Q: Is there a way to harvest spores from mushrooms you buy and what is the best method of growing psychedelic mushrooms?
A: If you want to harvest spores from the mushrooms bought on the street, you are going to also be germinating hundreds if not thousands of mold and bacteria spores as well. To do this, and still be able to save some of the actual "shroom" mycelium, or vegetive part of the mushroom you are going to need to use a substance called "agar". It is fairly complicated to use, and requires a pressure cooker, and either a laminar flow hood, or a still air glove box. So many "street shrooms" are various types, usually either liberty caps from the northwest, or psilocybe cubensis grown indoors on either brown rice flour, manure compost, coconut husk fiber and coffee, straw, or a mixture of any of those. You may also run into Panaleous Cyanesence, Psilocybe Cyanesence or even P Azuresence. Because you can really only cultivate Psilocybe Cubensis, and Panaleous Cyanesence indoors, there is no telling what type of mushroom you would end up germinating from the ones you buy. A much easier way is to go to sacredspores.com and purchase panaleous. or cubensis spores syringes from them, and then follow either a "bulk substrate tek", or a "PF Tek" Just search the term to find out how. Basically you are going to sterilize something that mushrooms like to eat in a jar that has a place to insert a syringe needle into and inject your spores. My favorite is using regular old wild bird seed. Once the mushroom fungus takes it over, you can mix it into manure, coconut husk fiber, or coco coir, mixed with coffee grounds. Once it then takes over the "bulk substrate" you can fruit into beautiful little shroom gardens. Once its sterilized, and sealed from the open air so that mold and bacteria doesn't start eating up all the mushroom food, you add spores, or live tissue from either the inside of a mushroom stem you've already harvested "sterile of course" or you can also transfer a little live tissue from a cake or a bulk spawn and add it to a jar of sterilized karo syrup and water and grow live tissue that way. Using isolated live tissue is actually better for yields, as this is only one sub strain of mycelium instead of hundreds as you would get with using spore inoculations. Its not really that big of a difference but sometimes other sub strains don't get along and wont combine to form mushrooms. Anyways, I hope that answers your question, and don't forget to get your supplies at sacredspores.com Those guys are the best, and have awesome customer service.