Panaeolus Cyanescens - Liquid Culture to Fruits by Blue Helix

Table of Contents:

What is all this about?

How do they grow compared to cubensis?

The Grow

Stage 1 - The Liquid Culture

Stage 2 - The Spawn Bags

Stage 3 - Laying the trays, Casing, and Casing Incubation

Stage 4 - Fruiting

About the Harvest

So, that's all fine and dandy, but how strong are they?



What is all this about?

This grow log is of my first try at Ausi Pan Cyans. The techniques I used in this grow are identical to my successful Ecuadorian cubensis grow of a few months back.

How do they grow compared to cubensis?

Like cubensis Pan Cyans are not too difficult to grow. I would call them a tiny bit more challenging than cubensis but not very much.

They grow slightly faster than cubensis in liquid culture, taking only 2 or 3 days to achieve a very high mycelium density cloud if continuously stirred and inoculated with a few ml of starter liquid culture whereas cubensis takes about 3 or 4 days.

Once in in grain or manure, they are close to the same speed as cubensis but can't hold the substrate as hard or dig through as well because they lack rhizomorphic features. When trying to colonize lots of grain, you really need to either keep shaking the grain every four days or use sufficient liquid culture so you don't need to shake because the mycelium can slow down, lacking the tenacity of cubensis mycelium. The same probably applies to spawning manure (i.e. use lots of spawn).

In the fruiting department, they like a between 75 to the low 80s, which is a little warmer than cubensis requires. The pins won't tolerate 100% relative humidity very well like cubensis can. The fruiting bodies are very tiny compared to cubensis, but there are tons of them. The fruits are much easier to dry than cubensis because they are smaller, but still the yield isn't as great. I believe one could achieve about 30% the yield of a perfect cubensis yield under ideal conditions.

In the strength department they make up for some of the yield shortfall. They will knock your socks off so be careful with these! I write a lot more about strength below, and I recommend you read it if you intend to trip on these. Tripping hard on anything can be dangerous, even deadly if you are in the wrong place, so take it easy at first.

The Grow

Stage 1 - The Liquid Culture

I started with a 4% by weight liquid culture solution. In my case I used 20 grams of sugars for the 500 ml of water. 10 grams of dextrose was added to 10 grams of light malt powder in a few coffee filters, which was then loaded in the coffee machine. I poured about 4 cups of water in the coffee machine, which steamed out about 2 of the cups and drained the other two through the sugars dissolving and filtering the liquid culture solution. The solution was covered with a metal disc lid with holes and cloth medical tape over the holes. Over that was placed a filter disc. I also dropped my Teflon magnetic stir bar in the quart jar and pressure-cooked the whole thing for 25 minutes. After it cooled, I inoculated with very few spores scraped off a spore print, and thus this liquid culture developed slowly given the minute amount of spores used. I have since seen Goliath Pan Cyans develop from 3ccs of liquid starter culture in only 48 hours, making them faster than cubensis. Below is the progression of the culture:

Liquid Culture (LC) Sugars.

Making LC Lid.

LC Lid Underside.

Liquid Culture - Day 3.

Liquid Culture - Day 5.

Liquid Culture - Day 7 (completion). Starting with a few mls of live culture rather than few spores can shorten this stage to around only 48 hours rather than 7 days.

Stage 2 - The Spawn Bags

On the 7th day, the liquid culture was ready for inoculation directly into the fruiting substrate. I use spawn bags to colonize the final fruit out substrate rather than spawn because it's easier and faster. Using a couple or few large spawn bags, one has plenty of room for enough substrate for either small or large bulk grows, so why bother with creating grain spawn? A single large spawn bag holds about one gallon of substrate. In PF terms that about 20 half pins jars of substrate all prepared via a single large liquid culture injection rather than 80 small half pint jar injections.

The fruit out substrate was:

6.5 parts Agar's special mushroom compost (via dry weight)

2 parts WBS (via dry weight)

2 parts rye grass seed (via dry weight)

3% Stevia leaf (percentage via volume)

0.2% black mustard (percentage via volume)

All was mixed with water to the correct moisture content by feel and then loaded into large spawn bags. The WBS was loaded dry so as to absorb a little moisture during cooking, thus preparing the mix to absorb the liquid culture without getting too wet. I pressure cooked the bags for 4 hours. Once they cooled sufficiently to touch with gloves, I sealed them shut in a dirty bathroom without allowing air in the bag. I then hung the bags up from the top of the plastic in a closet using rubber-footed wood clamps to allow them to cool and draw air in via the filter patch. Once self-inflated and cool, they were removed from the clamps and injected through a tape reinforced area of the bag with 80 ml to 140 ml of liquid culture (I strongly recommend the 140 ml). I immediately sealed the hole with hot glue. Once the hot glue cooled, I kneaded the grains and manure through the plastic to mix in the inoculants and put the bags separated on a shelf to colonize. The bags were remixed one time on the fourth day, but mixing was not needed for the bag that had received the full 140 ml of liquid culture. All bags were well colonized by day 7. Below are pictures of the progression of the bag culture:

Fruiting Substrate Colonizing in Sterile Spawn Bag on Days 2... ...and 7 (completion)

Stage 3 - Laying the trays, Casing, and Casing Incubation

After cutting open the bags, I crumbled up the substrate as required to lay the trays about 2' deep and as evenly as possible. 12-quart dishwash trays are super cheap at Walmart and great for cubensis, but I do NOT recommend 12-quart trays for Pan Cyans. They are far too tall and will encourage air stagnation around the pins. I recommend using a 2' to 4" tall tray of some sort. For example, plant starter trays sold at garden stores would probably work well.

I used the classic 50/50 Tek casing with 10% to 15% coco coir (by volume) added. I laid the casing about 1/3rd inch thick. I do not recommend the addition of coco coir for this mushroom because it will encourage excessive overlay I think which seemed to reduce yields in the Ausi strain. Some folks also don't pH-balance Pan Cyan peat casings. I have no opinion about that as I haven't tried it, but I wouldn't doubt it would work fine. One thing is for certain; do not use hydrated lime for pH-balancing with this mushroom or any other. You are very likely to spike the pH way too high, and while cubensis can take that abuse, this one won't tolerate it. If you can't get pulverized limestone or powder calcium carbonate of some source, just don't use anything.

I put the laid trays in a closet for incubation. I covered the tray with plastic wrap and put a piece of 2" wide masking tape across the center length of the tray over the plastic. With a razor, I cut a slit the entire length of the tape and pulled it apart about 1/4th inch and covered with cloth medical tape. This is to allow some but not excessive gas exchange.

For cubensis with an inch casing, casing incubation is pretty much required, but Pan Cyans can rip through the casing in 24 hours because the casing is so thin. As a result, one can probably skip casing incubation all together with Pan Cyans, but it won't hurt anything. Below is a picture of the tray in the incubation closet. Notice the tray is raised off the shelf to help keep it from overheating. I raised the tray out of habit because with cubensis overheating can be a serious problem, but with Pan Cyans one probably doesn't need to worry about it as the substrate depth is only 2".

24-Hour Casing Incubation.

Stage 4 - Fruiting

I incubated the casing for 24 hours and we're off to fruit. At this point, I was only 2 weeks from the spore injection to the liquid culture, and already I was putting the tray in the fruiting chamber! Now try to beat that! Like I said Pan Cyans are faster than cubensis. Pan Cyans can fruit in the same environment as cubensis with some minor tweaks.

First, you can mist up to the pin formation, but you really must stop watering once the pins start to form. These pins abort easily and misting them will abort them. Once the pins are well set, one should try to reduce the humidity in the chamber to 85% to 95%. Don't allow it to stay up around 100% or else the pins won't mature as they should. Cubensis doesn't seem to mind near 100% humidity all the time--although you risk forming mold in your casing--but these don't like it and you also strongly risk forming mold in the casing. Just crack the lid a little open if you don't have any other way. Fresh air requirements are technically not more than cubensis but they tend to get super tall in high CO2 environments and less stocky. It all depends on what you want. Lastly, keep the chamber a little warmer than cubensis. I recommend 75F to 82F. Below is my fruiting chamber progression.

Day 3 in Fruiting Chamber. Day 8 in Fruiting Chamber.

Day 9 in Fruiting Chamber. (arrows: Note lower pin density in overlaid areas.)

Day 10 in Fruiting Chamber.

Day 11 in Fruiting Chamber and the Harvest Day!

About the Harvest

I pulled that harvest on day 25 since the first spore was injected in the live culture. If I had used a few ml of a live culture to inoculate the live culture, I could have probably pulled the first flush off in 3 weeks! Now that is fast!

Although the pictures show the best trays, the trays did pretty well overall for a first timer. I estimate I harvested about 40% of a perfect first flush potential due to green mold which limited the yield. In fact I lost all of the trays after the first flush to green mold. It was all my fault too because I left town during the time the trays were in the fruiting chamber (that's why days 4 to 7 have no pictures) and the humidity and misting was way too high. The green mold formed on the soggy bottoms of the trays and extended up into the casing. Just don't over mist your trays! The fruits dried to exactly 10% their wet weight.

One thing that delighted me was the variation of this mushroom within the flush. Unlike cubensis, Pan Cyans show tremendous variation within a flush if one uses a multi-spore culture like I did. Some of the fruits were super tall, over 6 inches tall, and others were short (2 inches tall). Some had large caps (size of a quarter) and most had tiny caps (size of a nickel). The only thing that was consistent is that all the fruits were very small compared to cubensis. Indeed a single large third-flush cubensis can yield as much mass as half an entire tray of these!

One thing that really was a treat was the fact that about 1% or 2% of the caps had a light brown spore color while the others were grey. Here are some pictures of that fantastic phenomenon:

WOW! Isn't that beautiful?!?

So, that's all fine and dandy, but how strong are they?

Growing these over regular cubensis provides the grower a way to expand his or her cultivation skills to a new mushroom, but what about potency? Well, I have some firsthand experience to tell you, but first, let me preface this by saying that I am a seasoned cubensis tripper. I had my share of bad trips over the years. I know what it?s like to see both heaven and hell on shrooms, and hell always seems to come more often on stronger doses. I typically take about 3 grams on a cubensis trip, and I grow them strong on manure.

With these I decided to follow the dosage calculator here and take 10 fresh grams (would dry to 1 gram but is as strong as 1.35 grams dried). I was shooting for a level 3 experience. What I got was closer to a level 5 with total destruction of my ego.

I went from starting to see geometric patterns on the ground to tripping so hard that I couldn't even figure out how to put my Ipod's ear buds in my ears in less than 20 minutes! These shot off like a bomb in my brain way faster than anything I've taken, even cubensis tea doesn't hit that fast. I was so screwed up and it happened so fast that I had a massively terrible trip. I didn't know what the hell was going on. I won't go into details here, but let's just say I was heavily delusional in a negative sense and had trouble staying on my feet and not fainting. I am not a religious person, but basically I turned into a crazed religious schizophrenic for about 7 hours straight. The ordeal wore out my sitter--thank God I had one--big time. I would equate those 10 wet grams to about 4 to 5 dried grams of extremely strong cubensis.

I do not recommend taking over 1 dried gram until you know what you are dealing with. If you take them wet, you'd better start with no more than about 7 wet grams your first try. Now, I am serious here: these are not light weight mushrooms like cubensis! Like I said, the batch I grew was at least 4 to 5 times as strong as any cubensis I have ever grown, and I've grow lots of types on all sorts of stuff. Just be careful with them!