Acorn

Acorn

Type	Seed
Grows	Oak Tree
Season	All
Growth Time	Variable
Cart	100 to 1,000g
Sell Price	20g

The Acorn is the seed of the Oak Tree, and it reaches the farm off a branch rather than over a counter. Shaking the oaks already standing in the woods supplies all the acorns a farm needs, which makes it the cheapest planting in the game. The seed goes into bare, unhoed earth and never needs watering afterwards. Oak growth is a nightly gamble, so a planting made without Tree Fertilizer can take three weeks or far longer. The Acorn is also an ingredient in its own right, feeding a forager's snack, a knitted hat, an orange dye pot and a recipe for a special tree. A few acorns pressed into waste ground are the quiet start of a wood lot that pays for Kegs years later.

Growing

Acorns are picky about the soil they go into. The tile has to be plain ground that has never met a Hoe. Running a Hoe over the spot first makes the seed refuse to go in, which catches out anyone used to planting vegetables. Beyond the farm, any ground that could be tilled will take an Acorn as long as it is left alone.

Growth happens in five steps, and each night the planted seed either moves up a step or sits still. Outside Winter the odds of moving are about one in five. Half of all acorns finish in a little over a fortnight, and nine in ten are done inside a month of growing days. That spread is the real planning problem: two acorns planted side by side on the same night can finish a fortnight apart.

Tree Fertilizer removes the gamble. Sprinkled on the planted seed, it carries the oak up one step every single night, so the tree is full grown in five days. It keeps working through Winter, when bare acorns simply wait for Spring. The recipe arrives at Foraging level 7 and asks only for Fiber and Stone, so a stack of it costs nothing worth counting against five days instead of twenty.

Crowding is the other thing that stalls a planting. A seedling with a full-grown tree on one of the tiles touching it holds where it is, so a tight row of acorns becomes a row of permanent shrubs. Two tiles between seeds keeps every one of them moving and leaves room to walk the rows.

A late planting is worth pairing with fertiliser. An Acorn pressed in during Fall without it will usually still be a sapling when Winter arrives, and then stands untouched until Spring.

Buying

Acorns start falling once foraging experience has been earned. A mature oak shaken by hand gives one up now and then, and felling one leaves a couple more behind. Both routes cost nothing but a walk, and a single trip through Cindersap Forest usually fills a pocket.

The town's Garbage Cans turn up acorns as well, which suits an early farm with no Axe worth swinging. A Woodskip Fish Pond is the steadiest supply of all: once the population reaches nine, the pond can hand over as many as five in one morning. That turns a pond built for fish into a tree nursery.

The Traveling Cart stocks an Acorn occasionally, and it asks many times what the packet fetches in the Shipping Bin. Since the trees give them away, the cart's price only makes sense to someone who has cleared every oak off the map.

Uses

Three tree seeds craft into a Field Snack, and the Acorn is one of them, next to a Pine Cone and a Maple Seed. The recipe is unlocked by the first scrap of foraging experience, which makes it the earliest food a farm can assemble out of pure litter. It restores far more energy than the shaking that gathered it, and the odd Field Snack even turns up in the Garbage Cans ready made.

Five Acorns go into one Mystic Tree Seed, alongside five each of the Maple Seed, the Pine Cone and the Mahogany Seed. Unlocking Foraging Mastery is what puts that recipe in reach. A grown Mystic Tree takes a Tapper and gives Mystic Syrup, which the raccoon family will swap one for one for Fairy Dust, so a well-stocked acorn supply is useful in the late game as well as the early one.

At a Sewing Machine, Cloth in the feed slot with a tree seed in the spool makes the Beanie, and an Acorn serves for the spool. The same seed works the orange dye pot in Emily and Haley's house at 2 Willow Lane.

Fish Pond requests ask for two or three Acorns from time to time. Keeping a small stack in a chest saves a trip out to the forest when a pond puts in its order.

Villagers think little of a handful of seeds. The Acorn is a disliked gift almost everywhere in Pelican Town, so it belongs in the ground or in a crafting slot rather than in a wrapped box.

Crafting Acorn with the other materials below makes these items.

Item	Image	Ingredients
Field Snack		Acorn (1), Maple Seed (1), Pine Cone (1)

Notes

Plant the first acorns close to the farmhouse. Oaks planted at the far edge of a large farm are easy to forget, and the point of a wood lot is a short walk with an Axe.

Craft Tree Fertilizer before planting rather than after. A bare Acorn already part way through its stages still benefits, but five nights of guaranteed growth from the start is the whole saving.

All Seeds

Every entry in this group, with its key details.

Name	Grows	Season	Pierre
Acorn	Oak Tree	All	-
Amaranth Seeds	Amaranth	Fall	70g
Ancient Seeds	Ancient Fruit	Spring; Summer; Fall	-
Apple Sapling	Apple	Fall	4,000g
Apricot Sapling	Apricot	Spring	2,000g
Artichoke Seeds	Artichoke	Fall	30g (Year 2+)
Banana Sapling	Banana	All on Ginger Island; Summer in Stardew Valley	-
Bean Starter	Green Bean	Spring	60g
Beet Seeds	Beet	Fall	-
Blue Grass Starter	Blue Grass	Spring; Summer; Fall	-
Blueberry Seeds	Blueberry	Summer	80g
Bok Choy Seeds	Bok Choy	Fall	50g
Broccoli Seeds	Broccoli	Fall	-
Cactus Seeds	Cactus Fruit	All	-
Carrot Seeds	Carrot	Spring	-
Cauliflower Seeds	Cauliflower	Spring	80g
Cherry Sapling	Cherry	Spring	3,400g
Coffee Bean	-	Spring; Summer	-
Corn Seeds	Corn	Summer; Fall	150g
Cranberry Seeds	Cranberries	Fall	240g
Eggplant Seeds	Eggplant	Fall	20g
Fairy Seeds	Fairy Rose	Fall	200g
Fall Seeds	Blackberry, Common Mushroom, Hazelnut, or Wild Plum	Fall	-
Fiber Seeds	Fiber	All	-
Garlic Seeds	Garlic	Spring	40g (Year 2+)
Grape Starter	Grape	Fall	60g
Grass Starter	Grass	Spring; Summer; Fall	100g
Hops Starter	Hops	Summer	60g
Jazz Seeds	Blue Jazz	Spring	30g
Kale Seeds	Kale	Spring	70g
Mahogany Seed	Mahogany Tree	All	-
Mango Sapling	Mango	All on Ginger Island; Summer in Stardew Valley	-
Maple Seed	Maple Tree	All	-
Melon Seeds	Melon	Summer	80g
Mixed Flower Seeds	Varies	Spring Summer Fall	-
Mixed Seeds	Varies	Spring Summer Fall	-
Mossy Seed	Green Rain Tree	All	-
Mushroom Tree Seed	Mushroom Tree	All	-
Mystic Tree Seed	Mystic Tree	All	-
Orange Sapling	Orange	Summer	4,000g
Parsnip Seeds	Parsnip	Spring	20g
Peach Sapling	Peach	Summer	6,000g
Pepper Seeds	Hot Pepper	Summer	40g
Pine Cone	Pine Tree	All	-
Pineapple Seeds	Pineapple	All on Ginger Island; Summer in Stardew Valley	-
Pomegranate Sapling	Pomegranate	Fall	6,000g
Poppy Seeds	Poppy	Summer	100g
Potato Seeds	Potato	Spring	50g
Powdermelon Seeds	Powdermelon	Winter	-
Pumpkin Seeds	Pumpkin	Fall	100g
Qi Bean	Qi Fruit	All	-
Radish Seeds	Radish	Summer	40g
Rare Seed	Sweet Gem Berry	Fall	-
Red Cabbage Seeds	Red Cabbage	Summer	100g (Year 2+)
Rhubarb Seeds	Rhubarb	Spring	-
Rice Shoot	Unmilled Rice	Spring	40g
Spangle Seeds	Summer Spangle	Summer	50g
Spring Seeds	Wild Horseradish, Daffodil,; Leek, or Dandelion	Spring	-
Starfruit Seeds	Starfruit	Summer	-
Strawberry Seeds	Strawberry	Spring	-
Summer Seeds	Grape, Spice Berry,; or Sweet Pea	Summer	-
Summer Squash Seeds	Summer Squash	Summer	-
Sunflower Seeds	Sunflower	Summer; Fall	200g
Taro Tuber	Taro Root	All on Ginger Island; Summer in Stardew Valley	-
Tea Sapling	Tea Leaves	All	-
Tomato Seeds	Tomato	Summer	50g
Tulip Bulb	Tulip	Spring	20g
Wheat Seeds	Wheat	Summer; Fall	10g
Winter Seeds	Crocus, Crystal Fruit,; Snow Yam, or Winter Root	Winter	-
Yam Seeds	Yam	Fall	60g