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Originally Posted by Romain  Im also thinking about growing shrooms as well. How long does it take from start to finish to grow them? |
It depends on A LOT of factors. It will not take more than two months unless you seriously screw up. Also, there are a lot of ways to speed up the process.
Let's say you start off using spores (which most everyone will). You inject the spores into the jar. After 2-4 days the spores germinate and then after about 5-7 days you will see a tiny white spot. If you've made it this far, fucking fantastic.
Now the white spot (called mycelium) will keep getting bigger and eventually cover the whole jar. If you choose a slow ass colonizer like Ecuador, this can take 2-4 weeks. If you choose South American, this will probably be a little less than 2 weeks. (I'm not really sure on times because I grow edibles. Read the Shroomery forums for more info. Better yet, sign up and search their forums.)
So fast forward 3 weeks, you have a fully white (colonized) jar. You now have to birth the jar. Take the "cake" out and put it in a jug of water for 24 hours in the fridge (this is called dunking).
Take it out and roll it in vermiculite (these two steps are known as 'dunking & rolling') and then mist it with water.
Put these cakes in a terrarium, increase humidity to 100% and start giving them light (before this part, the jars should of been somewhere dark @ 80-82F. If the temp was higher then contamination was more likely to occur, and if the temp was lower they take longer to colonize but it's worth it because you're less likely to get a contamination.)
After 1-2 weeks you will start to see little pinheads on the cake. These are called pins and will eventually be the actual mushroom fruitbodies. Pins = good. You want lots and lots of pins!
Some pins will stop growing shortly after being introduced. These are called aborts. You should take these off because they will not grow. As you get better you get less aborts but they are normal. You can eat them and they are potent, so it's alright.
One day you'll wake up and see that you have a lot of pins about 1-2" tall. After this you can literally see the mushrooms growing by the hour. Doubling in size every 6-12 hours. If you look at the video in this post, you'll see that near the end they start growing very fast.
The above is called PF Tek (
http://www.erowid.org/plants/mushroo...s_law10.shtml). It is very very outdated. I only mention it because the other methods turn people off. BUT I highly recommend reading about casing and grain before attempting PF Tek.
Casing isn't that hard and it's VERY worth it! You can even case your PF tek cakes so don't sweat it. If this is all overwhelming, don't worry. Just read PF tek first and understand it.
All in all it will probably take 1.5 - 2 months when you're starting out. As you gain experience, you can do a lot of things to decrease wait time and increase yield. For example:
When using grain like rye or wild bird seed, you can shake the jar and this causes the jar to colonize faster.
If you use liquid culture (LC) rather than spores (you have to make LC yourself), you will shave a few days off the colonization time because the spores don't need to germinate. LC + grain = about 10 days to colonize.
Casing to something mushrooms thrive in like horse manure and straw really increases colonization time. It will take about 1-2 week for the fully colonized grain jar to colonize a tray of manure.
Then about a few days to a week to see pins. Not only that but you'll see 2-3x more pins if you use casings instead of cakes. They will be more potent and bigger too.
Later on you can move on to more advanced shit like cloning your best mushroom so you'll have a better, even pinset, creating hybrids by crossing two strains, etc etc.
It all sounds hard but most of it is just learning all the new terminology. You're basically just soaking, simmering, pressure cooking, mixing, injecting..
One thing that fucks up people who are starting out is contamination. You must absolutely be clean AT LEAST until the jar is fully colonized.
For example while injecting the spores, you should have clean clothes on,
a painters mask or just DO NOT breath near/on the jar (bacteria),
washed hands with gloves on,
light the tip of the needle until it gets red hot and then cool it with an alcohol swab and swab the jar lid also,
spray Oust or Lysol liberally in the room and let it do its thing,
spray your body,
bleach ALL working surfaces,
incubate (just means keep somewhere dark and at 80-82F) the jars somewhere clean. Tupperware cleaned out with bleach.
If you follow all that and still get a contamination, it means your jar lids weren't filtered good enough, OR you fucked up sterilizing the jars.
Rye or WBS for example MUST be pressure cooked. No boiling / steaming / microwaving will sterlize it.