In this article, you’ll find all the information you need to grow your own magic mushrooms. We’ll show you five ways to get started and hopefully help you decide which one works best for you.
From 5 minutes’ work to 5 months of preparation and in-depth research, we’ll show you different ways to get started in the vast world of mushroom growing and explain the pros and cons of each growing method.
1) Magic mushroom grow boxes
- Difficulty : Low
- Cost : €20–50
- Time required : 5–15 minutes
- Biggest advantage : Minimal effort, with a range of strains to choose from
- Biggest disadvantage : If it fails, it fails, and you might never find out why.
Note that you’ll need to choose between Classic and 100% Mycelium grow boxes.
Magic mushroom growboxes have been produced in the Netherlands since the 1990s and remain very popular. You have to open the lid to start the growing process, which makes the mycelium vulnerable to contamination – which is why these boxes do not come with a guarantee.
Using mushroom growboxes
Once you receive your growbox, it is already fully colonised by mycelium and ready to start fruiting.
Wash your hands, choose a clean environment with indirect light and prepare to place the open growbox into the grow bag supplied with it. Quickly open the lid, remove it, place the growbox in the bag and fold the bag over it to keep unfiltered air away from your mycelium.
Magic mushrooms should start sprouting within a few days to weeks.
Advantages of mushroom grow boxes
A healthy magic mushroom grow box will produce a few flushes of mushrooms for you, and you get to choose your favourite strain from a list of options.
Although mushroom strains do not really affect the potency or effects of the mushrooms, it is still a nice touch that you can choose the name you like best, and you may even notice slight differences in appearance between varieties.
Disadvantages of mushroom grow boxes
The downside of this option is that these kits are manufactured and sold in bulk in such a way that you never really know exactly how old your kit is – it could be 10 days old, or 100 by the time you receive it. This makes mushroom grow kits a bit of a gamble. If they produce mushrooms, they’re amazing! If they don’t, that’s a shame, but it’s not the supplier’s problem.
Opening the lid allows all sorts of germs and mould spores to attack the mycelium, and if you handle your grow kit incorrectly, this may result in a perfectly healthy box producing no mushrooms at all because it has been overrun by contamination. In that case, you’ll be scraping a mouldy lump of grain out of a plastic box that you can’t really use for anything afterwards.
Conclusion
Mushroom grow boxes are a classic method of shroom cultivation and, if you don’t mind taking on the risk of failure, they’re a good option for easy shroom growing.
2) Growing magic mushrooms from spore vials
- Difficulty : Medium
- Cost : €20–100
- Time required : 3–12 hours
- Biggest advantage : Grow any strain of Cubensis mushrooms you can find online and really get to know the life cycle of magic mushrooms.
- Biggest disadvantage : If you don’t want to buy every single component, you’ll still need to invest time and resources in preparing your liquid culture and substrate. If you do buy every single component, it’s like buying a grow kit, but less convenient.
Growing from spore vials is your first step towards independence.
Although you’ll still need to buy new spores every now and then, you can start taking control of the mushroom-growing process bit by bit and produce massive amounts of magic mushrooms, whilst actually beginning to understand what you’re doing.
This is the first method explained in depth in our Magic Mushroom Grow Guide for Beginners.
Using spore vials to grow magic mushrooms
Spore vials contain mushroom spores in sterilised water and allow you to inoculate spawn or liquid culture without needing a sterile lab environment.
This is the ideal bridge between casual growing using grow kits and moving on to growing shrooms independently. You don’t need to work in a super-clean environment just yet and can simply do this in your bedroom.
And whilst you’ll need to source your spore vials from a professional supplier, you can choose to make all other components at home. This adds the extra risk of botching the sterilisation process, but as you’re only using standard household materials, you can always try again.
Advantages of growing mushrooms from spore vials
Spore vials are great because you can use sterilised syringes to transfer mushroom spores into sterilised substrate. That takes the bulk of the responsibility off your shoulders, and you don’t need a pristine laboratory – a clean dining table will do the trick.
You’ll still need to learn to work quickly and hygienically, but that’s essential for all aspects of mushroom cultivation and is also a pretty useful skill to have in life.
The e-book on our website contains information on how to make all the necessary components at home, so you’ll only need to buy spore vials online and can get the rest from your local corner shop.
Disadvantages of growing mushrooms from spore vials
Spores in water are still less common than spore prints and are quite difficult to make at home. Once you’ve learnt to grow using this method, you’re still only halfway there and won’t be able to simply carry on and make your own spores just yet.
3) Growing magic mushrooms using mushroom caps (spore lids)
- Difficulty : Medium to Complex
- Cost : 0–50€
- Time required : 60 minutes
- Biggest advantage : Essentially a free way to produce new mushrooms from ones you’ve already grown.
- Biggest disadvantage : As a low-budget DIY method, growing from caps isn’t particularly hygienic and you’ll need a few attempts to get it right.
You can use mushrooms to grow more mushrooms – which is exactly how it happens in nature.
This is almost a life hack, because you can do it for free, provided you have a mason jar and a handful of rice to hand. Give this method a go when your magic mushroom culture or growbox has fruiting!
Using mushroom caps to grow shrooms
The method is explained in more detail, with pictures, in our grow guide, but here’s basically how it works:
- Boil some brown rice for 10 minutes and fill one or more mason jars halfway
- Poke a hole in the lid that’s about the size of a 10-cent coin
- Screw the lid onto the jar, cover it with aluminium foil and place it in a saucepan with 3 inches of boiling water (or a pressure cooker if you have one available)
- Sterilise the jar and rice for 45 minutes
- Let it cool down, then take it out of the saucepan without removing the foil
- Cut off the cap of a mature mushroom, lift the foil and place the mushroom gills-down over the hole in the jar, leaving it covered with foil.
- Allow 1–2 days for some spores to fall onto the rice, then remove the cap.
- Wait for the spores to germinate and colonise the rice with white mycelium.
- That’s it! If you’ve avoided contamination, new mushrooms can grow from the rice within a few weeks!
Advantages of growing mushrooms from mushroom caps
It’s free and absolutely brilliant if it works.
You’ll get a few mushrooms from your grow kit, so you can try this growing method as many times as you have caps available.
If you manage to get one jar perfectly colonised without any contamination, you can even use that jar to inoculate larger quantities of sterilised grain and get a huge harvest of magic mushrooms for zero investment.
Disadvantages of growing mushrooms from mushroom caps
This method isn’t very hygienic and is more of a neat trick than a serious growing technique. It sometimes takes a few attempts to get it right without contamination. Be prepared for at least a few of your attempts to fail.
Also, you can only use this method to continue growing straight away; there isn’t really time for breaks between growing cycles if you transfer the spores directly onto rice.
4) Growing magic mushrooms from spore prints / Petri dish cultures / cloning
- Difficulty : Very complex
- Cost : €100–500 (or more, for professional lab equipment)
- Time required : 2–3 months + setting up the inoculation area
- Biggest advantage : Grow any amount of mushrooms any way you like
- Biggest disadvantage : Requires space, time and money, and mycology might take over your life.
This is top-tier mushroom cultivation and exactly what mycologists and industrial mushroom producers do.
If you master growing from spore prints or cloning, you’re essentially acquiring a skill that you could use to make a living – and which looks like magic to others.
There are a lot of things to consider here, and a vast range of effort and investment required; you can do this on a relatively small budget if you make all the individual components yourself.
But you won’t be able to avoid buying a few essentials, such as Petri dishes, a proper air filter and a book on mushroom cultivation.
We’ll cover this final stage of mushroom cultivation in a separate article in the future.
Reasons to grow your own magic mushrooms:
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Save Money and Stay Safe – Growing your own magic mushrooms is a much more cost-effective option than buying them. What’s more, you can ensure that the ingredients and growing conditions are safe for consumption, which can be a concern when buying from unknown sources.
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Superior Quality – Freshness is key when it comes to the quality of your mushrooms. By growing them at home, you can be sure that they are at their peak of freshness and flavour.
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A Deeper Understanding – Growing your own mushrooms will give you a deeper understanding of their growing conditions, which will help you appreciate them more. You’ll also have the opportunity to experiment with different growing techniques to see what works best for you.
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Self-Sufficiency – By growing your own magic mushrooms, you’ll be self-sufficient and won’t need to rely on online orders. You can grow your mushrooms using local ingredients, which is not only cost-effective but also environmentally friendly.
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A Lifelong Skill – Growing magic mushrooms is a skill for life. You can use the knowledge you gain to cultivate a wide variety of edible and medicinal mushrooms, making this a valuable addition to your gardening skills.
Download our e-book, “Beginner’s Guide to Growing Magic Mushrooms”
If you’re ready to take the next step, our comprehensive guide, “Unstoppable Mushrooms”, is here to help. This guide is packed with tips and tricks to help you successfully grow your own magic mushrooms. From selecting the right ingredients to understanding the growing conditions, our guide covers everything you need to know to start growing your own magic mushrooms.