Stardew Valley - Fruit Trees

A fruit tree grows from a sapling, needs clear ground around it, and then gives one fruit a day in its season. The fruit improves as the tree ages.

Overview

A fruit tree is the laziest money on the farm. A sapling goes into untilled ground, four weeks pass, and from then on the tree drops one fruit every day of its own season without ever being watered, fertilised or replanted. It survives Winter standing up, it keeps going for the rest of the save, and the only attention it ever asks for is somebody walking past to shake it.

The patience is the price. A sapling costs more than a season of seeds, the first harvest is a month away, and the fruit that arrives is plain. Each full year after the tree matures lifts the fruit one star, so a tree planted in the first Spring is giving silver fruit in the second year, gold in the third and iridium in the fourth. That slow climb is where the real value sits, because an iridium fruit is worth twice a plain one and the tree does nothing differently to make it.

The planting rule is the one thing that catches farms out. A sapling must sit in the middle of a clear three by three square, and while it is still growing that square has to stay clear of objects, paths and new debris. A stick that spawns overnight beside a sapling stops it growing and puts a message on the screen the next morning. Once the tree is mature the rule lapses entirely, and paths, chests and machines can be packed right up against the trunk.

Groups

Three groups fruit in the valley and two of them are bought. The Spring pair, the apricot and the cherry, are the cheapest saplings and the cheapest fruit. The Summer group is the largest: the orange, the peach and, on the island, the banana and the mango. The Fall pair, the apple and the pomegranate, closes the year, and the pomegranate shares top price in the valley with the peach.

The island pair are a different animal. Their saplings are not sold for gold at all. The Island Trader wants dragon teeth for a Banana Sapling and a basket of mussels for a Mango Sapling, and both also turn up inside golden coconuts. In the valley they fruit only in Summer, but planted on Ginger Island they fruit every day of the year.

The last group is the places rather than the trees. The Greenhouse and Ginger Island both ignore the calendar, so any tree planted in either produces daily forever and keeps its summer leaves while snow falls outside.

Order

A first-year farm should buy one sapling before it buys anything clever. Four weeks of waiting means a sapling bought in Spring fruits in Summer at the earliest, so the habit worth forming is to plant the next season's tree during this one. An apricot and a cherry planted in the first Spring are producing by the second, and the pair costs less than a single Peach Sapling.

The Greenhouse changes the order completely. Its border soil takes fruit trees, and a tree there fruits every day in every season, which is worth roughly four times what the same tree does outdoors. A farm that has just finished the Pantry should fill the greenhouse border before planting another outdoor row.

Ginger Island comes last and is the best ground of all. Space is plentiful, the trees fruit daily, and the two island saplings are already there in the form of trades. A mature run usually ends with the island orchard as its quiet background income while the fields do something more interesting.

Best

By price per tile the peach and the pomegranate win in the valley, and they cost the most to buy for exactly that reason. By price per fruit the banana wins outright, which makes the island orchard the most valuable one a farm can plant. The mango is a little behind it and feeds Leo, the island's only resident, who loves the fruit.

The cheap trees are not the poor choice they look. An Apricot Sapling costs a third of a Peach Sapling, matures in the same four weeks and climbs quality on the same schedule, so a first-year farm short of gold does better planting four cheap trees than waiting a season for one expensive one. The cherry sits in the middle and is the usual recommendation for a first orchard.

The real ranking, though, is by what the fruit is turned into rather than what it sells for. Any fruit in a keg becomes wine worth three times the fruit, and that multiplier applies to the base price before quality, which is why the dear fruits stay dear and the cheap ones stay cheap all the way through the machine.

Uses

Wine is the main answer and the Artisan profession at Farming level ten adds two fifths on top of it. A keg takes a week over one fruit, though, so a keg wall can only ever absorb a trickle. A Dehydrator takes five fruit at a time and finishes overnight, which makes it the machine that actually keeps up with an orchard, at the cost of somewhat less value from each fruit. The sensible arrangement is kegs for the expensive fruit and a dehydrator for everything the kegs cannot swallow.

Bundles want the raw fruit. The Artisan Bundle in the Pantry accepts any of the valley's five tree fruits among its options, the Fodder Bundle on the Bulletin Board wants apples, and the Enchanter's Bundle wants a pomegranate. Since the Pantry's reward is the greenhouse, and the greenhouse is where fruit trees earn most, the branch pays for its own best home.

Cooking takes a few. Apricots go into Fruit Salad, apples into Cranberry Candy, bananas into Banana Pudding and mangoes into Mango Sticky Rice. As gifts the fruits are unusually safe, since nearly every villager likes them, and four of them are loved outright: oranges by Gus, peaches by Robin, pomegranates by Elliott and mangoes by Leo.

Prices

A sapling is an investment with a known payback, and the arithmetic is kinder than it looks. An outdoor tree fruits on twenty-eight days a season, so even the cheapest tree returns its sapling price inside two or three harvest seasons, and everything after that is free. In the greenhouse the same tree fruits every day of the year and pays for itself in a single year.

Quality is the other half of the sum. Fruit tree fruit takes the Tiller bonus when sold raw, and the jump from plain to iridium doubles the price without any change in effort, so an orchard's worth rises on its own for the first three years. A farm in its fourth year is picking twice the money off the same trees it planted at the start.

Strategy

Plant a season ahead, always. The four weeks of growth are the only real cost in this branch, and a sapling bought the day its season starts wastes a whole year of fruit. Saplings grow in any season, so Winter is the perfect time to plant everything that fruits in Spring.

Leave the three by three square alone until the tree is grown, then build right up to it. Paths laid under a mature tree keep debris from ever spawning nearby again, which matters on a farm that plants new saplings beside old ones.

Use the axe deliberately. Chopping a tree down returns a sapling of the same quality as the fruit it was giving, and a higher-quality sapling grows faster: silver at twice the speed, gold at three times, iridium at five. Felling a tree the moment it would produce a silver sapling, then replanting that sapling on the spot, reaches iridium fruit well over a season sooner than simply leaving the original tree standing.

Keep the orchard off the good soil. Trees need no watering and no sprinklers, so they belong on the awkward corners, the edges of the farm and the land behind the buildings, leaving the sprinkler grid free for crops that need it.

Notes

Lightning is the branch's one hazard. A storm can burn a tree, which then produces coal instead of fruit for four days before recovering by itself. Nothing is lost permanently, and a farm with lightning rods standing takes the hit less often.

Weather otherwise has no hold on these trees. Rain, wind and sun all produce the same single fruit, which makes an orchard the most reliable income on a farm during a wet season when the fields are a mess.

Uncollected fruit waits on the branch for three days before the tree stops stacking more, so a trip away from the farm costs nothing as long as the shaking happens within that window. A tilled hoe swing under a mature tree returns its sapling the same way the axe does, which is the quiet way to move an orchard without losing it.

All Fruit

Every entry in this group, with its key details.

Name	Image	Season	Price
Apple		Fall	100g
Apricot		Spring	50g
Banana		All on Ginger Island; Summer in Stardew Valley	150g
Cherry		Spring	80g
Mango		Summer in Stardew Valley; All on Ginger Island	130g
Orange		Summer	100g
Peach		Summer	140g
Pomegranate		Fall	140g

All Fruit Trees

Every entry in this group, with its key details.

Name	Image	Season	Fruit
Apple Tree		Fall	Apple
Apricot Tree		Spring	Apricot
Banana Tree		All on Ginger Island; Summer in Stardew Valley	Banana
Cherry Tree		Spring	Cherry
Mango Tree		All on Ginger Island; Summer in Stardew Valley	Mango
Orange Tree		Summer	Orange
Peach Tree		Summer	Peach
Pomegranate Tree		Fall	Pomegranate