Stardew Valley - Crops

Crops are the plants grown on the farm from seeds. Each crop belongs to a season and dies when that season ends. The Greenhouse and Ginger Island are the exceptions, and crops grow there all year. Seeds are sold at Pierre's General Store and other shops. A crop needs water every day until it is ready to harvest.

Crop Groups

Crops sorted by the season they grow in.

Overview

Crops are the reason the farm exists, and the branch is really a calendar problem rather than a gardening one. A seed belongs to a season, grows only while that season lasts, and dies on the first morning of the next one. Everything a farmer does with soil is a bet on whether a plant will finish before the weather turns, and the branch rewards the farms that place that bet well rather than the farms that plant the most.

The mechanics are simple enough to state and easy to get wrong. A tile has to be hoed before it can be fertilised or sown, both of which cost no energy once the soil is open, and it has to be watered every day until the plant is ready. An unwatered day is not fatal: the plant simply stops for a day and carries on afterwards. Growth times exclude the day of planting, so a five-day crop sown on the first of a season is picked on the sixth.

Two kinds of plant break the seasonal rule. A handful grow across more than one season and carry on without withering, and anything grown inside the greenhouse or on Ginger Island ignores the calendar completely. Those two exceptions are what turn a farm from a seasonal business into a year-round one, which is why the greenhouse is the most valuable reward in the game.

Groups

The clearest division is between plants picked once and plants that keep producing. A single-harvest crop is a lump sum, and the fields full of them are replanted every few weeks. A regrowing crop is an annuity: it costs more to start, then yields every few days until the season ends, and it usually wins over a full season even when its price per item looks poor.

Then there are the giant crops. Cauliflower, melon, pumpkin, powdermelon and the island's own fruit can each merge a three by three block into one enormous plant, which takes three swings of an axe and drops fifteen to twenty-one items. Each possible block of nine has a small chance every morning, so the only way to chase one is to plant in squares and wait.

Order

A first Spring is spent on cheap, fast crops because that is all the farm can afford. Parsnips and potatoes pay for the hoe swings, and the Egg Festival is the one shop visit that matters, because the Strawberry Seeds sold there regrow every few days and turn the back half of Spring into real money. Cauliflowers planted in squares are the other first-year gamble worth taking.

Summer is when the branch gets serious. Blueberries give several berries per picking and keep going all season, which makes them the standard summer field. Hops planted on trellises and fed into kegs are the highest income per day a second-year farm can reach. Anyone who can reach the desert should buy Starfruit Seeds, because nothing else turns into wine worth as much.

Fall is the season of regrowing fruit and of big single harvests. Cranberries behave like blueberries with a higher price, pumpkins are the giant crop worth planning for, and the Sweet Gem Berry sold by the Traveling Cart is the single most valuable thing that can be grown, with a stardrop waiting for anyone who gives one to the old man in the Secret Woods.

Winter closes the outdoor fields, and that is the point at which the greenhouse stops being a luxury. Ancient fruit planted inside it regrows every week for the rest of the save, and a greenhouse full of it is the end state of this branch.

Best

Rank crops by gold per day rather than by price. On that measure the regrowing crops win their own seasons and Ancient Fruit wins the game, because it never needs replanting and its wine is worth several times the fruit. Starfruit is the strongest single harvest, and a field of it in Summer funds everything a farm wants to build.

The honest early pick is the strawberry, because it costs little, regrows, and arrives at exactly the moment a first-year farm has nothing else. The honest late pick is Ancient Fruit in the greenhouse with the rest of the space given to kegs.

Fertiliser deserves a ranking of its own. Deluxe fertiliser is the only one that reaches iridium quality, and a crop at that grade is what makes the keg worth filling. Speed gro is the better choice late in a season, when the question is whether a plant will finish at all rather than what it will be worth. Only one fertiliser can sit on a tile, and on crops that yield several items at once it only improves the first one, which quietly makes it a poor fit for blueberries and cranberries.

Uses

The Community Center wants crops in quantity, and the Pantry's seasonal scrolls are the reason a farmer keeps one of everything grown. Cooking takes more crop products than any other category of ingredient. The dye pots and the Sewing Machine take crops too, with berries making farming trousers and the two most expensive fruits making genie trousers.

Two of the branch's achievements shape a long save. One wants fifteen of each of the twenty-eight proper crops shipped, and the other wants three hundred of a single crop, which together make a habit of shipping small amounts of everything as well as a lot of one thing.

Prices

A crop is worth three different amounts depending on what happens to it. Sold raw it earns its price and a tenth more with the Tiller profession. Put through a Preserves Jar it becomes jelly or pickles worth roughly twice the base and a little over, which is the better route for cheap vegetables. Put through a keg it becomes wine worth three times the base, or juice worth rather more than twice, and the Artisan profession adds two fifths on top of that.

The rule that falls out of those numbers is simple. Vegetables go to jars, fruit goes to kegs, and anything cheap enough that the jar's flat bonus outweighs the keg's multiplier goes to jars as well. A cask in the cellar then ages wine upwards again, which is where the largest numbers in the game come from.

Quality matters before any of that. The four quality levels change price, energy and the goodwill a gift earns, though a cooked dish and an artisan good both ignore it.

Notes

A dead crop left standing keeps its tile hoed into the new season, so clearing the field with a scythe on the first morning of a season saves a round of hoeing rather than costing one.

Wild seeds are the exception to every quality rule in this branch, because what grows from them is forage and its quality follows the foraging skill instead. A forager with the right profession can therefore grow iridium wild food, which no ordinary crop can manage without deluxe fertiliser.

All Crops

Every crop, with its season, growth time and normal-quality sell price.

Crop	Season	Growth	Price
Blue Jazz	Spring	7 days	50g
Carrot	Spring	3 days	35g
Cauliflower	Spring	12 days	175g
Garlic	Spring	4 days	60g
Green Bean	Spring	10 days	40g
Kale	Spring	6 days	110g
Parsnip	Spring	4 days	35g
Potato	Spring	6 days	80g
Rhubarb	Spring	13 days	220g
Strawberry	Spring	8 days	120g
Tulip	Spring	6 days	30g
Unmilled Rice	Spring	-	-
Ancient Fruit	Spring, Summer, Fall	28 days	550g
Tea Leaves	Spring, Summer, Fall	20 days	-
Blueberry	Summer	13 days	50g
Hops	Summer	11 days	25g
Hot Pepper	Summer	5 days	40g
Melon	Summer	12 days	250g
Poppy	Summer	7 days	140g
Radish	Summer	6 days	90g
Red Cabbage	Summer	9 days	260g
Starfruit	Summer	13 days	750g
Summer Spangle	Summer	8 days	90g
Summer Squash	Summer	6 days	-
Tomato	Summer	11 days	60g
Corn	Summer, Fall	14 days	50g
Sunflower	Summer, Fall	8 days	80g
Wheat	Summer, Fall	4 days	25g
Amaranth	Fall	7 days	150g
Artichoke	Fall	8 days	160g
Beet	Fall	6 days	100g
Bok Choy	Fall	4 days	80g
Cranberries	Fall	7 days	-
Eggplant	Fall	5 days	60g
Fairy Rose	Fall	12 days	-
Pumpkin	Fall	13 days	320g
Sweet Gem Berry	Fall	24 days	-
Yam	Fall	10 days	160g
Powdermelon	Winter	-	60g
Broccoli	-	-	-
Cactus Fruit	-	-	75g
Grape	-	-	80g
Pineapple	-	-	-
Qi Fruit	-	-	-
Taro Root	-	10 days	100g