New Year, new spore syringes!

This year, I’m planning on introducing some new spore syringes to the collection (and some other things). As I’ve mentioned on my New Year’s Eve Insta post, I’ve got some awesome plans for this coming year, so I’m going to be bringing in a few new bits because hell, it keeps things interesting. It’s been an excellent time being a spore vendor so far, and I’m looking forward to the future, sending out billions more magic mushroom spores across the UK for people to enjoy collecting. Good times all round!

Actual new spore syringes:

I’ve already got quite a few varieties for sale, from the ever-popular Golden Teacher to weirder named stuff like Jedi Mind Fuck. At the moment, I’ve got 22 different phenotypes up for sale if you include the spore prints that I sell thanks to having Red Boy! I’ve recently started selling PF Classic because I thought they were cool, so that’s the first of the new ones this year. I’m planning to bring in another four or five different types this year at least, so keep an eye out! As usual, everything is tested extensively to make sure it’s worth adding to the product range. If I wouldn’t use it myself, it’s not being sold.

Obviously adding more products to the range means more processing time for me, so I’m also going to be adding to the lab equipment, with yet another massive flow hood from MycoPunks so that I’ve got a quite-frankly daft amount of space to work in. I have to make quite a few spore syringes to keep up with demand so the more usable space I’ve got, the better. Spore slinging 24/7/365, that’s the aim.

Spore swabs? What’s a spore swab?

For the more seasoned mycologist amongst you, I’m also going to be introducing a new range of spore swabs. These are the best way to preserve the genetics of the mushrooms that are a bit more reluctant to drop their spores, so there will be some interesting stuff in the lineup!

The spore swabs are imported from a nice legally-compliant country, where a lovely chap gets a totally sterile, medical grade swab, and gets it all up the gills of a mushroom that wouldn’t ordinarily drop spores (there will always be a few up in there, just hanging around). This means that spores from the freakier kinds with bizarre looking caps can still be harvested and sent all over the world! Awesome, and just as legal as spore syringes!

These are a little more difficult to use with your microscope than a spore syringe, but it’s well worth learning how and expanding your knowledge. The techniques are ones that’ll help your general mycology out across the whole board, so have a look on your preferred flavour of search engine, spend a little time practicing, and you’ll get it nailed. Mycology isn’t hard (promise!), it just takes a bit of practice to get your technique dialled in properly.

How-to guides!

I do now actually have quite a few customers in Brazil, Jamaica, Canada, and Austria, so I figured I might as well lean on the knowledge I gained whilst on holiday to these places and do some writeups on how to grow magic mushrooms from spores. The usual disclaimer applies – I am not recommending or endorsing that anyone does this if your country doesn’t allow it, and unless you are literally from one of these countries, please don’t message me about it because that’ll be the end of our conversation. There is a lot of great advice out there, but also a lot of bad advice, so hopefully I can shed a bit of light on what I think works.

Orangutan Trading Co hoodies!

The t-shirts are amazing and sell like the hottest of cakes, so I figure this year, I’ll find a decent quality hoodie supplier, and get a stash of them sorted out for the colder months. Thanks to the expanded lab space, I might actually have somewhere to store them that doesn’t make my missus apoplectic with rage at all the boxes full of clothing, so it’ll be doable this year.

Interestingly I did actually try and source beanies last year, but the ones that arrived weren’t very good. Because of this, I had to abandon that idea as Christmas was looming and I needed to make sure I was building all the Lego in the world with my boy instead of trying to source merch. Gotta find that work/life balance!

Any suggestions?

So that’s about the size of it! If you’ve got any ideas or suggestions, feel free to fire them over to me either on Insta or heck, you can even drop me an email. Either way, this year I’m going full-tilt to get spores into as many hands as possible, and to do as many charitable deeds as possible. That’s what OTC is all about, baby!

Also don’t vote Tory

Love ya! OTC