Hi folks.
I've been growing for one year now, so I'm not quite a total noob, but still have tons to learn. Even so, I thought I'd throw in my two spores' worth at this point as it might help other beginners who are thinking about what species to grow first.
When I started, I ordered two spore prints: one psilocybe cubensis B+ and one panaeolus cyanescens (Jamaica). My plan was to grow the cubes first, and then "graduate" to the pans, which I'd initially read were quite fussy. But then I began to read more and came across a lot of posts saying that there was barely any difference between the two (in terms of level of difficulty), so I decided to switch the order, dive straight into the pans, and keep the cubes as a backup.
Bad decision. Almost a year (and some 8 grow cycles) later, I'd managed to produce some 60g (fresh) of fruits. It was an endless series of failures. I kept making all kinds of adjustments to my tek (the biggest being a change from a greenhouse setup to trays within shotgun chambers), but nothing worked. Usually, the grow produced either nothing or contaminated.
After a year, I was almost ready to give up, but I still had the cube print and thought I might was well give things one final shot. I set up the grow with very low expectations. When I put the substrate trays under fruiting conditions, after one week, I still couldn’t make out any clear signs of knots or pins. I thought it was the same old story, and was ready to dump everything and pack up. And then they just exploded. I couldn’t believe my eyes. And they kept coming in wave after wave. From one grow (of three small trays), I harvested 900g (fresh) and have enough dried and stored to last me a good stretch.
I’m not saying my experience is the final word. Maybe some people have found pans just as easy. Maybe I got a bad print. But, based on one year of attempts, I’d strongly recommend that if you’re just starting out and trying to choose a first species to cultivate, think about doing a cube species first. (Or at least avoid pans.) They’re much more forgiving and resilient, and your initial success will give you the encouragement to keep at it. Maybe one day I’ll try pans again, but I’m just as happy with my cubes for now.
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encouraging! I started right around the turn of the new year (2019), and only recently came to fully understand the principles of agar. I've had one fruit pop up and that was at the beginning... It was a blob mushroom and I thought it was contamination and threw the whole thing out. As I was doing this, the worst stench I've ever smelled came from under the substrate. No mold or trich, but I figure bacteria.
Ever since, hardly any success at all. I came to fully understand agar tonight actually. After some deductive reasoning, I finally learned about dirty cultures from commercial syringes after my most vigorous jar was also the only one with contamination. That tells me that there were way more spores in that particular purge, and had lots of bad spores in it. I know for sure there was no contamination from outside the jar... I pc'd myself at 15psi for 90 mins with micro pore tape and a SHIP covering it.
I know this was a little off topic, but I read about your failures in general and decided to share mine. I've only tried cubes so far.
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