XL Cylocybe Special MykoBox Grow Kit

Step 1: Inoculation

We highly recommend working within a SAB (Still-Air Box). We sell lids that have arm holes laser-cut in them, sized to your preference, so you can easily add them to an IKEA Samla tub and have a SAB! We call them Sabla - check them out here.

At the very least, work in a small, very clean and draught-free room. Make sure you're freshly showered and in clean clothes, then thoroughly clean your hands and forearms with one of the hand wipes for 40-60 seconds.

Prepare your chosen gourmet mushroom spore or culture syringe for use by screwing on the sterile needle we've given you.

Carefully take your box out of its packaging. It's now exposed to the open air and potential contaminants - this is where working within a SAB will greatly reduce your chances of suffering a contamination.

Use a 70% IPA / 2% Chlorhexidine wipe to clean all of the grey rubber injection ports on the lid of the box, for 40-60 seconds. Don't touch, try to remove or inject through the white filter strips! They provide essential clean air exchange.

Pierce through the injection ports to evenly distribute 3ml of your gourmet spore or culture solution between all of the injection ports. Take care not to add any more than 3ml in total to your box.

Step 2: Colonisation

Now keep your box somewhere clean and safe. Mycelium is living and needs to breathe, so don't ever store your box in an airtight container or block the filters on the lid.

Temperature is extremely important for achieving good colonisation. Being too hot (above 26C) or too cold (below 18C) will very likely cause problems like contamination or slow to no growth.

Aim for 23C (give or take a couple of degrees) if you can, but crucially, do your best to maintain the temperature you're able to achieve. Don't let the temperature go up and down too much.

Using a liquid culture, agar or grain-to-grain instead of spores? Aim for 26C - those are live mycelium, not spores.

Avoid heat mats please! It's a very common mistake. They don't spread warmth evenly, which can cause excessive condensation and water build-up - an easy pathway for contamination to enter your box.

Consider building or buying an incubator if you're struggling to hold these temperatures - it's way cheaper than keeping your home heating on all the time and gives much better results.

At 23C (give or take a couple of degrees), it will generally take around 4-6 weeks at optimum conditions for your box to fully colonise (this means the grains are completely covered in healthy, white mushroom mycelium) but this depends on a lot of different factors and also just that nature can simply be unpredictable!

Even once the substrate in your box looks fully covered in mycelium, if you have the patience, give it an extra 3-7 days - this will almost guarantee full colonisation in the places you can't see.

Step 3: Dunking for max hydration/humidity

When you're confident the substrate is fully colonised, you are ready to use a method called 'dunking' to prepare for fruiting. Do not ever take the lid off your box before full colonisation (if the dry vermiculite layer on top isn't covered in mycelium, this is okay! You are just looking for the dark substrate underneath to now be completely white).

Fill a pot with fresh water, deep enough to submerge your colonised substrate (known as a 'cake') in.

Open your box and remove the colonised cake - it will be a solid block. Place this in the water and put a couple of plates on top to weigh the cake down and stop it floating. You need it to be fully submerged in water at all times. Put a lid on the pot to stop dust and flies getting in.

Leave your cake dunking like this for anything between 6-24 hours... depending on how much patience you have! Obviously, the longer you leave it, the better your results will be.

Step 4: Hydrating the perlite

First, you need to hydrate your 2L of perlite.

Please cover your mouth and nose when working with perlite and avoid breathing the dust in (it throws off a lot of dust when poured). If you do breathe some in, move into fresh air and rinse your nose/mouth.

The way we prefer to hydrate perlite helps to avoid the dust! Simply place your bag of perlite underneath a tap, carefully open the seal on the bag and turn your tap on to fill it with water. The perlite will float in water, so turn your tap off at the point your perlite is a few inches from the top of the bag.

Then, seal the bag closed again and fold over the top a few times, before lifting it up with one hand and holding the bottom of the bag with the other hand. Slowly and carefully move the bag around, flip it upside down and back again - basically, move the water around the perlite so it can absorb it.

Now you need to hold the bag over a sink or bath at an angle that allows water and unwanted debris to collect in a corner and cut a small hole in this corner to allow it all to drain out. It's best to place a strainer underneath the bag to catch any large bits of perlite that might come out.

When the water stops running out of the bag, lift it out of the sink and place inside your grow tent. Open it up and let all of the damp perlite pour into the bottom of your tent. Spread it out into an even layer, ready for sitting your grow kit on top.

If you don't fancy using this method, you can slowly pour your dry perlite into a strainer (please don't breathe in the dust!) and rinse under a tap for a while until it's soaking wet, then pour it all into the grow tent - don't worry if it's still dripping wet.

Step 5: Into the XXL Grow Tent

Now, cut a piece of tin foil slightly larger than your cake and place this on top of the perlite. You don't ever want your cake sitting on the damp perlite, as it can cause contamination.

Keep your perlite wet (recommended, but not totally necessary): Perlite can dry out quickly, so every other day, pour some water into your grow tent and mix it around with a clean hand so the perlite becomes drenched. It's okay to have an excess of water in there, and adding a little bit of 3% hydrogen peroxide to the water can help kill microbes. Just be careful the wet perlite never touches your cake - it just sits there, so it can bring a higher risk of contamination.

Place your cake on the foil, then close the tent: Fold the top of the tent over, leaving a gap at one corner for top-FAE (Fresh Air Exchange), and tuck the piece of filter material we give you into that gap. It holds the gap open, helps keep the humidity in and keeps flies and dust out.

Step 6: The best bit... fruiting your mushrooms!

Do your best to maintain a temperature of 21C (give or take a couple of degrees) at this stage to get the best results.

Humidity and FAE (fresh air exchange) are extremely important for pinning and healthy mushroom development, as is temperature and light. They all need to work in harmony.

Humidity will build up inside the grow tent from the extra moisture you added to your cake during the dunking stage and the damp perlite, and the filtered gap at the corner of your tent allows for fresh air exchange.

Mist and fan: Misting 3-6 times a day and fanning is recommended for best results. Don't start misting until at least 24 hours have passed since you dunked, as there will be loads of water in your substrate at this point and you could waterlog it. After that, open the tent, give your cake a fine mist until it glistens, fan in some fresh air (a wave of your hand or a piece of card is plenty) and close it back up. If you notice any excess water, dab it up with tissue paper.

Placing an electric fan somewhere in the room on a low setting will create a gentle air current and help increase the FAE inside the grow tent.

Your mushrooms will need light to grow. Indirect sunlight is fine, but if you want to use grow lights - a 5000-6500K LED or fluorescent light a couple of feet away is recommended.

If you notice the inside of your grow tent looking dry, there are a few things which can cause this. Your perlite is not damp enough, the fan is too close, or grow lights are too close and hot.

Observe what's happening and adjust your setup as required - fantastic results depend on it.

After around 3-7 days you'll begin to see lots of tiny white dots - these are hyphal knots which will develop into primordia, aka mushroom pins... the exciting part!

It should then only take 4-5 days for the pins to grow into fully mature mushrooms ready for harvest.

During this time, they'll let you know if something isn't quite right - fuzzy mycelium at the base of the mushrooms and/or thin stems are an indication that more FAE is needed so increasing the fan speed or opening the corner gap a little wider might be something to try.

When the veil beneath one of your mushroom caps is about to tear off, this is when you should harvest your first flush. If you don't get there quick enough, spores will begin to drop from your mushroom caps and make a mess!

It's best to cut the mushrooms off with a clean scalpel or knife, you can also just pull them off but be careful not to damage the substrate too much.

After you've harvested all the mushrooms from your first flush, you can repeat the dunking stage to get more moisture into your substrate again.

You can rehydrate your perlite at this point too if it seems dry. Always be careful the wet perlite never touches your cake though, as it's a contamination risk.

When you remove the cake from the water after dunking, give it a little rinse under the tap (it's been sitting in its own dirty bath water for up to 24 hours) and allow excess water to drain away before placing back into your grow tent.

You should continue to dunk your substrate after each flush, and if you've taken good care of it, you should achieve multiple flushes of mushrooms from your grow kit before the nutrients are all used up.