Massive Psilocybe Cubensis Cultivation Bee Style

[Aurelius]

the 4th book is the only one that could even be considered suspect.  the others don't really focus on psychedelic mushrooms. they do have their place in the books, but you won't get busted for ordering them. 

http://www.fungi.com/

You definitely won't get busted from here.  And if you can't get a book, just ask them- they'll surely be able to find a place you can order from.  (they sell more of these books, if not all of them, on this site)

[robot]

[robot]

[raffike]

Get that H2O2 and use it in performic acid oxidation,get an autoclave and sterilize whatever you want to at 120 C 1 hour.

[Aurelius]

As strange as it may sound to you, Mycology (the study of mushrooms - or more correctly- fungi) is actually a much more common pursuit than most people give it credit.  I personally know of four or five people who regularly go hunting for mushrooms- for culinary purposes, but there a couple more who do for other reasons. 

There is nothing illegal or immoral about studying these organisms.  It's like saying that if I study toads, I'll be busted for toad-licking  (bufotenine mmm, mmm good).

[ClearLight]

Lil, here's the link to the h202 tek...

    

http://mycomasters.com

[Lilienthal]

Sounds indeed like an alternative for working under sterile conditions... Seems like I was wrong   . Would be interesting to get his concentrations without buying those book...

[Prince_Charles]

He says:

There is little use for peroxide in preparation of compost. This is because compost is by nature not a sterile substrate. Properly made compost should have a tremendous diversity of microorganisms in it, even after it heats up to temperatures high enough to kill insects and weed seeds. This diversity of microoganisms should protect the mushrooms from molds and pathogens. The appearance of significant mold growth during the colonization of compost by mushroom tissue is a likely sign that the compost lacks an important set of microorganisms, perhaps because it was allowed to get too hot. Although one might be able to control such mold or pathogen growth with peroxide, a better solution is to correct the procedure for compost preparation. See Dr. Elaine Ingham's fascinating website, Soilfoodweb.com for more information on what makes good compost."

http://mycomasters.com/Advantages-FAQs.html#FAQs

Maybe this applies to cowshit too?

[ClearLight]

--- From the book ----

To be on the safe side with my plate cultures, I use the lowest concentration of peroxide that I have found effective in agar medium, which is about 0.018%, or 6 mls per liter of medium. (You can add twice this much without visible harm to the mycelium of the species I have grown, but note that very slow-growing species such as Stropharia may be more sensitive to peroxide exposure. The production of protective peroxide-decomposing enzymes seems to be roughly parallel to the rate of growth of the organism). When the plate is inoculated, the concentration presumably begins to drop slowly below the initial level as the peroxide is decomposed by the spreading mycelium. Eventually, the peroxide should disappear completely when the agar is overgrown, if not earlier. Once this stage is reached, colonies of mold may begin to appear at the edge of the agar plate.

-------------------------------------

  since this guy has put a lot of work into it.. i'm not going to post up the whole thing here.. but it is really worth getting...

[Aurelius]

are you saying that you do indeed recommend buying his book?  I had considered it a while back, but was short on cash at the time.

[cya]

Biojamer, is that enough to compleatly steralize the substrate? BRF gets contaminated very easily. Are you speaking from expirience or theory? May I sugest adding h202 to the water while preparing the substrate. It will decompose in the microwave, no?

What are some other less suspicious chemicals that can be used instead of h2o2? Sodium benzoate, perhaps?

[cya]

clearlight, robot already posted that link. Please tell me its post is visable to you!

[midway]

There is little use for peroxide in preparation of compost. This is because compost is by nature not a sterile substrate. Properly made compost should have a tremendous diversity of microorganisms in it, even after it heats up to temperatures high enough to kill insects and weed seeds.

Generally, the best growers use manure sucessfully by using spawn, because as the passage alludes to, its impractical to sterilize large quantities of manure or compost.

Spores alone innoculated in manure may take, but the competition with other organisms would be high. Using already flourishing mycelium, however, means that the mushrooms will likely overpower competitors in a reasonably clean environment.

And so, our ingenious growers will, for example, sterilize grain in a pressure cooker or autoclave, then carefully introduce spores. the result in some weeks is that they have now a dense mixture of the desired mycelium which they then mix in with the manure/compost/whatever to give it more in space and nutrient potential.


Peroxide has been used successfully by large scale growers to combat invaders on the compost/manure/whatever casings. A common one is cobweb mold, which if caught early enough, is destroyed by the peroxide, and the stronger mycelium survives. however, peroxide does stunt the growth of or even damage it, and it certainly shouldnt be used too much unless you have to. Most good growers stay away from using H2O2 at all with spores, and i concur that this is probably the most favorable of routes, although its actual effects are to my knowledge unknown.

[ClearLight]

Yes, there is a lot of useful info in that book...

  I was responding to lil's request for a link, but did not see robot's prior link on that...

[flipper]

Fuck H2O2. Normal sterrilizing is good enough.
If you use Mycelia-water to incubate you have alot more change of succes. Mycelia can defend itself a little. It is stronger then Spore-water.
If you start with spores just incubate a agar dish. Select the purest and most healthy colony of Mycelia and incubate again a Agar dish, and again and again until you have a pure beautiful white strain. (Dont forget sterilizing in a pressure cooker.)
Cut it into pieces and put them into jars with sterilized water and dextrose. Put it into a dark and warm place. Let the Mycelia grow a few weeks and shake every day the jars. With this Mycela water you can Incubate other sterilized jars with water dextrose. And with those jars indefinitly other jars. Easy.
Your substrate will colonize faster with Mycelia water. It has more defense against other contaminations, but you always have to sterilize.

When you have innoculated your substrate Coldshock it. Put it in the frigde for 24 hours (in the dark). Make sure the Temp and Humidification are stable. Temp should be between the 75 and 85 F degrees. Humidication should be around the 90%.
Put the substrate in the shadow. Natural light is the best. Make it Night and day. 12 hours in the shadow 12 hours in the dark.  

[Aurelius]

Take the best sample of mycelium that you currently have.  Take a agar plate and place the mycelium on the plate as though you were going to culture it.  Now, spray the the surface, mycelium and agar both, with a weak solution of gentamycin sulfate.  Next, add another film of agar on top of the mycelium plate.  The mycelium will recover faster and grow faster than the contaminants and will begin to grow through the agar to the top and to the edges. As soon as you have a good amount of mycelium growing either out the sides or out the top, collect a small sample without[/i] digging into the agar.  Repeat this procedure with the newly collected peice of mycelium.  After the second or third grow period, you will have substancially pure mycelium for propagation. 


gentamycin sulfate is available as a eye sanitation/disinfectant to help treat 'pinkeye'.  I believe it might be available cheaply through some chem suppliers also.

[Yachaj]

Robot wrote:

How could one go about producing say 50 kg of dried shrooms per month.

Even if it were legal it would probably be outdated to do so. Dried mushrooms are of lower quality than fresh. And the freshest mushrooms are obtained when the end user is growing him/herself. If quality is among your concerns I would inoculate 10,000 PF TEK style halfpint whiskyglasses, vacuum seal each of them and tell the customers to remove the seal 4-6 weeks before they need the mushrooms. Air will enter the substrate (filtered through the dry contaminant barrier on top), spores will germinate and mushrooms will grow 'in vitro'. Totally maintenance free.

No autoclave - no peroxide - and the vacuum sealed glasses do not look suspicious at all (in most places on this planet they are not even illegal). But you probably need some professional mixing equipment for the substrate and a soda pop factory setup for the inoculation.

In the third edition of the mushroom cultivator's bible Growing Gourmet and MedicinalMush rooms (TEN SPEED PRESS, 2000), author PAUL STAMETS explains:

The ultimate shortcut for culturing mushrooms is via spore mass/liquid-inoculation directly into fruiting substrates (p. 133). Bottle culture is an effective means for growing a variety of gourmet and medicinal mushrooms on sterilized substrates. Currently, Asian growers have adapted bottle culture, originally designed for the easy cropping of Enoki mushrooms (Flammulina velutipes), to the cultivation of many other gourmet and medicinal mushrooms, including Lion's Mane (Hericium erinaceus, Buna-shimeji (Hypsizygus tessulatzto, Reishi (Ganoderma lucidum), Wood Ears (Auricularia polytricha), and some varieties of Oyster mushrooms. The advantage of bottle culture is that the process can be highly compartmentalized and easily incorporated into the many high-speed production systems adapted from other industries. With the natural evolution of techniques, Asian cultivators have replaced bottles with similarly shaped, cylindrical bags. Many growers in Thailand, Taiwan, andjapan prefer this hybrid method. Liquid-inoculation of sterilized, supplemented medium allows for inoculation methods resembling the high-production systems seen in a soda pop factory. With reengineering, such high-speed assembly-line machinery could be retrofitted for commercial bottle and bag cultivation. (pp. 191-193)

[Yachaj]

in 1891, the first book on mushroom growing was published, and it shed new light on the theory of cultivation on horse manure compost. WILLIAM FALCONER, a mushroom grower and experimenter from Long Island, agreed with the recommendations of agricultural journalists and compiled their theories into Mushrooms: How to Grow Them; A Practical Treatise on Mushroom Culturefor Profit and Pleasure (available on-line at

http://chla.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/chla/chla-idx?notisid=AAM1556