How the chooser works
The chooser on the home page is a short set of rules that runs in your browser. Nothing you pick leaves your device or gets saved. Here are all of the rules.
Which teks it can suggest
It only suggests teks that take you all the way to mushrooms with bought spawn: All-in-one grow bags, Supplemented sawdust blocks, Pasteurised straw (hot water), Cold-water lime pasteurisation, Bucket tek, Shotgun fruiting chamber, Martha tent, Monotub fruiting for gourmet species, Logs with plug spawn, Wood-chip garden beds, Spent coffee grounds .
The lab and spawn teks (Still air box vs flow hood, Agar, Liquid culture, Grain spawn in jars, Grain spawn in bags ) are steps inside a grow, so they are never a top-three result. If you say you have a pressure cooker and want a project to tinker with, the results end with a pointer to them.
Step 1: rule teks out
- Where you will grow. “Indoors” removes outdoor-only teks; “Outdoors” removes indoor-only teks. Supplemented sawdust blocks count as both, because ready-to-fruit blocks can fruit outside in season. “Either” removes nothing.
- Space. A tek is removed if it needs more room than you have. A yard counts as having a shelf and a corner too.
- Pressure cooker. “No” removes every tek that needs pressure sterilisation.
Step 2: score what is left
| Your answer | Rule | Points |
|---|---|---|
| Species | The tek suits that species (per its sources) | +4 |
| It does not. Skipped if you chose “Not sure yet”. | -6 | |
| Budget band | The tek’s cost band is at or under yours | +2 |
| Its cost band is above yours | -3 | |
| How hands-on | Difficulty matches your answer exactly | +2 |
| One step away | +1 | |
| How soon | First harvest comes as soon as you want, or sooner | +2 |
| It takes longer than you want | -4 | |
| Space | The tek uses the full space you offered | +1 |
“Chestnut or pioppino” matches teks that suit either, and so does “Reishi or maitake”. Hands-on and speed use the tek’s difficulty (easy, moderate, demanding) and time to first harvest (weeks, months, about a year) from the comparison table.
Step 3: show the top 3
The highest scores win. Ties go to the easier tek, then the cheaper one, then the one that comes first alphabetically. Each result gets one sentence built from the answers that earned it points, such as “Fits a small space, a low budget and a harvest within weeks.” If fewer than three teks survive step 1, you see fewer, with a note on which answer to loosen.
The questions
- Where will you grow? (Indoors; Outdoors, in a yard or woods; Either is fine)
- How much space can you give it? (A shelf or a closet corner; A corner of a room, basement or garage; A yard, garden bed or woodlot)
- What budget band are you in? (Low: use what I have, buy spawn; Medium: happy to buy some kit; High: I will invest in equipment)
- Will you sterilise with a pressure cooker? (Yes, I have one or will get one; No pressure cooker)
- Which mushroom interests you most? (Oyster; Lion’s mane; Shiitake; Wine cap; Chestnut or pioppino; King oyster; Reishi or maitake; Not sure yet)
- How hands-on do you want to be? (Set it up and mostly leave it; A few minutes most days; I want a project to tinker with)
- How soon do you want mushrooms? (Within a few weeks; Within a few months; I can wait a year)
The rules live in one file in the site’s code, so they can be tuned as teks are added. Try the chooser.