How To Grow Magic Mushrooms Indoors [3 Methods]

Magic mushrooms can be hard to come by, only growing naturally in Europe during the autumn and winter. Depending on where you live, they might grow in abundance, or not at all. If you fall into the latter group and want a ready supply of magic mushrooms in your life, then you’ll have to take growing into your own hands.

Growing magic mushrooms at home might sound too good to be true, but it can actually be very simple and accessible to almost everyone. And if you want to get fully involved, there are more complex methods available that provide huge harvests. Below, we’ll take you through three methods of shroom cultivation, from the easiest to the most involved.

First things first: create a sterile workspace

Whichever mushroom growing method you opt for, operating within a sterile environment is essential. Despite seeming resilient, mushrooms are actually surprisingly sensitive beings. The environments in which they grow are highly hospitable—not only to Psilocybe mycelium, but all manner of moulds and bacteria.

The substrates on which they grow are prime candidates for contamination, and there are many more aggressive life forms out there that would happily outcompete and colonise your mushroom spores. So keeping things clean gives them the best chance.

How sterile you make your environment depends on space, budget, resources, and how much effort you're willing to put in. At the very least, you’ll want to wipe surfaces and tools down with isopropyl alcohol and sterilise containers in a pressure cooker or cooking pot.

If you really want to lower the risk of contamination, you can clear out a room and line it with plastic sheeting. You could also employ a powerful tool in the arsenal of cleanliness: a laminar flow hood. These devices filter air, allowing you to inoculate (inject spores into a substrate) in an environment with a continual supply of clean air.

It’s very possible to achieve successful mushroom harvests without going to the more extreme lengths of sterilisation; just do what you’re comfortable with.

Method 1: grow kits

Magic mushroom grow kits provide a quick and simple way to grow large amounts of shrooms at home. While you still need to be careful with them, they are the method least fraught with challenges.

What you need

Grow kits tend to come with:

• A fully colonised substrate
• Humidity tent/appropriate container
• Instructions

Some may come with more than this, but not always. Either way, there are a few extra pieces of equipment you’ll need to get a good harvest:

• Latex gloves
• Misting bottle
• (Optional) Heat mat
• (Optional) Heat guard
• (Optional) Hygrometer

Overview of the method

Mushroom grow kits cut out the hardest, riskiest elements of mushroom cultivation. They arrive with a fully colonised substrate, meaning it’s ready to begin fruiting mushrooms immediately, and the main window for contamination has passed.

Though each brand works slightly differently, they follow the same basic steps. Exposing the mycelium to a little air and water triggers the fruiting process. Over the next few weeks, it will be necessary to keep it in a humid environment and allow for air exchange once a day. For the specifics of each brand, Zamnesia will provide manuals.

Fresh Mushrooms Grow Kit 'McKennaii'

(2277)

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Why choose this method?

If you want to obtain a large flush of magic mushrooms in a relatively short period, with relatively little effort, this method is incredible. For the price, yields can be significant, providing you with many memorable trips.

There are no real downsides to this option. The only reason to opt for another method would be out of a desire to perform the process in its entirety, from inoculation through to harvest. If you can master an involved method, then you can basically supply yourself with magic mushrooms forever. But for many, a grow kit is a perfect option.

Method 2: PF tek

The PF tek is perhaps the simplest form of true mushroom cultivation. Requiring nothing particularly technical, it can nevertheless allow you to achieve big yields at home while maintaining a large degree of involvement in the process.

What you need

The PF tek requires a significant amount of equipment. However, all of it is available from non-specialist sources (except mushroom spores) and shouldn’t cost too much. For a full list of equipment, consult our detailed guide to preparing a PF tek. Otherwise, here are some of the essentials:

• Mushroom spores: Either buy a spore syringe or source your own
• Pressure cooker: Not essential, but reduces the risk of contamination significantly
• Jars: This is where you will put your substrate, and where the mycelium will colonise
• Brown rice flour: This is the substrate on which your mycelium will grow
• Vermiculite: This organic substance maintains correct humidity and aeration in your brown rice flour substrate
• Large plastic box with lid: This will become a fruiting chamber for the final stages

Mondo Spore Syringe Psilocybe Cubensis B+

(121)

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Overview of the method

1. Create your substrate: Mix together vermiculite and brown rice flour, and load into jars.

2. Sterilise: Using either a pressure cooker or a cooking pot, heat your jars and substrate to the point that they are fully sterilised.

3. Inoculate: Inject spores into your jars.

4. Colonisation: Now, leave the jars in a suitable place and allow the spores to colonise.

5. Pinning: Exposing your fully colonised jars to light and cooler temperatures will cause the mycelium to form pins, which are young mushrooms.

6. Fruiting: Remove the cakes from the jars, put them in the fruiting chamber, and maintain a good environment. Pins will grow into fully mature magic mushrooms.

Why choose this method?

For those who want to try cultivating magic mushrooms from scratch, this is potentially the easiest and most reliable method. With good results, it offers a forgiving and satisfying introduction to the process.

However, it’s slow and requires patience, and can easily go wrong. While it’s worth exercising patience if you’re serious about developing cultivation skills, for those who just want a quick route to a flush of high-quality mushrooms, a grow kit may be more suitable.

Method 3: spawn & bulk substrate

If you’re after huge yields of magic mushrooms, this method will deliver! Hardly more complex than the PF tek, bulk grows allow veritable forests of magic mushrooms to be produced.

What you need

Now, for a bulk grow, you need some kind of spawn. Spawn is a general name given to a body of mycelium that will then go on to colonise the bulk substrate. Rather than inoculating this single, large substrate, the best method is to inoculate a smaller one and then add this mycelium to the larger one.

You may use a broken-up cake from a PF tek, an agar solution, or a liquid culture. The choice is yours.

Once you have spawn, there are a few essential things you need for a bulk grow:

• Large box, similar to a fruiting chamber
• Half a brick of coco coir
• 5l coarse vermiculite
• 3.75l cow manure
• 1.75–2l water
• Hydrated lime

There is a much longer list of necessary equipment, which you can see on our dedicated guide to growing magic mushrooms in bulk.

Overview of the method

The process for a bulk grow is very simple. Or rather, the extra steps are very simple. After creating your spawn, all you really need to do is add this to the substrate of your bulk grow, maintain conditions until it’s fully colonised, then let it fruit.

First, you will cover the box in an opaque bin bag while it colonises. Once it’s fully colonised, you can remove this and begin misting it, triggering the fruiting stage. Then, just look after it, and watch as incredibly large flushes of mushrooms appear.

Why choose this method?

There’s only really one reason to choose this method over the others: yield. As the name “bulk” suggests, this method has been developed exclusively to grow huge amounts of magic mushrooms. And it works!

If you have the patience, space, and resources to commit to this method, you can provide yourself with an almost infinite supply of magic mushrooms.

Growing magic mushrooms: a method to suit everyone

As you can see, there’s a way to grow magic mushrooms at home whatever your level of commitment or ability.

A grow kit allows you to quickly harvest a decent flush of magic mushrooms with minimal effort. The PF tek is perfect for novice cultivators who want to try growing magic mushrooms at home without a grow kit. If successful, it offers very good results and is an invaluable step in learning to grow magic from scratch. Bulk grows are best suited to those who have grown before, know a little about what they’re doing, and are after something really impressive.

Whichever method you choose, you’ll get something out of it—not least of all the magic mushrooms themselves—and next time, you can always step it up a level.

Max Sargent

Max has been writing for over a decade, and has come into cannabis and psychedelic journalism in the last few years. Writing for companies such as Zamnesia, Royal Queen Seeds, Cannaconnection, Gorilla Seeds, MushMagic and more, he has experience in a broad spectrum of the industry.

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