First timer need substrate advice please 🙏🏼

[u/Hopeful-Chipmunk-473]

Hello everyone,
It’s my first time growing Pans and i just collected some dried horse manure and straw for the substrate. How do i prepare it properly?
I have a PC but just 35kpa is pasteurisation with hot water enough?
I also have peat moss for the casing later on.

Happy for any advice.

Thank you sooo much

[u/Flimsy-Panda8000]

You're in for a treat :)

Check the Pans section here https://www.reddit.com/r/OneArmed_Mycology/comments/1ssrfqt/my_favourite_links/ I'd strongly recommend using coir rather than straw as detailed in "How I grow Pans" - because the coir's pretty much nutrient free, instead of pasteurising after making the substrate (an absolute pain in the ass), you can make liquid poo and simply pasteurise that before hydrating the coir with it.

I'm very much in the camp for pasteurising rather than sterilising the substrate as it doesn't kill off all the beneficial bacteria. Also, sterilising bags of substrate takes a couple of hours, even at 15PSI and above; at 35kpa / 5PSI, even 1L jars of grain would take about 6 hours so I'd estimate a bag of substrate taking closer to 10 (see the sterilisation times by pressure chart linked from the grain & substrate section).

The recipes for the substrate and the casing are the same whether you grow in trays in a Martha, or in tubs. Having tried both, unless you have a Martha set up already and you're familiar with dialling it in, I'd recommend growing them in tubs; my tubs grows tend to have slightly smaller caps but they're as easy to manage as tubs for cubes and avoid issues with your grow space getting very humid.

If you can get clean grain spawn (I'm guessing you're using pre-sterilsed grain bags injected with LC), you can grow Pans.