I have been reading up on casing and am going to give it a go. What I am curious about is the actual function of each 'ingredient' of the casing mix.
So:
- why do we mix Peat & Calcium Carbonate into the casing mix and not just straight Vermiculite?
- Can you use any form of Calcium Carbonate or must it be a fine powder?
- Why do we not add Brown Rice Flour to the mix?
Any and all help is appreciated!
P.s. on a side note, is this method specific to Cubensis or can it be used for all mushrooms? I am attempting to grow some Bio-Luminescent mushrooms from spores I received through my University. I can't remember the Latin name for the life of me...
Google it, All of which are fine casing materials, you can do straight Verm but it offers nothing aside from water. Calcium Carb must be a fine powder in order to be evenly dispersed throughout the casing, BRF colonizes slow as bawlz, I mean you could but why take a step backwards?
PW
peat/verm is used because its non nuitritious, it supplies a microclimate benificial to pinning and also as a moisture reserve. Its more benificial when fruiting straight grains that perform poorly without a casing layer, due to moisture content, and also because mycelium will tend to grow densly in a highly nuitritious substrate like greats (which isnt great for pinning) the casing layer allows the mycelium to mycelium to spread out through the casing layer less dense.
Casing with cubensis is optional. Striaght casing crumbled cakes doesnt really have much benifit. What you may see is that it puts out almost everything on the first flush, rather than over several flushes if you jsut left it as a cake.
Casing is more important which other species of mushrooms, not sure about the glowing mushroom though
no comment :rolleyes: