. This cake is the effect of mycelium covering the surface of the container and involving the substrate. If you take it out of the container, it should stay firm like a cake and mushrooms will grow from it.

First Step: Sterilizing

The worst thing that could happen to your mushroom growing is hostile bacteria striking your inoculation container. You must take care to sterilize the containers and the place where they will be. You don’t want to have disgusting germs making a criminal fuss on your spores and breeding in your inoculation container.

Select a quiet space of your house, a private room that that can be prepared as a tiny lab.

Collect all the things you need for the first phase. Put your facial mask on, get into the room and don’t let anyone else in.

Spray the place with a sensible amount of disinfectant. And don’t forget to use gloves.

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