Yield & Efficiency Calculator
Estimate how much your grow will produce — fresh and dried — from the dry substrate you're using and the species' biological efficiency, broken down flush by flush.
Biological efficiency is fresh harvest divided by dry substrate weight. Run it forward from substrate you have, or backward from a yield you want to the substrate you'll need. Yields are shown as the species' real range, because strain and conditions move the number — plan with the low end, not the headline.
Your grow
Biological efficiency is fresh harvest per unit of dry substrate. Ranges come from the database — plan with them, don't bank on them.
BE varies wildly with strain, substrate and conditions, so figures are shown as ranges (literature-range/estimated). Dried weight assumes mushrooms are ~90% water. Fresh yields on well-supplemented substrate can beat these; poor conditions fall short.
How to use it
- Pick your species. Its biological-efficiency range loads from the database — the slider is capped to realistic values.
- Choose a mode. Estimate yield from substrate you have, or work backward from a target yield to the substrate needed.
- Enter the figure. Dry substrate weight, or the fresh harvest you're aiming for.
- Read the result. Fresh yield, a dried estimate, a flush-by-flush breakdown, and what the batch turns at the low end of the range.
Questions
What is biological efficiency?
Fresh mushroom harvest divided by dry substrate weight, as a percentage. 100% means one kilogram of fresh mushrooms from one kilogram of dry substrate.
What is a good biological efficiency?
It depends on species and conditions. Published trials report roughly 40–95% for oysters on straw and sawdust (higher on some residues), shiitake around 75–125% and lion's mane 50–100% — totals across all flushes, not a single number.
How much do mushrooms shrink when dried?
Roughly ten to one. Fresh mushrooms are about 90% water, so a kilogram fresh dries down to around 100 grams.
Why show a range instead of one number?
Yield shifts with strain, substrate and conditions. A range is honest about that; a single figure would imply a precision that doesn't exist.