Stardew Valley - Summer Crops

Summer crops are planted and harvested in summer. They die when fall begins.

Overview

Summer is when the fields stop being an apprenticeship and start being a business. Eleven plants belong to the month alone, and they are the first group in the year whose prices are large enough to pay for buildings rather than for seeds. A single tile of the best of them earns more over the month than a whole first-Spring field managed, which is why most saves point their biggest hoeing session at the first morning of Summer.

The branch divides sharply by who stocks it. Pierre carries the everyday half: melon, tomato, pepper, radish, poppy and the Summer Spangle, with Red Cabbage joining the shelf from a second year. The two plants that make the real money are bought elsewhere. Starfruit seeds come from the Oasis out in the desert, and hops starters, though cheap at the counter, only matter to a farm that owns kegs. Summer squash sits outside the shops entirely, dug from seed spots and traded from the raccoon family, and only between the last week of Spring and the twentieth of Summer.

Three fixed days shape the month. The potluck on the eleventh is judged on the quality and value of whatever goes into the pot, so a gold-grade melon walked down to the beach is worth more there than in the shipping bin. A fishing contest fills the twentieth and twenty-first, and the month closes with the jellies on the twenty-eighth. In a first year the ground also shifts on the third, and the railroad opens.

Groups

Five of the eleven are picked once. Melon and Red Cabbage are the heavyweights, radish and poppy the middle, and the Summer Spangle the ornament. Melon is among the few plants that can turn nine tiles into one giant crop, so a melon field goes in as squares rather than rows.

Five keep producing, and they are the backbone of the season. Blueberries take thirteen days, then hand over three berries every four days, which is the highest yield per picking anywhere in the branch. Tomatoes fruit every four days, peppers and squash every three, and hops every single day once mature. A hops trellis planted on the first morning can be picked seventeen times before the frost, and nothing else in the game produces that often.

The eleventh plant is starfruit, and it belongs in a group of its own. Thirteen days of growth, a price beaten only by one autumn berry, and seeds that cost four hundred gold each make it the one crop in the valley where the seed is a genuine investment.

The two flowers are grown for the hives. A poppy close enough to a Bee House turns plain honey into the most valuable honey any flower produces, and the Summer Spangle is close behind, so the row beside the hives earns far more than the row beside the bin.

Order

Everything hinges on the first morning. Hops, blueberries, tomatoes and starfruit all pay by the number of harvests they fit into the month, and each day of delay removes one. A farm that spends the first of Summer hoeing and sowing has effectively bought a second field for free.

The desert trip comes next, and it is worth making early. Four hundred gold a seed is daunting in a first Summer, and a dozen starfruit are still the fastest route to the money a greenhouse, a barn or a bus-load of further seeds needs. Anything left over buys another round, and the crop pays for itself twice inside the month.

The middle of the month belongs to the short regrowers. Peppers mature in five days and squash in six, so either can be sown as late as the third week and still pay. Radish at six days and Red Cabbage at nine are the sensible fillers for a tile freed up by a melon.

Kegs decide when hops become worthwhile. Twenty-five gold a flower is poor money, and the same flower fermented is worth twelve times that, so the hops trellis is planted by a farm that has already built the kegs and left idle by one that has not.

Best

Counted in plain gold per day, before any fertiliser or profession, starfruit leads at nearly twenty-seven, blueberries follow at about twenty-one, and Red Cabbage sits near eighteen. Melon reaches roughly fourteen, Summer Squash a little over thirteen, hops about thirteen and a half, peppers close to eleven, and tomato, radish, poppy and the spangle fill in below that.

Those figures understate two of them. Hops exist to be brewed, and a keg of them comes back as Pale Ale in less than two days, which makes a hops trellis the highest income per tile a second-year farm can build. Starfruit exists to be aged: the fruit alone is the second most valuable thing grown in the valley, its wine is worth three times that, and a cask in the cellar lifts it further still. A cellar full of starfruit wine is where most of the gold in a long save actually comes from.

Blueberries are the honest pick for a farm without machines. Three berries a picking, four pickings a month, and seeds at eighty gold means the field pays well whatever else the farm has built, and the harvest is big enough to keep jars busy as well.

The flowers are last on gold and should not be judged on it. A poppy row beside eight bee houses quietly out-earns a poppy row sold raw by a wide margin.

Uses

The Pantry's Summer scroll wants a tomato, a Hot Pepper, a blueberry and a melon, and the Junimos' quality scroll takes five gold-grade melons. A Red Cabbage closes the dye scroll on the Bulletin Board, a poppy goes into the chef's scroll, and a remixed save may ask for blueberries, starfruit or Summer Squash instead, so the first good example of each is worth holding back.

The kitchen takes more from this branch than from any other. The tomato alone is behind pizza, spaghetti, bruschetta, Fish Stew, Shrimp Cocktail, Eggplant Parmesan, Vegetable Medley and the ravioli that shrugs off monster curses. A pepper and a piece of cheese make Pepper Poppers, which raise farming and walking speed, and a pepper with an eel makes the dish miners take down for luck. Red cabbage makes coleslaw, a Fish Taco and the Red Plate that lifts maximum energy, and a radish goes into the same plate and into a salad of its own. Melon and blueberry together make a Fruit Salad, melon and sugar make a Pink Cake, and blueberries make a tart. A poppy becomes a muffin.

Two plants reach outside the kitchen. Nine starfruit, a pile of stone and a stack of fibre build a Junimo hut, which is the only building that harvests a field by itself. Hops go nowhere except a keg, and that is the point of them.

Prices

The season rewards machines more sharply than any other. A cheap vegetable gains most from a Preserves Jar, where the bonus is a flat addition rather than a multiple, so radishes, tomatoes and squash belong in jars. Fruit belongs in kegs, where wine is three times the raw price, and that covers blueberry, pepper, melon and starfruit alike.

Hops are the exception that breaks the pattern, because Pale Ale is worth twelve times the flower and brews faster than wine. A farm with limited keg space fills it with hops first and with fruit afterwards.

Strategy

Plant to the machines rather than to the acre. Ten kegs can swallow a modest hops trellis and nothing more, so a farm with ten kegs plants ten hops and gives the rest of the field to whatever sells best raw. Produce waiting in a chest for a machine that is already busy earns nothing while it waits.

Water the field before the twentieth. Rain is common in Summer, but the longest crops cannot afford a dry morning when a picking hangs on a single day, and sprinklers bought with the first starfruit money remove the problem for the rest of the save.

Keep the potluck in mind on the tenth. The pot is judged on quality and value together, cooked and inedible items are refused outright, and the best thing to carry down is a gold-grade melon or starfruit rather than anything from the kitchen.

Save seeds rather than buying them twice. A Seed Maker fed one starfruit returns more Starfruit Seeds than the Oasis would sell for the same gold, which is how a farm escapes the desert trip from a second Summer onwards.

Notes

Poppies are hated by almost everyone in the valley, and Penny is the only person pleased to receive one, which makes them the one flower never to hand over as a present.

Hops are disliked more strongly still by Leo and Penny, and merely tolerated by everybody else, so the trellis is for the kegs and not for the gift log.

Lewis and Shane both love a Hot Pepper, Penny loves a melon, and Caroline loves a Summer Spangle, which covers three birthdays in the month for the price of a few tiles.

One starfruit can be bought at the potluck booth each year for three thousand gold, which is roughly four times what the fruit fetches, so the stall is a curiosity rather than a supply line.

Red cabbage can be found in the Skull Cavern and on the travelling cart from a first year, which is the only way to meet the plant before Pierre stocks the seeds.

All Summer Crops

Each of these crops with its season, growth time and normal-quality sell price.

Crop	Season	Growth	Price
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