It’s the eternal question that I get from people: there’s so much choice, which magic mushroom spores should I buy? I am going to explain it as best as I possibly can, via the medium of interpretive dance. Not really, I’ve been doing that all morning and you haven’t seen it, so I’ll use the medium of “words on a screen” instead, or I suppose if you want you can click the button to make the computer read it out to you. It’s funny when it swears.

Here at OTC we sell magic mushroom spores (alright, we also sell pretty sweet clothing too, fair enough), and there's two sides to the whole customer base: one side if you live in a country where it’s legal to grow magic mushrooms, and one where it isn’t. You can buy interesting magic mushroom spores in the UK, for example, not an issue at all, but you can't grow magic mushrooms in the UK without breaking some laws. Spores aren't mushrooms, same as eggs ain't a chicken and trees aren't sheds. It's totally cool to collect them still if you live somewhere with stupid laws (or do anything legal you want with them), but I am writing this particular paragraph to try and get ahead of any dumbfuck journalists (it’s happened before): I don’t sell spores for people to do crimes with, I sell spores for them to do whatever is legal in their country with. Seems pretty fuckin’ clear to me but clickbait dickheads will try to misinterpret the truth if they’re able, so there we are. Position made clear. I’m going to write about the growing of them below, because that is something people can do if they live somewhere that it’s permitted, so I think it’s relevant!

"What do you mean it's not just England and America? Preposterous!"

Spores for microscopy:

Lot of people seem to love a bit of microscopin’, so: in terms of microscopy, you’d be fine purchasing any of the spores in syringes as a good starting point. As they’re suspended in sterilised distilled water, inside of a sterile syringe, they’re very easy to apply to your microscope slide and have a look at the wonders of nature.

The spore swabs and spore prints? Totally cool still, just a little more difficult to get onto your glass slide. You’ll figure it out, I’m sure. It’s not that complicated really, is it?

Spores for growing mushrooms:

Congratulations, cool country you’ve got going on there. I’d love to visit! For you, the options are much wider. A great place to start is with any of the spore syringes from the “spore syringe” section of the site! These are all variations on the “magic” mushroom Psilocybe Cubensis. There’s a slight misconception sometimes where people try and equate the different types of cubensis to different strains of weed: with weed, there are literal genetic differences between strains. With cubensis mushrooms, there aren’t any genetic differences, because they’re the same thing. These are all very easy mushrooms to cultivate from your own home, as they’re pretty happy with a very standard and easily google-able growing setup, no special equipment required other than a plastic box, really. Demand drives supply, and these seem to be a very popular mushroom for people to collect, so that’s what I stock a lot of. Golden Teacher spores are the biggest seller out of these, by a reasonable margin!

The reason for all the different types of cubensis is that it’s often possible to stabilise changes in them, even though it’s the same base genetic material. Mushrooms are hugely prone to mutation (this is how people can make such crazy looking specimens within a relatively short series of generations), so yep, there are differences between, say, your B+ magic mushroom and your Penis Envy 6 magic mushroom, despite it having the same DNA.

I’ve got 28 different varieties, which were all chosen because I thought they were pretty cool, so there’s plenty there to get your teeth into! Most people start off with Golden Teacher spores, but I think that’s almost a self-sustaining myth: people start with them, so people read that most people start with them, and then start with them, and so on and so forth. They’re not any easier (in my opinion) than any of the others, because it’s all simple enough with a little bit of reading. Instead of Golden Teacher spores, why not try some of the others, like KSSS or PESH? They're absolutely every bit as easy and just as good.

no I meant read something about mycology for fuck's sake

In terms of slightly more advanced syringe-based stuff, the “exotic spore syringes” are where you’d want to be heading. I’ve got what we used-to-call-and-still-call-for-the-time-being Psilocybe Natalensis (seriously click here for an explanation on the name), Panaeolus Cyanescens, Psilocybe Tampanensis, and ones called Psilocybe Ovideocystidiata (you can just call them Ovoids, it’s fine). These are a little bit more difficult to grow, but really it’s all on Google and YouTube anyway so it’s not like the good old days where you’d have to trial and error your way through things. Would I start with these if I’d never grown mushrooms before? I’d probably get a few easier ones under the belt first so I knew what failure and success both looked like before starting with this (yes, you will have failures, it is inevitable).

The spore swabs are another step up in difficulty. The mushrooms these come from are misshapen, twisted freaks of nature (not really they’re lovely) but as they’re odd mutants they don’t really drop many spores. This means your avid mycologist has to jam a sterile swab up in the gills and give it a good twist around to get any spores out, which is why people don’t have syringes of these kinds. For microscopy and storage purposes, there’s really no difference, but if you’re going to try to grow them then you need to have a bit of knowledge about how to get the spores off the swab cleanly and efficiently. Even then it can still be difficult, but it’s the only way you’ll get access to these spores, so it’s worth learning.

Finally: spore prints! These are awesome, because in terms of bang-to-buck you get a whole lot of genetic material that essentially lasts forever for a relatively small amount of cash. The catch is you really need to learn how to make your own spore syringes or liquid culture to get the most out of these, which again requires some specialist equipment and knowledge. Totally worth learning, totally worth getting the kit, but it’s not as straightforward as a spore syringe by any means.

Keep that lab area clean, ya buggers

Spores for collecting:

Could be that you live in a country where it’s not legal to grow magic mushrooms right now, but that could well change in the future, like it has in a lot of places with weed. Best mushroom spores to buy in this case would be the spore prints, followed by the swabs and then the syringes. Spores in a syringe will last for literal years if stored correctly (cool and dark), swabs will last longer than that (cool, dark, and dry), and then finally spore prints (cool dark and dry), where we don’t really know how long they last because people have been able to grow mushrooms from decades-old prints. A fuckin’ long time, let’s put it that way.

So that’s about it really, I hope that clears thing up, and remember: I’m not saying go and do anything naughty with the spores, but I am saying if you live somewhere that it is legal to grow them then you should, because they are awesome.

All the best ya motherlickers, I hope you're having a lovely year so far!