Relative ease of growing mushrooms?

Hey there guys,


I've done a couple of moderately successful pot grows in the past, and now I'm up and running on what should be a real solid grow. I was just looking through the PF-Tek for simple minds (i.e. for me), and it seems much easier, cheaper, and quicker than growing pot, provided the grower follows it to the letter. I've always heard the contrary the, that pot is much more fool proof and it takes a real mycological maven to get anywhere with psilocybe cubensis. Can anyone who's grown both comment on which may be easier, or easier in some ways? I would imagine each has its particular challenges, but it looks like with a good spore syringe and careful study of the PF-Tek, I'd be able to harvest some really beautiful boomers in just a couple months... Thanks a lot for any input!


Peace,

J

IMHO the psilocybe's are easier to grow because it really isn't daily maintenance, but there are more things that can take the entire crop in one foul swoop. So it is merely a different activity. I have done both and assuming you don't try to innovate to much on the available method you should be fine.

Peace

its easy study pf tek good beginner methods stay away from weird strains of spores stick with b+ or golden teacher also sterilization is the key contamination is #1 problem

shroomery.org is definitely a website you wanna spend some time checking out...use the search function young padawan

also make sure your get ORGANIC brown rice flour use spring water its cheap to do less than 100$ the most expensive parts are spores and a pressure cooker ...once i was so high i stayed up all night and watched the mushrooms grow literally.

yeah I actually already got my spores from T.H.E. Ordered em on thursday night, got em on monday morning. I've read the pf-tek over a bunch of times, I already have the supplies, so I think I'll give this a try! I'm just gonna be real strict about hygiene, take a shower right before working, wash down the counters, etc. Thanks for the responses. And wish me luck! I'll post on here if I harvest some beauties!

Good luck, keep us updated no one else seems too...maybe they do...

Keep us updated!

I've grown both, and I can tell you that I definitely agree with what you mentioned here... Mushrooms are a LOT easier to grow/maintain, assuming you follow the proper protocol.

The inoculation and incubation are the "hardest" parts, simply because you need to worry about contaminations. After that is done, and they are colonizing the substrate properly, it's all clear sailing. At least, this is from my experience.

If you soak the perlite at the bottom of the fruiting chamber before putting it in, you don't even need to mist the chamber all that often. I still do it every now and then when I remember to, but it doesn't seem necessary and the humidity still stays up there really high.

Now with pot, there are so many more things that can go wrong.. Nutrient deficiencies, over fertilizing, lack of light, too much or too close light, insects, deciphering symptoms which can look like two opposite causes, and so on and so forth.

I definitely feel that growing shrooms is faaaaaar easier, and even better is the fact that you reap what you sew so much quicker (since you get flushes of mushrooms you can pick every 1-2 weeks for a couple months).

As long as you wash your hands thoroughly, sterilize the substrate, sterilize the needle, wear latex gloves and use disinfectant (and preferably work in a glove box) you shouldn't have much to worry about at all. I know some of you are thinking "that sounds like a lot more effort than you need to take with pot", but the fact is this is a one time thing that takes an hour in the beginning to get it going; after that sterilization isn't so important, whereas growing pot seems to be a major commitment during the whole life span of each of the plants.

That's my two cents anyhow!

Those are good points, that's pretty much my line of thinking. Now I wonder though, if mushrooms are overall so much simpler and faster to grow and harvest, why do so few people seem to grow them in comparison to pot? I know they are less popular than weed, but in my area, people are constantly looking for caps and often have a hard time finding them. It seems like from a business perspective, mushrooms would be pretty profitable, which you'd think would be a motivation for more people to grow. I'm thinking of trying it simply because it's an interest of mine, not for money, and to me growing an entheogen to make money is a major contradiction, but I'm just trying to put myself in the place of a normal drug cultivator who needs a source of income... so why don't we have more mushroom growers? It's not like it's easy to get caught either, in fact I'd think it'd be nigh impossible unless you told a bunch of people. Way more secure than growing cannabis...

i'd like to give it a try, you have a link to a get started guide? where do i get the spores and syringe? sorry to jump in on your thread

yeah I can help you out. Go to the Shroomery for all kinds of information and guides. The guide that I'm gonna use can be found here. I ordered my spores from The Hawk's Eye. Hawke is awesome, I got my order in like three days. I couldn't believe how fast it was. Good luck!

Nice, im gonna start growing shrooms next year..
Grow journal anyone?? ;P

To be honest, I have no idea why more people don't grow them either. I think the number one reason is the one you stated: about them being less popular. I think second to that is the fact that most guidelines say that you need a pressure cooker, and this likely deters many people who take the first step at looking into it, because most of us don't have pressure cookers and they are kind of expensive. I know I ended up getting one just for growing mushrooms, which was a costly investment (more than a hundred bucks, though I received it as a gift).

But you have some really good points in there too.. I agree that from a financial standpoint, it does seem like a smart business move. In fact my girlfriend says the same thing to me many times about how "too bad we can't just sell them" because of how much I end up getting out of flushes in such a short time frame. It costs around 10 bucks a gram in the country I currently reside, and even with a really small scale growing with just 4-6 350 ml cakes, I end up with roughly 40-60 grams (dried). That's a whole lot of fucking moneys' worth in such a short time (2 months at most).

I don't sell them though because ... well, mainly because I don't want to increase the likelihood of getting caught. They maintain their potency for quite a long time and seem to have a real long shelf life, so it's nice in that I always have shrooms to take when I want, which allows me to take 5-7 grams every couple of weeks.

They also don't put off a distinct odor like Cannabis, so no one should smell them, and if they did, they probably would have no clue what they are smelling anyhow. Another plus to growing them (in comparison to Cannabis) is that any old cheapo light will do, and they only need light when fruiting and only for at most half of the day (even an 11 watt energy bulb seems to work fine).

I wish pot was as easy to grow as shrooms have been for me because I feel like I muck up my pot grows in some manner. I need a lot more herb and not so much fungi anymore.

Keep in mind (anyone who is thinking of growing shrooms) that you only really need to buy spores ONE TIME. The syringe can be re-used - just pressure cook it for half an hour and it will be sterile again, and anytime you grow mushrooms make a spore print out of one or two of your biggest caps. This is basically as simple as cutting the stem off a cap and laying the cap down (upright) on a piece of aluminum foil. With a spore print saved and the same old syringe you can then always fill up your syringe again with spores from your spore print (basically you just scrape the spores off the print into a small - sterile - cup of distilled water, and then suck it up in the syringe). So keep this in mind if you never want to pay for spores again, because you can continuously grow mushrooms this way for next to nothing.

Again as previously mention stick to a simple strain such as psilocybe cubensis or any of its variants.. the larger the flush the easier it is to grow likewise with marijuana.

Inoculation and incubation are the most tedious and watchful kind of processes. Marijuana takes maintenance and persistance, if you get lazy one week then your outcome can be greatly affected.

The PF-Tek is a great route for the novice mushroom grower and should produce great results. Remember fungi grows on its own accord, have some darkness and a humidity that is just right and you just spawned something of great power

Wow thanks for the info guys, I have searched around the internet for a bit, but would like to ask you Psychotic, how's the tolerance when taking shrooms??
I mean, if you trip like, 2 times a month, does your trip get a lot weaker?? And as the months and eventually years go by, do the effects start to fade or you stiil trip very hard?? Besides you getting used to the effects, like a psycho tolerance, how's the physical toley?? lol thx

This is what I think on tolerance.

The tolerance builds rapidly and if you trip on the same amount of mushrooms say, 3 days later, it will be a very weak trip in comparison. One week after is probably not even enough. Two weeks would probably be OK. I trip every month or two on shrooms and have been doing so for a while. I haven't noticed any long-term tolerance.

Also if you follow this link you will find all the possible physical effects mushrooms will have on the body.
http://www.shroomery.org/6265/Physical-Effects-of-Mushrooms

Brevity said:

This is what I think on tolerance.

The tolerance builds rapidly and if you trip on the same amount of mushrooms say, 3 days later, it will be a very weak trip in comparison. One week after is probably not even enough. Two weeks would probably be OK. I trip every month or two on shrooms and have been doing so for a while. I haven't noticed any long-term tolerance.

Also if you follow this link you will find all the possible physical effects mushrooms will have on the body.
http://www.shroomery.org/6265/Physical-Effects-of-Mushrooms

Click to expand...

Agreed!

I don't see any remarkable tolerance as I do with ecstasy! Once a week you can build up a slight tolerance and may have some cognitive troubles. It is best to give it a 3 week break, and possibly longer after over extended use. Shrooms in my opinion are more healthy then mdma. Although, if you do go on a daily binge with shrooms, trust me you're gonna have one big headache afterwards- depleted serontonin!

Yah. Psilocin is a partial agonist and binds with your serotonin and does some weird yet Awe-some things....

Brevity said:

Yah. Psilocin is a partial agonist and binds with your serotonin and does some weird yet Awe-some things....

Click to expand...

Not a total agonist like ecstasy... it plays with other parts of your brain without jeoperdizing one wholly part!

Psilocin is the true everyman.