Wienerwoods
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Oh boy. This one is exciting.
I've been wanting to grow magic mushrooms for a long ass time. As it happens, the planets kind of aligned when a distant relative sent me a badass, brand new pressure cooker. It sounds strange and it kind of is so we'll leave it at that.
At about the same time I also received a B+ spore print for free from a charitable local mycology enthusiast. I thought about storing it away for a while but then I realized it would be too long before conditions would allow for such a project again. And so I set out to gather the necessary equipment. Getting syringes was definitely something I won't miss. First I tried to get off easy and got the wrong kind of needles (ones you shoot up heroin with, I assume); the needles were tiny and the syringes were only 3 cc.
Getting the right kind was a lot more involved. I ended up only getting one 20 cc syringe and a 2.5", 18G needle. By then I'd had enough and decided I'd go with what I have.
Tuesday morning I cut holes in a plastic container to make a glove box. My Dremel ran out of battery just as I was finishing up the second hole and I got lazy so I tried using a Leatherman and fucked up something epic. Fortunately the glove box was still usable. After that I boiled some pre-sterilized water (overkill much?) and filled the syringes. After a few hours they had cooled down and I proceeded to make the spore syringes. I wiped everything with 60% IPA, emptied the 20 cc syringe along with about 3/4 of the spore print in a shot glass, pulled the liquid back and forth in the syringe a few times and put the cap on. I used the last 1/4 of the print for a 3 cc syringe and stored that one in the cellar where it's cool. So much overkill, I know.
After making the syringes, I made the substrate:
1500 ml vermiculite
750 ml wholegrain rice flour
750 ml water
100g pouch of food grade gypsum
I had to use drinking glasses because I couldn't find any tapered canning jars anywhere. Europe...
There were 10 glasses, five blue 200 ml glasses and five clear 250 ml glasses. Once the glasses were loaded with the substrate as well as a dry verm layer, I put a square of aluminum foil on every glass, secured it with packing tape and put on a second layer of foil. The PC could only fit 7 glasses so I just normally boiled the other three for about 90 minutes.
And so... Tuesday evening, I was sitting where I'm sitting now, waiting for the sterilized stuff to cool down just a little bit more before I could proceed to inoculation. I was pretty nervous, for some reason even more so than when making the syringes.
Inoculation went pretty well. After sterilizing the box, my hands and all the tools I opened the cooker and moved the jars in the glove box (I did 5 at a time).
>remove second foil layer
>flame needle
>inject a total of three times through the center and to the sides (2 cc in each glass)
>cover hole with micropore tape
>replace foil
>repeat
Any stray vermiculite bits I would just wipe off the needle with a cotton pad soaked in IPA. I also wiped my gloves every few glasses.
It's now been exactly 5 days since inoculation. All ten jars have visible mycelium growing in them and the growth rate really is something to behold. No signs of contamination yet.
Next up is making a shotgun terrarium - which reminds me, HOW THE HELL can I reasonably expect the perlite to stay inside the terrarium if even the bottom is full of 1/4" holes?
Comments, critique and tips for improvement are more than welcome.
I've been wanting to grow magic mushrooms for a long ass time. As it happens, the planets kind of aligned when a distant relative sent me a badass, brand new pressure cooker. It sounds strange and it kind of is so we'll leave it at that.
At about the same time I also received a B+ spore print for free from a charitable local mycology enthusiast. I thought about storing it away for a while but then I realized it would be too long before conditions would allow for such a project again. And so I set out to gather the necessary equipment. Getting syringes was definitely something I won't miss. First I tried to get off easy and got the wrong kind of needles (ones you shoot up heroin with, I assume); the needles were tiny and the syringes were only 3 cc.
Getting the right kind was a lot more involved. I ended up only getting one 20 cc syringe and a 2.5", 18G needle. By then I'd had enough and decided I'd go with what I have.
Tuesday morning I cut holes in a plastic container to make a glove box. My Dremel ran out of battery just as I was finishing up the second hole and I got lazy so I tried using a Leatherman and fucked up something epic. Fortunately the glove box was still usable. After that I boiled some pre-sterilized water (overkill much?) and filled the syringes. After a few hours they had cooled down and I proceeded to make the spore syringes. I wiped everything with 60% IPA, emptied the 20 cc syringe along with about 3/4 of the spore print in a shot glass, pulled the liquid back and forth in the syringe a few times and put the cap on. I used the last 1/4 of the print for a 3 cc syringe and stored that one in the cellar where it's cool. So much overkill, I know.
After making the syringes, I made the substrate:
1500 ml vermiculite
750 ml wholegrain rice flour
750 ml water
100g pouch of food grade gypsum
I had to use drinking glasses because I couldn't find any tapered canning jars anywhere. Europe...
There were 10 glasses, five blue 200 ml glasses and five clear 250 ml glasses. Once the glasses were loaded with the substrate as well as a dry verm layer, I put a square of aluminum foil on every glass, secured it with packing tape and put on a second layer of foil. The PC could only fit 7 glasses so I just normally boiled the other three for about 90 minutes.
And so... Tuesday evening, I was sitting where I'm sitting now, waiting for the sterilized stuff to cool down just a little bit more before I could proceed to inoculation. I was pretty nervous, for some reason even more so than when making the syringes.
Inoculation went pretty well. After sterilizing the box, my hands and all the tools I opened the cooker and moved the jars in the glove box (I did 5 at a time).
>remove second foil layer
>flame needle
>inject a total of three times through the center and to the sides (2 cc in each glass)
>cover hole with micropore tape
>replace foil
>repeat
Any stray vermiculite bits I would just wipe off the needle with a cotton pad soaked in IPA. I also wiped my gloves every few glasses.
It's now been exactly 5 days since inoculation. All ten jars have visible mycelium growing in them and the growth rate really is something to behold. No signs of contamination yet.
Next up is making a shotgun terrarium - which reminds me, HOW THE HELL can I reasonably expect the perlite to stay inside the terrarium if even the bottom is full of 1/4" holes?
Comments, critique and tips for improvement are more than welcome.
