Psilocybin Mushroom Handbook

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  PROLOGUE

  Introduction

  Chapter 1 - A BRIEF HISTORY OF PSILOCYBIN MUSHROOM CULTIVATION

  Chapter 2 - THE BIOLOGY OF MUSHROOMS

  What is a Mushroom?

  Fungal Classification & Taxonomy

  Examples of the Linnaean Taxonomic System

  The Fungal Llife Cycle

  Spore Discharge

  Fungal Growth

  Fungal Sex, Part One: Mating

  Fungal Sex, Part Two: Fruiting

  The Biology of Mushroom Cultivation

  Chapter 3 - PSILOCYBE: THE SPECIES

  The Woodloving Psilocybes

  Chapter 4 - STERILE CULTURE TECHNIQUE

  Cleaning Your Work Area

  Personal Hygiene

  Mental Hygiene

  Record Keeping

  Chapter 5 - EQUIPMENT AND SUPPLIES

  Equipment

  Supplies

  Substrates & Casing Materials

  Chapter 6 - PF TEK IMPROVED

  The “Improved” PF Tek

  Phase 2: PF Tek Inoculation

  Phase 3: Incubation

  Phase 4: Germination/Colonization

  Contamination

  Phase 5: Fruiting

  Preparing the Jars for Fruiting

  Phase 6: Harvesting

  Drying the Mushrooms & Taking Spore Prints

  Cloning a Fruiting Strain to Agar

  Making Spore Syringes

  Chapter 7 - WORKING WITH AGAR

  Preparing Agar Plates

  Senescence

  Care of Petri Dishes & Cultures

  Spore Streaking

  Agar Spore Germination

  Cardboard Disc Spore Germination

  Incubation

  Tissue Transfers (Cloning)

  Agar-to-Agar Transfers (Subculturing)

  Contamination

  Diagnosing the Sources of Contamination on Agar

  Long-Term Strain Storage

  Paper Pellet Storage Medium

  Inoculating Storage Tubes

  Retrieving Cultures From Storage

  Chapter 8 - WORKING WITH GRAIN

  Grain Spawn Preparation

  Grain Spawn Recipes

  Agar-to-Grain Transfers

  Syringe Inoculation of Grain

  Incubating Your Jars

  Shaking Grain Jars

  Understanding Contamination on Grain

  Grain-to-Grain Transfers

  Bags and Other Large Spawn Containers

  Loading and Cooking Grain Bags

  Innoculating Grain Bags

  Incubating Larger Containers

  Chapter 9 - FRUITING CONTAINERS

  The Humidity Tent

  Humidity Levels

  Lighting

  Chapter 10 - CASING SOIL

  Casing Soil Recipes

  Overlay

  Scratching

  Contamination

  Chapter 11 - FRUITING AND HARVESTING

  Harvesting

  Cleaning the Harvest

  Yields and Biological Efficiency

  Chapter 12 - AFTER THE HARVEST

  Preserving Mushrooms

  Spore Printing

  Chapter 13 - OUTDOOR CULTIVATION

  Temperature Requirements

  About Wood Substrates

  Spore Germination (see chapter 7)

  Cloning (see chapter 7)

  Peroxide and the Caramel Caps

  Agar Culturing/Strain Selection

  “PF Tek” for Woodlovers

  Grain Spawn

  Biology of Rhizomorphs

  Wood-Based Primary (Sterilized) Spawn

  Wood Chips

  Spiral-Grooved Dowels

  Sawdust

  Timing

  Spawn Rates

  Wood-Based Primary Spawn

  Contamination

  Secondary (Non-Sterilized) Spawn

  Location

  Containers and Substrate Depth

  Fruiting Substrate

  Creating the Bed

  Incubation

  Casing & Companion Planting

  Fruiting

  Winter Dormancy

  Restoring Depleted Beds

  Outdoor (“Naturalized”) Spawn Transfers

  Stem-Butt and Cardboard Spawn

  Can I Grow Woodlovers Indoors?

  Chapter 14 - THE CHEMISTRY OF PSILOCYBE MUSHROOMS

  Psilocybin Safety

  Chapter 15 - THE PSILOCYBE MUSHROOM EXPERIENCE

  Fresh vs. Dry

  Dosage

  Recommended Dosages by Species

  Dosage Levels

  Higher Doses

  Monoamine Oxidase (MAO) Inhibitors and Psilocybe Alkaloids

  Tolerance

  Methods of Ingestion

  Mushroom Tea

  Alcohol Extract

  Chapter 16 - CONCLUSION: WHERE TO GO FROM HERE

  Appendix A

  Appendix B

  Appendix C - RESOURCES

  Appendix D - GLOSSARY

  Index

  Copyright Page

  This book is dedicated to the many mycologists who helped to uncover the secrets behind the life cycle of these little mushrooms, and to the Mazatec peoples of Mexico, who have for centuries protected, nourished, and handed down the ceremony, knowledge, and wisdom they reveal.

  We would also like to thank Kat for having so generously agreed to produce a new Psilocybe cubensis life cycle illustration. Her beautiful artwork illuminated the pages of the book that germinated our mycological careers, and it is a great honor to have some of that same light grace our own little book.

  Finally, we would like to thank Mellea R. Millaria, our little honey mushroom, for her keen photographic eye, patience, and beauty. Without her unwavering support, this book would surely never have fruited.

  PROLOGUE

  In 1992, while perusing the dusty aisles of a Manhattan antiquarian book-shop, we happened upon a dog-eared copy of O.T. Oss and O.N. Oeric’s Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower’s Guide. This slim volume, with its densely packed text and fanciful, otherworldly line drawings, held for us an immediate and irresistible allure. Like an illuminated manuscript or a book of spells, it glimmered and hummed with meaning, reaching out to us from the crowded shelves. It seemed less a book than a communiqué, a missive cast out into the world, waiting silently for years to at last make its way into our hands. We already held a considerable affection for the mushrooms in question, but we had never before contemplated growing our own.Yet by the time we exited the shop, book in hand, the idea seemed self-evident, organic: Of course, we thought, we will grow our own mushrooms!

  For us, this book has never lost its intense personal appeal, but we were hardly the sole intended recipients of the secrets it contained. First published in 1976, Psilocybin has been in print ever since and has sold over 150,000 copies. The methods it espouses have inspired the careers of untold numbers of mushroom cultivators and kitchen mycologists (your humble authors among them), and sparked a flurry of underground experimentation and innovation. Although several books and pamphlets on the subject of psilocybin mushroom cultivation have been published before and since Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower’s Guide, this book is unique in a number of important ways.

  First of all, it presents a series of methods that can be performed by nearly anyone, requiring only a limited investment in specialized tools and materials, such as a pressure cooker and Petri dishes. Second, unlike previously available techniques, Oss and Oeric’s methodology is relatively simple, reliable, and quite productive. Though they did not invent any of the methods they espoused, they were the first t
o combine them into such an efficient and effective system. Finally, it is far more than a simple manual for the cultivation of psilocybin mushrooms. With its philosophical asides, lovely, phantasmagorical illustrations, and Lovecraftian speculations about the off-world origins of the organisms and their import for humankind (including a statement of purpose supposedly dictated to one of the authors by the mushroom overlords themselves!), it is, above all, a great read.

  Although Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower’s Guide is a classic, a new manual on psilocybin mushroom cultivation is nonetheless needed. While Psilocybin has stood the test of time as literature, it has become obsolete as a grower’s guide. As easy and reliable as the Oss & Oeric method was, it still left a great deal of room for improvement. In the 30 years since Psilocybin first appeared, many cultivation techniques have been considerably refined or supplanted entirely, and a number of new technological and mycological discoveries have been made.

  The purpose of this book is to update and complement the methods Oss and Oeric described. It is our hope that by creating a new resource for beginning Psilocybe mushroom cultivators, the burden of being such a resource will be lifted from that book. Psilocbyin Mushroom Handbook updates the outmoded technical information within its predecessor’s pages, leaving Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower’s Guide free to be seen for what it is: a work of art. It is our humble wish that our efforts here will provide concise and well organized instructions for mushroom cultivation that incorporate the most up-to-date practices. In so doing, we hope to help keep in print the book that first sparked our mushroom imagination to life so it will continue to inspire new students of psycho-mycology for years to come.

  INTRODUCTION

  If you spend a little time perusing the published literature or the various Web sites on the subject of Psilocybe mushroom cultivation, you will quickly notice the dizzying array of methods that one can use to grow these mushrooms.This is particularly true for Psilocybe cubensis: there are the “Psilocybe Fanaticus Technique,” methods utilizing wild bird seed, composted cow or horse manure, worm castings, and so on. As you will come to see, this is a very robust species with which to work, easily adaptable to a wide variety of substrates and conditions. As a result, it is the ultimate “tinkerer’s” mushroom, and has inspired countless experiments in search of the best, newest, or simply the wackiest1 method to make it fruit.

  Such “primary research” stands as one of the paramount joys of working in science, but it can also be its greatest frustration, particularly for a beginner. Some 99.99% of scientific investigations result in setbacks, dead ends, or outright failure, and that is exactly how it should be. Only by process of elimination does one arrive at that elusive, precious 0.01% Holy Grail of success (proving, in the end, that failures aren’t really failures anyway). Anyone who has spent any amount of time doing scientific research eventually becomes comfortable with this seemingly skewed ratio. One comes to see failures as simply part of the process, even sometimes a welcome part, since there is usually much to be learned from something that doesn’t work.

  Nevertheless, for a beginner this can be a difficult lesson to learn. Early failures (often among the most catastrophic) can be so disheartening for the novice that she is inclined to give up completely. More than a few times we were ourselves ready to chuck it all and go back to doing something easy, like brain surgery. But then we discovered that brain surgery wasn’t nearly as much fun, returned to growing mushrooms, and eventually our successes were more spectacular than our failures. We can assure you that the same will hold true for you if you stick with it despite whatever setbacks you may encounter along the way.

  We have tried to present to the reader a set of mushroom cultivation methods that are simple and reliable enough to at least minimize the number of problems and failures that might arise. It is a system that is, if not foolproof, at least fool-resistant. We have sought to avoid methods that are confusing or present too many choices for the cultivator at each stage of the process. Instead, we have tried to guide the novice from one end of the mushroom life cycle to the other in the simplest and most direct route possible.

  The methods we present are among those that we have found the simplest and most effective in our hands.You should not interpret the omission of any other methods from this guide as an implicit critique of their merits. Time and space prevent us from describing or commenting on all the possible ways you might grow these mushrooms.You could very likely find success using one of these alternative methods, and we would never want to dissuade you from further experimentation, if that is your desire.

  This book is not meant to be the final word about psilocybin-containing mushrooms. Its main purpose is simply to expose the beginner to basic and reliable methods for growing several of them. The thing about beginners is that once they get going, they don’t remain beginners for long, and soon outgrow their initial training. Once you have seen firsthand how these mushrooms grow, you will naturally begin to see other avenues for exploration and experimentation.We have provided a list of titles at the end of the book for further reading, should you want to go beyond the boundaries of its pages, and we sincerely hope you will do so.To have outgrown our methods is to have proven their value as tools for learning.

  Scope and Scale

  Another thing you might notice on reading this book is that it does not contain methods for cultivating mushrooms on a larger scale, so-called “bulk” methods. After some deliberation, we decided not to cover the subject of large-scale cultivation for two reasons. First of all, bulk methods are far less reliable than the small-scale ones we describe here, particularly for beginners. Second, we felt that to do so would be to encourage unnecessary risk-taking.The methods we describe here should provide any reader with more than enough psilocybin to keep one’s friends and family “bemushroomed” for years. If you find you have more than you need, we encourage you to (discreetly) give them away, rather than sell them on the open market. Besides, while growing or possessing these mushrooms in any quantity is illegal in most countries, growing them in bulk and/or selling them is just asking for trouble.The small-scale methods we describe are far more suited to anyone trying to keep a low profile, and the best way to avoid being busted is to keep out of “the biz” in the first place.

  If, after having succeeded with our methods, you still feel the urge to “bulk up,” we suggest you consider learning how to grow edible or medicinal mushrooms.You might not make quite as much money doing so, but you’ll certainly keep yourself out of jail. Methods for growing mushrooms of every kind (including the Psilocybes) on both small and large scales can be found in several of the books in our further reading list.

  How to Read This Book

  We strongly suggest you read this book from cover to cover, front to back, one chapter at a time, in the order presented. However, if like us you have a terminally short attention span, then feel free to skip around and read the book in whatever order you like. Just make sure that at the end of the day you have read the book in its entirety before you attempt any of the experiments within, even before you start gathering your equipment and materials, for two important reasons. First of all, mushroom cultivation is a complicated and strange process, and is not the kind of work for which everyone is necessarily well suited. It is entirely possible that upon reading this book you will find that you don’t really have the time or wherewithal to make a go of it. That is fine. Better that you figure that out before you invest any further time and money in the endeavor. Of course, the last thing we want to do is discourage you from trying. We truly believe that the methods we present are simple enough for just about anyone to perform successfully.We just want to make sure you really know what you are in for should you choose to give them a try.

  Second, and perhaps more important, if you take the time to internalize as many of the ideas and processes we present as possible before beginning, you will succeed far more quickly than you otherwise would.We figured out this part the hard way. It wa
s not until we had read every book we could find on the subject over and over and over again, and really felt like we understood what was supposed to happen, that things actually happened the way they were supposed to. In other words, it was only when we could see with our mind’s eye what we were supposed to see in the real world, that our experiments at last began to bear fruit, so to speak.We hope that this book is presented in such a way that upon reading it, you will understand what you will be doing and why, and you will experience swift success.

  1

  A BRIEF HISTORY OF PSILOCYBIN MUSHROOM CULTIVATION2

  At the time of R. Gordon Wasson’s “rediscovery” of the shamanic use of psilocybin-containing mushrooms in Mexico in the 1950s, the science of mushroom cultivation was still very much in its infancy. Until then, the only species of mushroom under cultivation, at least in the West3, was Agaricus bisporus, the common white button mushroom. The cultivation methods used were more or less the same as those devised in France during the 17th century: growers collected mycelium-rich soil from wild areas where the mushroom was found and transferred it to rows of horse manure in naturally climate-controlled caves. This method was effective, but since it utilized a raw, unpasteurized substrate, it left much to chance, and the beds often succumbed to contamination.3

  These crude methods remained essentially unchanged until the 20th century, when a number of incremental improvements were discovered, eventually setting the stage for the successful cultivation of Psilocybe cubensis in the 1960s. In the late 18th century, the American mushroom grower and researcher William Falconer published a book entitled Mushrooms: How to Grow Them; a Practical Treatise on Mushroom Culture for Profit and Pleasure, which compiled recent discoveries in Agaricus cultivation, and included a chapter on the benefits of a “casing layer.” By placing a thin layer of soil on top of the compost beds prior to fruiting, growers discovered that their mushroom yields were improved considerably.