Farming
"Your hands lie heavy on plow and scythe, clawing in your palms the furrows of age and hard labor. You know how to till and plow, and how to plant seeds."
Note: Farming is not only a basic skill but also an incrementable ability.
Agriculture
The Farming skill allows a Hearthling to plant seeds in soil to grow crops for food or materials. There are 20 crops in the game, 15 of which are planted directly into soil and 5 of which must be planted on a Trellis. To plant crops, you need 5 seeds per tile, (One full stack of 50 seeds will plant 10 crops), tilled ground, and patience. Note that certain crops are planted with the crop itself and not seeds, for instance, Beetroots and Peas do not have seeds, you simply plant the item themselves. Check the table below for more info.
- First, till some ground. You can do this on most dirt terrains by hand, but building a plow is preferable. A wooden plow lets you simply walk along at Crawl speed (1.5 tiles per second) to till the ground, a Metal Plow lets you do so at Run speed (4.5 tiles per second).
- Now, left click a stack of at least 5 seeds, and right click a tile of tilled ground. You can do this faster by holding shift and then right clicking the tile, which keeps the stack attached to your cursor, or at maximum speed by simply shift + right clicking the seeds in your inventory, which will then let you drag and drop a zone over a square of tiles which your character will automatically walk to and plant until they're done or they run out of seeds.
- Now comes the waiting. Plants take varying times to grow. Carrots will grow in a day, Pumpkins will grow in a week, with other crops somewhere in between.
- You will know a crop is fully grown when you can right click it and click harvest. Your character will walk over and pick the crop, giving you its materials and/or seeds. A Scythe will harvest multiple crops in front of you at a time. You can shift + right click a fully grown crop to drag and drop a zone over other fully grown crops of the same type to quickly and automatically harvest them as well, just like planting.
This won't work for all crops however. Specifically, Peas, Peppercorns, Grapes, Cucumbers and Hops crops are vineyard plants and are too delicate to be grown on their own and require a Trellis. This is quite simple though, simply build a trellis and right click the seeds onto the trellis like it were a tilled tile. Trellis plants generally take longer to grow than others.
Some things to note:
Seeds too annoying to carry and store? Worry not, they can be put into Buckets, Barrels, and Granaries!
For buckets, you must have the bucket in a container or your hands, they can't be filled when in your inventory. Simply right click the seeds onto the bucket. Each bucket can hold 1000 seeds, allowing you to carry a total 2000 seeds on you without any inventory space being used!
For barrels, simply right click the seeds straight into the barrel. Each barrel can hold 10,000 seeds.
Granaries are far more difficult to make than the other two choices, but are maximally efficient! They have 10 slots, to distribute the grand total capacity of 200,000 seeds(units). Simply right click the seeds into a slot. Granaries can hold other things like flours, grists, ash, and such as well.
Farming not rewarding enough?
Invest some Learning Points into Gardening, Plant Lore or even the ultimate Druidic Rite! Each skill makes you gain extra seeds and products when harvesting.
And if you're a true connoisseur of the farming arts, consider attempting the Farmer's Credo, which grants you further benefits to your growing (pun intended) arsenal. See more in Credo.
How do I even get seeds?!
Aside from asking or borrowing them from a neighbour or friend, you can get random seeds from drying Wild Windsown Weeds on a Drying Frame or Herbalist Table.
At the start of world the only way to get cultivated seeds is to gather wild crops: String Grass, Corn Grass, Wild Gourd, Wildflower, Wild Tuber, Wild Onion replanting them until eventually they evolve into advanced type.
How do I farm things like Blueberries?
That is another form of farming called Gardening. It is similar to Farming but you need to get that skill and then make yourself some Garden Pots and fill them with soil and water, then you right click your forageable of choice like Blueberries and right click them into the pot.
The winter snow killed my crops! How can I farm in winter and early spring while snow is still around?
Crops die when winter hits and they're unprotected.
In early spring, digging will get rid of the snow. Be careful - you want the snow gone, not a deep pit in your plowed field.
In winter, you can build fires around to melt the snow and save your crops from the low temperatures.
If constantly relighting fires isn't your thing you can use Mulch you get from your Compost Bin to make a Mound Bed, which radiates the summer warmth around it indefinitely in a sizeable area, and you can also plant forageables in it.
Quality of seeds
This applies only to the crops main-product (usually the seeds). Harvested crop-byproduct quality (Straw, Finer Plant Fibre, etc) always equal the planted crop/seed quality.
The basics:
- Newly planted crops-seeds get a initial quality change by [-2, +5] points.
- (As of World 14). Planted crops also gain additional random [-2, +5] quality changes over time. (related time-period unknown)
- Exception: If you (or, assuming, your crop) are above your local quality cap, and if you are the server lead in crop quality for that crop type, your crops will instead change by [-2, +2] with each quality change. The local quality cap effectively only matters for the server lead. (ref: ... and Yesteryear's Patch (2021-10-28))==(no fixed crop quality limit anymore)
- If your farming ability level is below or equal to the initial planted crop quality than the positives quality boost is ignored when harvesting.
- Farming ability level plays no other role when harvesting. (Harvested quantities however are effected by farming skills)
- (Quality inception: Permanent trellis crops will always return there initial planted crop quality. Harvesting them has no effect on this.)
Additional details:
The applied random [-2, +5] quality modification:
- Is set separately per crop-type. ie: each crop-type has its own randomizer.
- Is changed around every ~2 hours. ie: A planted crop-batch will generally give a uniformly result at harvesting.
- Might be different per region. (N-minimaps, or per supergrid. Lacking solid data on this)
- Harvested quantities, by harvester, are effected by Gardening, Plant Lore and Druidic Rite skills. (credo's ?)
Potential unknowns:
- If there is some potential auto-quality-gain limit based on the initial planted crop quality. (probably not, other than the planters farming level.)
- If those auto-quality-gains are also [-N, +N] variable changes. (Might be yes. based on some ad hoc observations)
Quality Grinding
To maximize quality gain, it is advisable to use multiple plantings, at least 2 hours apart, of your highest seed quality. With maximum skills, plants will yield three times their number in plantings-worth of seed. By planting in three phases it give you three chances to score the maximum +5 quality gain. Whatever the results, the highest quality seed will be sufficient to repeat the planting. If expanding the crops is a priority, two plantings leaves enough seed to expand each planting by 50%. This method avoids the downside of a bad RNG result unless all three plantings roll poorly (which is unlikely). Therefore, doing this will consistently increase average seed quality, and thus product quality, over time. The excess seeds or crops can then be used to crafting and consumption.
If you are fortunate to have seeds of a higher quality than your skills would otherwise produce (i.e. from a neighbour), then the resulting planting quality will not be between -2 and +5, but all positives are set to 0, giving a good chance to maintain the high quality while building up your skills to match.
What it does
Farming lets you plant and harvest crops (except grape seeds, which need Winemaking), plant trees, plow fields, mill Flour, and craft Straw Hats. You need at least 5 of the same seed to plant.
Adventure > Landscaping > Hand Plow
- Plows squares of furrowed soil that can be used to plant crops. Furrowed soil is not needed to plant trees, however. Plowing by hand uses more stamina than using the Plow item.
Build > Containers
Craft > Clothes & Equipment > Hats & Headwear
Craft > Processing & Materials
- Grind Flour
Seed Stacking
As of World 8, seeds of the same crop can stack (up to 50 in the inventory, 1000 in a bucket and 10000 in a barrel) if they have the same qualities. If you mix seeds with different qualities together, using a bucket or barrel, the resulting quality is:
You can use this to raise the overall quality of your seeds of a given crop by sacrificing higher tier seeds.
About Crops
A list of crops currently in the game include:
Please note this table is incomplete; information may be missing or incorrect. These values are still based on old Haven & Hearth
| Crop Field | Planted with | Additional Products and Information | 2 Stage | 3 Stage | 4 Stage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Barley Crop | Seeds of Barley | 5-18 Seeds of Barley, Straw | - | - | 3-4 Days |
| Beetroot Crop | Beetroot | 1 Beetroots, 1 Beetroot Leaves (Stage 3) 1-4 Beetroots, 1-4 Beetroot Leaves, Weird Beetroot (Rarely) (Final Stage) |
~18 Hours | - | 'Fastest reported': W-11: 2 Days 5 Hours 45 Minutes (No Hive.)
'Slowest reported': W-11: 2 Days 6 Hours 44 Minutes (No Hive.) |
| Carrot Crop | Seeds of Carrot or Carrot | 1 Carrot (Stage 3) 5-18 Seeds of Carrot (Stage 4) 1-4 Carrots (Final Stage) |
~ | ~ | 'Fastest reported': 15 Hours 50 Minutes.
'Slowest reported': 40 Hours. |
| Cucumber Crop | Seeds of Cucumber | 5-18 Seeds of Cucumber, 1-3 Cucumbers Grown on Trellis |
- | - | 4 Days 8 Hours |
| Flax Crop | Seeds of Flax | 5-18 Seeds of Flax, Flax Fibre | - | - | 2 Days |
| Garlic Crop | Clove of Garlic | 1-4 Garlic | - | - | - |
| Grapes Crop | Seeds of Grape | 1-4 Grapes Grown on Trellis |
- | - | 4 Days 8 Hours |
| Green Kale Crop | Seeds of Green Kale | ?? | - | - | - |
| Hemp Crop | Seeds of Hemp | Fresh Hemp Bud (Stage 3) 5-18 Seeds of Hemp, Hemp Fibre (Final Stage) |
- | Begins at a random time around 40 minutes before full maturation of crop.(Confirm) | 3 Days 4 Hours |
| Hops Crop | Hop Cones | 1-4 Hop Cones, Unusually Large Hop Cone (Rarely) Grown on Trellis |
- | - | - |
| Leek Crop | Seeds of Leek or Leek | 5-18 Seeds of Leek (Stage 3) 1 Leek (Stage 4) 1-4 Leeks (Final Stage) |
- | - | 3 Days |
| Lettuce Crop | Seeds of Lettuce | 5-12 Seeds of Lettuce, Head of Lettuce (Creates 3 Lettuce Leaf and 5-7 Seeds of Lettuce when split) |
~18Hours | - | 3 Days 8 Hours |
| Millet Crop | Seeds of Millet | 5-18 Seeds of Millet, Straw | - | - | - |
| Pea Crop | Peapod | 1-4 Peapods Grown on Trellis |
- | - | 3 Days 15 Hours |
| Peppercorn Crop | Peppercorn | 1-2 Peppercorns Grown on Trellis |
- | - | - |
| Pipeweed Crop | Seeds of Pipeweed | 5-18 Seeds of Pipeweed, 1 Fresh Leaf of Pipeweed | ~20 Hours. | - | - |
| Poppy Crop | Seeds of Poppy | 5-12 Seeds of Poppy, Poppy Flower (Stage 5) 5-24 Seeds of Poppy, Poppy Pod (Rarely) (Final Stage) |
- | - | 3 Days 19 Hours |
| Pumpkin Crop | Seeds of Pumpkin | Giant Pumpkin (Creates 40 Seeds of Pumpkin and 8 Pumpkin Flesh when split) |
- | - | 5-7 days |
| Red Onion Crop | Red Onion | 1-4 Red Onions, Crying Red Onion (Rarely) | - | - | - |
| Turnip Crop | Seeds of Turnip or Turnip | 5-18 Seeds of Turnip (Stage 3) 2-4 Turnips, Giant Turnip (Rarely) (Final Stage) |
- | - | - |
| Wheat Crop | Seeds of Wheat | 5-18 Seeds of Wheat, Straw | - | - | 3 Days 10 Hours |
| Yellow Onion Crop | Yellow Onion | 1-4 Yellow Onions, Crying Yellow Onion (Rarely) | - | - | - |
Notes:
- Times listed are in real-time and assume the use of a Beehive unless noted otherwise. They will also be affected by any bonuses from inside of a Realm and by the new 'Speed Crop' bonus (See below quote from the May 29th 2018 update.).
- Wheat, Barley, Millet and Hemp are unaffected by Beehives.
- Stage 1 is the initial planted stage. Nothing can be done to any crop at this stage.
- Poppies must sit 24 Hours or more in stage 5 (ready to harvest) before pods will start to appear instead of flowers.
- Inspect: As of (unknown), planted crops can be quality inspected at all crops stages. Returns (initial) planted crop quality. Same for trellis crops (ie: never updates to last harvested crops quality)
- (Stacks) For area-planting crops hiccup (not seed based) see Stack#Notable_Crops-Planting_Con.
- (Just in case: direct crops-table edit-link)
Game Development
- World 14 (2022-08-12)◎ >"Reworked crop quality gains so that all crops should gain quality relatively uniformly, with some geographically local variance still applied. Aiming to break the reign of turnip tyranny."
- Bull Ram (2022-03-20)◎ >"Can now inspect crops for quality when they are harvestable (including trellis crops)."
- Iced Bait (2021-11-07)◎ >"When planting an area, you will now plant using a small area of effect, planting several tiles around you at once. The character will not move to use that optimally, but it's something. Traveling salesman algorithm when?"
- Harvest Skis (2021-10-21)◎ >"Removed (effectively, at least) the timer from harvesting crops."
- Post Rose (2018-05-29)◎ >"Made it so that crops no longer need to be harvested the second they finish in order achieve their minimum cycle time. Whenever you destroy or harvest a crop the time the crop harvested had spent in the last growth stage is saved per tile or trellis. That time, up to a point, will then be added to your next planting on that tile. Do note that if you do not replant within a certain period, the retained time will be lost. Replanting within 3 RL days of the crop reaching its final growth stage should not lose you any time."