Growing Mushrooms: From Spore to Harvest (Step-by-Step Guide)

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Growing mushrooms from a Sporeprint is the ultimate way to gain full control over the entire cultivation process. But let's be honest right away: this is definitely not a method for beginners.

Working with loose spores and agar requires extreme precision, patience, and near-surgical sterility. Millions of invisible bacteria and mold spores are constantly floating in the air. One wrong move, and your culture medium turns into an infection paradise.

Warning: Are you a beginner?

If this is your first grow, save yourself a lot of frustration. Start with a ready-to-use magic Mushrooms Growkit or work with Liquid Culture. This allows you to skip the tricky agar phase, significantly reduces the risk of contamination, and gets you results much faster!

Do you still want to take the leap into advanced cultivation? Then here is the step-by-step guide to working with spores and agar.

Supplies

Make sure all your supplies are ready in a clean, draft-free workspace before you begin.

• Sporeprints (spores) - Check out our range of Sporeprints (Mushroom Spores)
• Multiple sterile agar plates (Petri dishes)
• Scalpels
• Flame source (alcohol burner or a small gas torch)
• 70% Isopropyl alcohol (in a spray bottle)
• Nitrile gloves
• Face mask
• Parafilm
• Growbag with substrate/cake (your final growing medium)

Ready for inoculation: sterilized grain jars in a clean workspace, combined with prepared agar plates.

Step 1: Preparation

Before you unpack anything, transform your workspace into a temporary laboratory.

Don't just sanitize your hands, but also spray your forearms entirely with 70% ISO. Once you reach deeper into a bag or box later on, you don't want the bare skin of your arms contaminating the environment.

1. Personal hygiene: Wash your hands and forearms thoroughly with soap. Put on your face mask and gloves.
2. Disinfect your workspace: Wipe down your work surface generously with 70% Isopropyl alcohol.
3. Spray hands and arms: Spray your gloves and forearms with 70% Isopropyl alcohol and rub it in well. Let it air dry (the evaporation kills the bacteria).

Step 2: Applying Spores to Agar Plates

Agar is the intermediate step to check if your spores are clean and to select the strongest mycelium.

1. Prepare your supplies: Place the agar plates close to you, but leave them closed.
2. Heat the blade red-hot: Hold the scalpel in the flame until the metal is red-hot. This kills all bacteria. Let the scalpel cool down for about 10 seconds near your clean workspace.
3. Unpack the spores: Take the Sporeprint out of its packaging as late as possible. The less time the spores are exposed to open air, the lower the risk of contamination.
4. Scrape and transfer: Carefully scrape a few spores off the print with the cooled scalpel so they fall onto an agar plate. Immediately put the lid back on and seal the edges with parafilm.
5. Repeat for multiple plates:
   • Flame your scalpel red-hot again for every plate.
   • Let it cool and scrape spores onto the next plate.

Why multiple agar plates?
Sporeprints are rarely 100% sterile. By preparing multiple plates, you spread your chances. Should one plate get infected with mold or bacteria, you'll still have other plates left where healthy mycelium can grow.

An agar test with contamination. The white fluff is mycelium, but the small individual spots and discoloration indicate bacteria or unwanted molds that you need to clone away from.

Step 3: Incubation and Cloning (Selecting Clean Mycelium)

After a few days to two weeks, you will see fine, white threads appear: mycelium.

Is there a small contamination on the plate, but you also see a nice patch of healthy, bright white mycelium? Then you're going to isolate (clone) this:

1. Disinfect your gloves and surroundings again with 70% ISO.
2. Heat your scalpel red-hot again and let it cool.
3. Cut out a tiny piece of the healthiest mycelium from the plate.
4. Transfer this to a brand new sterile agar plate and seal it with parafilm.
5. Repeat this until you have a petri dish that is 100% covered with strong, snow-white mycelium.

The ideal result on agar: a petri dish with strong, snow-white mycelium without any contamination, ready to be cut out.

Step 4: From Agar to Your Growing Medium (Inoculation)

Do you have a perfectly clean agar plate full of healthy mycelium? Then it's time to transfer to your growbag or substrate cake.

1. Disinfect arms and hands again: Thoroughly spray your gloves and forearms up to your elbows again with 70% Isopropyl alcohol. When you reach deeper into the growbag in a moment, this prevents your arm from contaminating the bag.
2. Sterilize scalpels: Hold the scalpel in the flame again until it is red-hot and let it cool.
3. Cut out: Carefully open your agar plate and cut out a small square of mycelium of about 5 x 5 mm.
4. Transfer: Open your growbag (or jar) as briefly as possible, place the 5 x 5 mm piece of agar into the growing medium, and immediately seal the bag airtight again.

Fully colonized spawn bags. The cake is completely white with mycelium and ready to potentially be transferred to bulk substrate.

Step 5: On the Way to the First magic Mushrooms

As soon as that precious piece of mycelium is in your growbag, the test of patience begins. Place your growbag in a dark, warm spot (ideally between 20°C and 24°C). Now it's just waiting for nature to take its course.

In the coming weeks, the snow-white mycelium will slowly spread from the agar block. Once the contents of the bag are about 30% covered with mycelium, gently knead the bag to break up the cake. Distribute the white mycelium evenly through the substrate to speed up colonization. Note: do this a maximum of one time! If you do this too often, you will exhaust the mycelium.

Moving to Bulk (Spawn to Bulk)

Once your bag is fully colonized (100% covered with white mycelium), the next phase begins. You can choose to fruit directly from the bag, but for a much larger harvest, you transfer the mycelium to a bulk substrate (such as pasteurized coco coir mixed with vermiculite). This process is known as 'spawning to bulk'.

Break your fully colonized cake into small pieces and mix it thoroughly with your bulk substrate in a clean, disinfected grow box (a monotub). Close the box and let the mycelium grow again in the dark until this entire surface is also covered with a strong, white network.

The reward after a sterile cultivation process: a full grow box with healthy magic Mushrooms during the fruiting phase.

The Fruiting Phase & FAE

Once your bulk substrate (or your bag) is about 80% colonized by the mycelium, it is time to initiate the fruiting phase. The mycelium now needs triggers to form pins (baby magic Mushrooms), where light, moisture, and especially oxygen are crucial.

While growing, mycelium produces carbon dioxide (CO2). CO2 is heavier than air and sinks to the bottom of your grow box or bag. If this CO2 layer becomes too thick, the magic Mushrooms suffocate and grow poorly or malformed (often recognizable by long stems with fuzzy white feet). To prevent this, you need to start with FAE (Frequent Air Exchange).

• Light: Place the box or bag in indirect daylight (never in direct sunlight).
• Fanning oxygen (FAE): Open your bag or box twice a day and fan fresh air inside for 30 seconds. By doing this, you "sweep" the heavy CO2 layer off the bottom so the mycelium can breathe fresh oxygen again. Always work sterile: wash and sanitize your hands before opening the box!
• Be careful with opening too often: Opening the bag or box too frequently carries a huge risk. Not only do you increase the chance of outside contamination, but the substrate can also dry out too quickly.
• Humidity & Temperature: Do you notice that the humidity is too low? Then fan a bit shorter or less often and spray the side walls (never directly on the mycelium) with a fine mist of water. Good to know: if the temperature in the room is stable and optimal (around 20°C - 24°C), the humidity in a closed growing environment usually maintains itself perfectly well!

Maintain these conditions and in no time you will see the first magic pins appear. Good luck with your grow!

Noah van Knippenberg

Content Specialist Novus Fumus

Noah van Knippenberg writes for Novus Fumus about cultivation techniques, mushrooms, and smartshop-related topics. Drawing from his practical experience, he translates complex subjects into accessible and reliable information.

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