Your order will be sent in a very secure plain cardboard envelope or box – which are glue sealed for better security than tape, with an easy tear-open strip.

There is no mention of our company name on any packages.

Yes! We ship everywhere.
All shipping options will be available at checkout.

A surprising number of customers enter their delivery address incorrectly at checkout.

If your order has not yet been dispatched, we can change the address details for you – but if you’ve already received dispatch notification, there is nothing we can do.

We will have to wait until your order is returned to us by the courier, and we will then give you the option to pay delivery costs again to have your order re-sent to you.

If your order is not returned to us by the courier (very rare) and is lost, we cannot offer a free replacement order or refund.

So, please double check your address when placing an order!

If you miss the delivery of your order, the courier will return it to us (but this is not guaranteed).
Royal Mail will return the order to your local depot and it will be available for you to re-arrange delivery or collect for 30 days.

When/if we receive your order back from the courier – We will contact you to arrange for you to pay the delivery costs again and we can then re-send your order.

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If your order contains a grow kit – we will give you the option of us re-sending the same kit out to you, or for you to pay for a new one.

As noted on the grow kit product pages, we advise that kits are stored for 2 weeks maximum before inoculation – and it is likely that your order being returned to us by the courier may take longer than 2 weeks.

So, if you choose to have the same grow kit sent to you and more than 2 weeks have passed since your original dispatch date, this is at your own risk of the grow kit losing too much moisture and not working to its full potential.

If you request a refund on your order after it is returned to us and it has been longer than 2 weeks since your dispatch date – we will not refund the grow kit price from your order.

We advise that spores can be kept for around 2 years to ensure viability. Although, there are lots of reports online of them being stored longer than this and still being active!

Some advice is to store spore solutions refrigerated but there is absolutely no harm in storing them at room temperature and this is how we have always stored our spores.

It’s important to keep spores out of direct light, such as a dark drawer.

We would always advise that you use a grow kit as soon as you possibly can.

Moisture has been added to the substrates to support mycelium growth and naturally, this moisture will gradually be lost – so, if you leave it too long before inoculation, there won’t be an adequate amount of moisture to support the mycelium and you’ll risk very slow colonisation to no colonisation at all.

The storage times do vary between substrate types and we have had success from substrates inoculated months after sterilisation but that is not always the case.

If you experience issues with slow/stalled colonisation and you have had your substrate sitting around for weeks upon weeks.. it’s likely to be a cause.

Please, just get them inoculated quickly!

Do not add any more gourmet solution to substrates than what our guides tell you to.

Adding too much moisture into a substrate will increase your chances of contamination… and nobody wants that.

No! – Using a heat mat introduces a higher risk of contamination.

The warmth provided from a heat mat is not spread equally enough throughout your substrate – the heat is coming from the bottom, whilst the top of your substrate remains at a colder temperature.

This produces a lot of condensation and therefore results in excess moisture build-up, which creates an easy pathway for contamination to enter your substrate.

It’s really not worth it.

We have an incubator in our Equipment section will will do the job for you.

We often get asked what the ‘stickers’ are on the lids of substrate products – these are in fact specially developed filters which are heat-sealed to the lids and work to provide essential clean air exchange to your colonising substrate within.

They should never be removed!

If you have any gourmet spore or culture solution left over in a syringe, keep the needle on it – flame sterilise the needle until it’s glowing red hot and put the needle cover on.

Don’t ever put the same syringe cap back on as previously removed, as it will most likely have been lying out in the open air and contaminant spores (bacteria, moulds – they’re everywhere!) would have landed on it, so you would introduce these into your syringe if you screwed the cap back on.

Because the needle came from sterile packaging, it is completely clean and safe to attach to the syringe and leave on there until you are ready to use again.

Make sure to then store spore syringes in a cool, dark place – in a drawer is an ideal place and store culture syringes in a very clean fridge.

Oh and before you use the syringe again, flame sterilise the needle again until it is glowing red hot, push a small amount of solution out through the needle and this will ensure that you’re killing off anything that may be on there.

Or if you want to be extra careful, you can attach a new sterile needle!

Unfortunately, due to time constraints we are unable to give detailed information on how to grow every gourmet mushroom species.

However, there’s some amazing resources out there – Have a quick search online and you’ll find a wealth of information! There’s loads of YouTube videos if you’re a visual learner or there are some brilliant books on the subject too, like Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms by Paul Stamets..

Engross yourself in the subject and you’ll enjoy the learning, trust us!

Liquid cultures should be kept refrigerated. Store them in a (clean!) fridge to keep them at their best and they will remain viable for around 12 months.

Please see our returns and refunds policy here

If you would like to pay using a different method than what you selected, you will need to place a new order and select your preferred option at checkout.

Different instructions are emailed to you for each payment option and for some payment methods, the payment process is completed dynamically during checkout, so it really is best just to place a new order to make things much quicker and easier!

Yes. You will be refunded using GBP as the base currency for the total price of the order, converted into Bitcoin or whichever cryptocurrency you used to pay, at the current conversion rate at the time of the refund.

We do this to ensure that the same GBP amount you pay at the time of ordering is returned to you. Due to the volatility of cryptocurrencies, we do not refund at the rate in force at the time of purchase, to protect both you and us from any big fluctuations in the crypto rates (they can sky rocket and drop regularly).

This can mean that you receive more or less crypto than what was paid at the time of the order transaction, however the equivalent GBP value of what you paid for your order will always be the same.

We often get asked why we don’t accept PayPal and other payment options…

The short answer: We would if we could.

We are limited to the payment options we have because of the hostility businesses like ours face from financial institutions. Forget the fact that all of our products are legal and sold for an entirely legitimate purpose, there is still a stigma surrounding some of the products we sell (most likely microscopy spores).

But in saying that, we have even had PayPal hold all of our money for 12months for a website that sold gourmet mushroom kits and didn’t stock microscopy spores at all… Maybe they just don’t like mushrooms, who knows?

We decide what we sell and don’t though, not some clueless representative of Paypal, Stripe or any other payment provider who is adamant that our spore syringes are used to inject into an arm (not even kidding..)

We face a constant battle to provide payment options on our website, so please don’t email us and suggest that we offer PayPal or card payments! (this happens weekly).

SY-LOH-SYB

We’re from bonnie Scotland, in the United Kingdom.