coversall said:

Hmm I'm about to mix up some pan-cake mix. But am a little low on brown rice potentially. Any reason why I shouldn't throw in some whole millet? Or even grind the millet into a flour if I need a bit extra to make the ratio up? Or should I make up the difference with manure/straw? So many possibilities!

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Drboomer said:

LI I wish I had thrown it in an lc. I feel much more able to read an lc and tell if it's good or not. I don't have a good source for nice dry manure just composted.

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Adas said:

Hindsight said:

I have used tap water, reverse osmosis filtered tap water, and bottled distilled water. I use the latter now just because it's an easy way for me to rule out any additional variables the could be responsible for something screwy going on. The fewer things I have to wonder about being the problem, the better, so I go distilled. Having said that, I've never really noticed any difference between the three water types, personally, but I do know that public water quality changes over time, and most bottled water has minerals or electrolytes added for taste (calcium, silica, etc) and I don't know how much effect these can have on mycelium.

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I don't think it's "for taste", but literally so that people don't drink demineralized water. This would have bad health consequences and make you mineral deficient quickly.

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Baba Yaga said:

coversall said:

Hmm I'm about to mix up some pan-cake mix. But am a little low on brown rice potentially. Any reason why I shouldn't throw in some whole millet? Or even grind the millet into a flour if I need a bit extra to make the ratio up? Or should I make up the difference with manure/straw? So many possibilities!

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If you are going to PC it then any flour will do, whole meal wheat flour works just as well.

Drboomer said:

LI I wish I had thrown it in an lc. I feel much more able to read an lc and tell if it's good or not. I don't have a good source for nice dry manure just composted.

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Composted manure can work just as well though if the overall texture of the substrate is nice and fluffy.

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Rad, I ended up with just enough brown rice so I'll save other flours for another day!

coversall said:

Drboomer said:

I love those little 250ml media bottles. They are perfect for small lc batches. I'm buying a ten pack at the end of the month and forgoing mason jars for lc.


My first batch of pan cakes has colonized pretty well. The only iffy parts are compost clumps I didn't break up well enough I'm going to try fruiting them anyway. Might shift my compost next run so I don't have little clumps of it.being partially frozen didn't help either. Hopefully I get at least a fruit. Dialing the Martha and my first run of cakes makes for a ton of variables up in the air at the same time.

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My manure is almost entirely dry, so when preping the stuff for my pan cakes I rub it between my hands to break up any clumps!

What did you start the pancakes with? LI or LC?

Panny said:

Hmmm, this makes sense. Anytime I see people posting pics of Pan mycelium on agar is looks a lot more dense and uniform that what I have. I also use bottled water for agar, could this also be a problem? I'm not sure if most of you use distilled water, or is tap water good enough most of the time?

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I've always used tap water for everything mycological and had no trouble there. I'd start by ditching the food colouring.

What is your agar recipie?

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Panny said:

Yeah, I bet that's it.

Current recipe:
300ml bottled water
6g agar
2g instant mashed potato flakes
1.5g light malt extract

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Hindsight said:

Baba is the resident tub growth expert so listen to him first, but my advice would be to get as much FAE as you can without sacrificing humidity. I know that sounds impossible since more FAE in a tub grow always means less humidity - but what I'm really trying to say is, try to keep the humidity really high in the tub (like 90%) - don't let it go below that for the sake of more FAE, if adding more FAE will cause humidity levels to drop below that. Looking at your photo, things look quite moist in there, and you are getting enough FAE and surface evaporation to get pins formed, so that being the case, I would leave the tub set to however it was set when the pins formed.

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Hindsight said:

Misting fruits is ok - it won't negatively impact them (as people used to believe), but if you have your tub/tent set properly, you shouldn't need to. But again, I'm not a tub guy so Baba is your best bet there.

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ekabpils said:

Very nice looking mycelium of NecD clone - still needs to be tested with real grow...

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shr00mFer said:

Finally my pan cyan showing some grow. Any advice on these ones guys? I know I am not supposed to mist the fruits directly and should increase FAE (I have opened all holes - one big on upper side and 4-5 small ones on lower - I have it on all sides of the tub).

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Moopers said:

How long are pan prints good for, on average? I am about to attempt pans again after a hiatus. I have some prints from 2020. Should I use them now to make sure I can keep the genetics going? They're P. bisporus, NecD, PHV, P. cyan 'Goliath'. Got all of them from AR.

If anyone has any recs of which of them to put to agar first, I'd appreciate it.

If they're no good, I will go back to Jambo or Estero.

I finally got the JCM chamber to work well on a recent tamp grow, so I'm really keen on getting pans moving again!

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