I have some cultivation queries for the nexian mycophiles:

I am having a lot of trouble with azures and pans.

First the azures: last year, I colonized 10 pf tek BRF & verm jars with spores from ralphsters. after taking 3 months (!) to colonize, 6 succumbed to contams (blur/red/green zoo of molds). the remaining 4 I put in Spawn bags with sterilized maple chips. 2 spawn bags "tryched" out, and the remaining 2 colonized with nice fluffy mycelia, but then a brown gooey liquid collected on the bottom...

this winter, tried another attempt. 10 jars that colonized like wildfire, completed in 9 days!
very encouraged, till 1 week later they ALL showed signs of the "blur/red/green zoo of molds". another failure...

what am i doing wrong? my sterile technique is impeccable - 12 crops of many strains of P.cubensis, with not one contaminated jar. Do I really need to go the agar/isolate/flow hood/grain to wood route? What a pain...

And the pans...
pan cyan syringe (again from ralphsters) inoculated (according to a tek i found) 10 jars of a mix of brf, verm & cow manure. 3 months later (with perfectly controlled temp at 82 f) not a sign of mycelium... Must say the manure was garden quality - do I need fresh stuff, pasteurized maybe? are my jars toast or will the spores have survived? Could I get fresh cow manure, pasteurize it and transfer the jars into another container with the manure? Any other ideas?

Thanks in advance

JBArk

Here are some pics:

I personally dont have any experience with azures or pans, but i have heard that they are hard to do indoors. I did hear about a guy that got trays of azures to work indoors. He spawned to alder chips, then cased in 50/50 peat and verm. To fruit them he had to give them a cold shock to trigger pinning.

I will check my notes and hopefully get you a link to his grow journal.

Sorry I don't have any solution for you just a question. Where did you get your spores? I've been looking for pan spores to buy on-line but didn't find any. I'd like to try to put some mycelium out into the woods here. They don't grow where I live now but they should grow here without problems.