6 ms·

Ever grown mushrooms? I wouldn't call it easy. It takes a few months and a lot of preparation, plus you need a pressure cooker and some other equipment.

by 3131s 9y ago

collyw 9y ago
There are kits available with the sterilization part done for you.
- jameskegel 9y ago
  Or just move to pasteurized hay, which is much more lenient
  - Govindae 9y ago
    My friend said that pressure cooking popcorn kernels as an incubation medium allowed fast mycillial colonization. He could shake the jars every couple days to speed up the process. He also claimed pasteurized hay made an excellent growth substrate.
- bfuller 9y ago
  the hard part is keeping everything clean once youve inoculated
PeanutCurry 9y ago
A lot of that is just time though. A pressure cooker isn't a difficult item to acquire and it's hardly suspicious. Even in America, it's mainly difficult in states like California and that's only because of the increased challenge to acquire spores. Most states in the USA have a weird loophole where you can purchase spores but the shrooms themselves are an illegal good. There are people who grow them in shoeboxes from kits. As long as you're willing to compromise quality in exchange for simply producing some amount of quantity you can get mushrooms with relatively little risk.
celticninja 9y ago
i believe a pressure cooker is optional for sterlization, and by all accounts it is easy, much easier than growing cannabis, which can be a bit more labor intensive
simias 9y ago
Depends what you're comparing it to I guess. It's still very much hobby-grade though and with some techniques (like the famous PF tek) you don't even need a pressure cooker. It still requires some time and dedication but it's really simple compared to, say, the synthesis of LSD.
jessaustin 9y ago
I've collected them growing in the wild... yes I mean psilocybin as well as morels, etc.
- hwillis 9y ago
  Selection bias. You found the lucky plants that managed to live. I had a friend try to grow shrooms, and despite managing the humidity, temperature and light exposure, disinfecting the container, and carefully controlling just about every aspect of the process he couldn't get shit to grow. Likewise when I was strapped for cash in college I briefly considered growing a few cannabis plants and decided against it after it seemed to be a lot harder to grow anything sell-able than expected.
  - pault 9y ago
    Counter anecdote: I did it about 15 years ago and got several pounds of good quality shrooms with no special knowledge or effort. Got lucky I guess.
    - ethbro 9y ago
      I've always considered the main reason we don't have a larger home grown drug problem is the same reason high-end crime is relatively rare: you're selecting a technically capable subset that our society already rewards fairly well. Such is the setup of Breaking Bad: were Walter White not terminal, would he still take the risk?
      - hwillis 9y ago
        That and the fact that police techniques for locating this kind of thing is pretty advanced. Until recently (LED grow lamps) the power consumption from grow lamps was so high that the power company would notice and the police would take interest. Cops can also drive around with infrared cameras looking for hot exhaust air/lamps, visible even if windows are blocked. Helicopters with infrared cameras can see hidden grow plots outside. Even when I was looking at it people were still split over LED vs conventional lights for growing, so it's only gotten easier to evade detection as the legality of growing has relaxed (literal definition: become less strict again). I don't know about shrooms, but they're peanuts compared to weed anyway. Obviously it's infeasible to grow coca anywhere in the US- you need a huge amount to produce any drug. Likewise creating LSD/MDMA/meth without synthetic, highly controlled precursors is pretty much completely infeasible. You could grow morning glories for ergot... if you wanted to harvest an entire field of them. But yeah, any decent chemist could figure out how to make any of the big drugs very easily. The precursor restrictions only keep out the non-experts. Even a penniless chemist knows that going to jail for that will make him totally radioactive for the rest of his life.

Ever grown mushrooms? I wouldn't call it easy. It takes a few months and a lot of preparation, plus you need a pressure cooker and some other equipment.

by 3131s 9y ago

Ever grown mushrooms? I wouldn't call it easy. It takes a few months and a lot of preparation, plus you need a pressure cooker and some other equipment.

collyw 9y ago

There are kits available with the sterilization part done for you.

jameskegel 9y ago
Or just move to pasteurized hay, which is much more lenient
- Govindae 9y ago
  My friend said that pressure cooking popcorn kernels as an incubation medium allowed fast mycillial colonization. He could shake the jars every couple days to speed up the process. He also claimed pasteurized hay made an excellent growth substrate.
bfuller 9y ago
the hard part is keeping everything clean once youve inoculated

PeanutCurry 9y ago

A lot of that is just time though. A pressure cooker isn't a difficult item to acquire and it's hardly suspicious. Even in America, it's mainly difficult in states like California and that's only because of the increased challenge to acquire spores. Most states in the USA have a weird loophole where you can purchase spores but the shrooms themselves are an illegal good. There are people who grow them in shoeboxes from kits. As long as you're willing to compromise quality in exchange for simply producing some amount of quantity you can get mushrooms with relatively little risk.

celticninja 9y ago

i believe a pressure cooker is optional for sterlization, and by all accounts it is easy, much easier than growing cannabis, which can be a bit more labor intensive

simias 9y ago

Depends what you're comparing it to I guess. It's still very much hobby-grade though and with some techniques (like the famous PF tek) you don't even need a pressure cooker. It still requires some time and dedication but it's really simple compared to, say, the synthesis of LSD.

jessaustin 9y ago

I've collected them growing in the wild... yes I mean psilocybin as well as morels, etc.

hwillis 9y ago
Selection bias. You found the lucky plants that managed to live. I had a friend try to grow shrooms, and despite managing the humidity, temperature and light exposure, disinfecting the container, and carefully controlling just about every aspect of the process he couldn't get shit to grow. Likewise when I was strapped for cash in college I briefly considered growing a few cannabis plants and decided against it after it seemed to be a lot harder to grow anything sell-able than expected.
- pault 9y ago
  Counter anecdote: I did it about 15 years ago and got several pounds of good quality shrooms with no special knowledge or effort. Got lucky I guess.
  - ethbro 9y ago
    I've always considered the main reason we don't have a larger home grown drug problem is the same reason high-end crime is relatively rare: you're selecting a technically capable subset that our society already rewards fairly well. Such is the setup of Breaking Bad: were Walter White not terminal, would he still take the risk?
    - hwillis 9y ago
      That and the fact that police techniques for locating this kind of thing is pretty advanced. Until recently (LED grow lamps) the power consumption from grow lamps was so high that the power company would notice and the police would take interest. Cops can also drive around with infrared cameras looking for hot exhaust air/lamps, visible even if windows are blocked. Helicopters with infrared cameras can see hidden grow plots outside. Even when I was looking at it people were still split over LED vs conventional lights for growing, so it's only gotten easier to evade detection as the legality of growing has relaxed (literal definition: become less strict again). I don't know about shrooms, but they're peanuts compared to weed anyway. Obviously it's infeasible to grow coca anywhere in the US- you need a huge amount to produce any drug. Likewise creating LSD/MDMA/meth without synthetic, highly controlled precursors is pretty much completely infeasible. You could grow morning glories for ergot... if you wanted to harvest an entire field of them. But yeah, any decent chemist could figure out how to make any of the big drugs very easily. The precursor restrictions only keep out the non-experts. Even a penniless chemist knows that going to jail for that will make him totally radioactive for the rest of his life.