Every crop

Days are to harvest on default settings (each growth phase can vary by up to 12 hours). Yield is the harvest at plant health 50 / 100.

The farming guide covers the long game; this is the ten-minute version for a character standing in a garden with a packet of seeds.

1. Get a digging tool. A trowel, shovel or garden hoe all work. Trowels turn up in sheds, garages and the gardening aisle of any hardware store.
2. Pick the ground. Right-click a grass or dirt tile outdoors and choose the farming option to dig a plot. Fenced back gardens are ideal because zombies and animals trample less.
3. Check the month. With growing seasons on (the default), sowing outside a crop's months curses the plant on day one. Radishes and lettuce are safe bets from February to May.
4. Sow. Open a seed packet (5 seeds) and plant. Starting health is a roll of roughly 37 to 64 depending on moon phase and whether it is a best month; Agriculture skill adds a little on top.
5. Water. Each watering adds about 10 water, up to 100. Watering cans and buckets hold the most; a bottle works in a pinch. Keep the level above the crop's threshold (see the rules above).
6. Pull weeds whenever the plot info shows them. Weeds double water drain and raise disease odds.
7. Fertilise once. A single compost bag or a single dose of fertiliser is a bonus; a second dose is a penalty (next section).
8. Check the plot every morning by hovering over it. Disease is cheap to cure early and fatal late.

Our pick for a first crop is radishes: 30 days, slug-proof, and the harvest returns seeds so the second plot is free.

Plant health moves every few game hours based on water, weeds, light, temperature and whether the plot is cursed. You control two of those directly.

Water

• Each watering action adds about 10 water and the plot caps at 100.
• Rain refills outdoor plots. Sun and pest flies speed drying, and weeds double the drain.
• The first growth stage usually wants more water than later stages, so the heavy watering is in week one.

Compost

A composter is a Carpentry build from planks and nails with a hammer. Only rotten food converts into compost; anything else just sits in storage. Right-clicking shows the compost level as a percentage, and from 10% upwards an empty sack takes 10% and becomes a compost bag, so a full composter holds about 10 bags. Each conversion also has about a 10% chance of leaving a worm inside, which is free fishing bait.

Fertiliser rules

The dose counter drops by one each time the plant advances a stage and the compost flag resets, so the safe rhythm is one application per stage, never two in a row. Pest flies are cured with a cigarette spray (water, an empty gardening spray can and five cigarettes or loose tobacco), aphids with water and rubbing alcohol in the can, mildew with milk in the can. A full can gives about 10 sprays.

A plant that reaches its harvest stage shows vegetables in the plot info. You can pick then, or wait one more stage until it is seed-bearing. Waiting costs nothing but time and is how the farm becomes self-sustaining.

• Yield scales with plant health relative to 50, so a 100-health plant gives roughly double a neglected one. Aphids and slugs cut the count, a cursed plant cannot roll the bonus yield, and Agriculture level adds a skill roll.
• Seeds return at about half a seed per vegetable, minimum one, when the plant is seed-bearing. A packet holds 5, so one good radish or tomato plant replaces its packet and then some.
• XP for a harvest is roughly half the plant's health, with a bonus for good care and a penalty for poor care, so healthy plants level you faster than many sickly ones.

Storing it

Fresh produce rots like any other food. A fridge roughly quintuples its life and a freezer stops decay, both covered on the cooking page. Vegetables can be canned at Cooking 8 or from the American Homesteading magazine, which is the real winter plan since neither fruit nor meat can go in a jar. Herbs dry for storage. Grain and fibre crops do not rot and can sit in a crate until you need them.

Indoors

Natural light feeds plant health. With the Kill Plants Outside Greenhouse sandbox option on, indoor plots slowly die unless the room name contains greenhouse. Greenhouse rooms soften the indoor penalty but do not change sowing months, and rooftop plots need the above-ground farming option enabled.

Our view: harvest half your first crop at the vegetable stage to eat, and let the rest go to seed. By the second season you will never open a seed packet again.