How To Transport Growing Magic Mushrooms

Sometimes you can’t avoid traveling with your growing shrooms. Whether it’s a change in living arrangements or a nosey neighbor, you must ensure you and your shrooms stay safe.

However, this comes with numerous risks.

In addition to the legal risk, temperature fluctuations, contamination, and physical damage to your mushrooms can cause significant problems to your grow.

In this article, we’ll look at how you can transport growing magic mushrooms as safely as possible. We’ll cover some tips to minimize the risk of contamination, how to secure loose BRF cakes, and what to do when you arrive at your destination.

How to Transport Growing Magic Mushrooms Step-by-Step

To successfully transport magic mushrooms mid-grow, you must mitigate the risks. If you keep the temperature inside the growing environment stable, keep contaminants out, eliminate light exposure, and minimize movement, your chances of success significantly increase.

Here’s a helpful guide to give you the best chances of success if you choose to transport your magic mushroom grow by car.

1. Clean Out the Trunk of Your Car

Regardless of whether your shrooms are in a sealed container, clean the environment you’re putting them in. A thorough vacuum and a spray with disinfectant will be enough, provided you take the other measures we’ll discuss to control contamination.

Simply vacuuming and disinfecting isn’t going to make the interior of your car sterile, nor will it help protect your colony from infection. However, it can reduce the chances of introducing foreign matter to your growing environment.

2. Prepare Your Grow Kit for Transport

If you’re transporting sealed, sterile jars colonizing with mycelium, make sure they’re secured before you leave. You can use damp perlite to fill in the gaps between cakes to prevent them from rolling around during transport. Or place them in a smaller container temporarily during transport.

If you’re using an aquarium-heated design, empty the water from the incubation chamber first so it doesn’t slosh around.

It’s also essential to protect the growing environment and your cakes from contamination during travel. Consider individually wrapping your exposed BRF cakes in plastic — otherwise, place the entire setup in a plastic garbage bag and seal it up. Make sure to give the inside of the bag a good spray with some disinfectant first.

You also want to make sure your mycelium doesn’t dry out. You don’t need to worry about this if you’re going somewhere close; if you’re driving for a few hours, give the mycelium a good spray of water before you leave. If your mushrooms are going to be in transport for a long time, you’ll want to open everything up every 5 or 6 hours to let in some fresh air and spray everything with more water.

3. Stabilize the Inside of the Vehicle

The ideal temperature range for most strains of Psilocybe cubensis is 50–68 ℉ (10–20℃). They will survive outside that range, but if your car has been sitting in the hot sun all day, it’s a good idea to cool it down first. The same goes if you live in a cold area; you don’t want to freeze your mycelium.

Start your car and allow the AC or heater to stabilize the temperature, around 60–70 ℉ (15–20℃), before loading up.

Cover the containers with towels or blankets to buffer the temperature further. This keeps direct sunlight off the mushrooms and maintains internal temperatures in cooler weather.

4. Secure Your Grow Kit Well & Drive Carefully

Secure your growing mushrooms snugly in the trunk of your vehicle, so they can’t slide around while you drive.

Try padding the sides of the containers with towels or blankets to prevent movement or tying the container down using straps or bungee cords. You could also have someone else sit with the setup on their lap to protect it.

When it’s finally time to start driving, keep things slow and steady.

What Are the Risks of Transporting Growing Magic Mushrooms?

There are several potential risks in transporting a magic mushroom grow setup. These occur regardless of whether the colony is in the incubation or fruiting growth phase.

Before transporting growing mushrooms, assess the risks to determine whether it’s worth attempting. After consideration, you can decide whether to cut your losses or try to mitigate the risks and go ahead with the journey.

Let’s take a look at five of the biggest risks associated with transporting the growing mushrooms.

1. Legality

The biggest risk with transporting growing magic mushrooms is your legal status. Unless you are traveling through a decriminalized part of the world, transporting magic mushrooms could potentially sacrifice your freedom.

Although many places are relaxing laws surrounding psilocybin, magic mushrooms remain illegal in most of the United States, Canada, and Europe.

Most areas treat psilocybin-containing mushrooms similar to MDMA, cocaine, and heroin. Getting caught with magic mushrooms — or worse, a grow setup mid-harvest — could land you some serious prison time.

In most of Europe and America, getting caught growing magic mushrooms is a criminal offense as it implies intent to distribute an illicit drug. The consequences go up to 10 years or more in prison, a permanent criminal record, or a hefty fine.

Before you even consider transporting magic mushrooms, consider the potential legal repercussions. If you get stopped by the police on your journey, and they search the car, these outcomes are possible. Consider this risk carefully before embarking on your journey.

Is your magic mushroom grow worth jail time? If you’re in a restricted state or country where you could face potential prison time for moving your shrooms, it’s likely best to cut your losses — it’s not worth the risk.

If you’re lucky enough to live in a country or state where psilocybin is legal or decriminalized, this doesn’t apply, but there are still plenty of other risks.

2. Overheating

Temperature fluctuation is the second biggest risk associated with moving your magic mushroom grow setup. If the temperature inside your growing environment varies dramatically — even for just a short period — you could risk stunting the colony’s growth or killing the colony.

The severity of this risk differs depending on the time of year you wish to travel and where you live in the world. Transporting the shrooms in a car that’s too hot or too cold will likely lead to disaster.

If you’re going to transport magic mushrooms mid-grow, first ensure the growing environment stays as stable as possible. We’ll cover how to do this a bit further down.

3. Contamination

If you’ve successfully cultivated mushrooms before, you know how vital it is to keep contaminants out of the growing environment.

The internal environment should already be sterile if you’re still establishing the mycelium in jars. As a result, contamination through transport shouldn’t be an issue./ima

Contamination becomes much more likely if your shrooms are in the fruiting phase and you have cakes inside a fruiting chamber. Although mycelium cakes are pretty resistant to contamination by this stage, they are far more vulnerable to bacteria.

We advise never transporting mushrooms while they’re fruiting. Due to the ventilation of the fruiting chamber, contaminants can easily enter from the outside. This could — at the very least — reduce the number of flushes before the colony succumbs to mold.

Any unsealed growing environment is susceptible to contamination. It’s important to take the appropriate steps if you want to reduce the chances of contamination in your colony.

4. Physical Damage

The final risk of transporting growing magic mushrooms is the substrate moving around and damaging the mycelium. Luckily, this is only a concern when cultivating mushrooms in trays or mycelium cakes during the fruiting process.

While driving, bumps in the road, sudden turns, fast acceleration, and sudden stops can cause the substrate to move around. Enough of this can damage mycelium, potentially leading to a lower yield.

Already growing shrooms may become crushed or damaged, and mycelium colonies could become stressed to the point of ceasing their fruiting.

Secure storage and careful driving can help prevent this from happening, but it doesn’t eliminate the risk. There is always the possibility of a cake falling over, substrate moving, or other movement damaging the mycelium.

Summary: Transporting Growing Magic Mushrooms Safely

Avoid transporting magic mushrooms while they’re growing at all costs. Of course, if you’re reading this, you likely have no option but to transport your grow setup.

Weigh the risks against the benefits carefully first. Consider the legal implications and whether the hassle is worth it. Depending on the size of your grow, you could be dealing with a substantial quantity of mushrooms, potentially carrying a hefty charge.

If you do transport your mushrooms, do so carefully. Prepare your vehicle and setup well before traveling, and drive carefully. Practicing the five steps above will give your growing mushrooms the best chance of surviving the duration of the journey.