I decided to do and share the way I prefer to grow pans from my isolated culture of Pan cyans Hawaiian. I needed to revive my slant and capture a few fresh prints anyway. This culture has proven to be the best producer I have ever isolated to date. I have done a lot of work to procure this culture, so I intend to keep it as long as I possibly can. So I take this culture out every 8-12 months to transfer to a new plate, then back to a new slant to keep it fresh and alive. This particular culture is 5 years old and has been rejuvenated 7 times. It still grows and produces the exact same way it did 5 years ago when I isolated it.
Agar Work:
The refrigerated culture slant from which I transferred to a new agar plate:
The plate from which I transferred to a fresh slant and used to inoculate my grain master:
Grain:
Grain master 24 hours after inoculating with a single small agar wedge
Grain master fully colonized in 6 days:
I use a trick here with dung lovers and it seems to work really well. I use approximately half the amount of grain per jar and added to that, I place an equal amount of field capacity manure. This allows me to use lesser amounts of grain and agar for my grain master. Also, the tiny pieces of manure become many inoculation points when transferred to G2G jars. This small amount in the jar is capable of inoculating 10 other same size jars (in my case I use pints, as my pressure cooker is small and will not hold quarts). But in this case, I only inoculated 6. You will be surprised and think you are only getting a tiny bit in each jar. But after the shake and recovery, you will see those many tiny pieces of manure have spread very well in the G2G jars and will give fast colonization speeds.
G2G jars at 2 days after inoculation and ready for a shake:
G2G jars 3 days later and are fully colonized and ready to spawn:
Bulk Substrate Prep:
My favorite bulk recipe to date with pans is 3 ingredients: manure, vermiculite and gypsum. Although, I have been using coir to supplement my subs as well recently with great results, I thought I would go back to my staple recipe for this grow. Plain wheat straw or a combination of straw/manure works very well too. I just prefer to use manure because I can get all I want for free:
Field composted horse manure I get from a local horse farm:
Broken up, all pieces of wood and rocks are discarded making a very fluffy manure based sub:
Gypsum added (I usually just eyeball it but a good rule of thumb is 5-10 percent per volume of sub.):
Vermiculite added (Once again eyeballed but anywhere from ¼-1 part):
All ingredients mixed together thoroughly and ready for the addition of water:
Field capacity and ready for pasteurization:
Spawning, Colonizing And Consolidation of Bulk Substrate:
Layering spawn and sub (you can also just pour all in and mix with clean hands):
Tub fully colonized and allowed to consolidate for 4 days:
Casing Prep And Colonization:
My casing recipe for this size mono is as follows:
2 cups of Peat Moss:
2 cups of Vermiculite:
2 tablespoons of gypsum:
2 teaspoons of hydrated lime dissolved in a little water (I use hydrated lime pellets):
All mixed together and brought to field capacity:
Pasteurized for 90 minutes, allowed to cool and applied very thinly (~¼ inch) to the consolidated sub and put straight into fruiting mode:
This 50/50+ recipe produces a casing material that is right at or near neutral on the pH scale. This a little more than what is needed for this size tub, but I like to have extra for patching due to possible uneven colonization and in between flushes. Pans are tenaciously attached to the casing layer, which can leave large holes when you pick them. So I like to patch after I harvest each flush, but that is optional.
Colonized casing:
Notice that the casing layer is not overrun and has colonized well. This is where the consolidation of the fully colonized sub makes a big difference. IME with pans, when I would case right after full colonization, the casing would be overtaken in a matter of days with thick mycelium, and would subsequently give me poor flushes, mostly from the sides. I began to notice that the best fruiting happened on the sections of the casing that looked like the above picture. Consolidation for 3-6 days solved this issue completely and I always do it now with the same results. Other pan growers have had great results not utilizing this technique, but I would highly recommend it to anyone. After all, it does not hurt a thing to do it.
Pin Set:
Conclusion:
Matured and ready for harvest:
Harvest pic:
All in all a pretty good haul for a mini mono of pans IMO. Happy growing to all!
Edited by coorsmikey, 04 June 2016 - 08:24 PM.
Added tags for future organization
