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The ULTIMATE Guide to Crops – Stardew Valley



Welcome to the beginning of a series of in-depth guides! For this series we’re going to be exploring each skill individually, starting with Farming! Since farming is such a large part of the game, it’ll be split into two different parts, crops and animals. I believe this should be a much more organized way to provide information to new players than what I’ve done before!

Thank you to my Avatars!
Charlie Barley – https://www.youtube.com/c/CharlieBarley
Seanie Dew – https://www.youtube.com/c/SeanieDew
Wickedy – https://www.youtube.com/c/WickedyChickady
Floydson – https://www.youtube.com/c/FloydsonYT
Leapalot – https://www.youtube.com/c/Leapalot

Link to the Crop Charts: https://twitter.com/Salmence100/status/1560360683262414848?s=20&t=y6qMb4pO85zif-rLf7aCqQ

Sections:
0:00 – Intro
1:16 – Crop Mechanics
3:38 – Spring Crops
9:05 – Summer Crops
14:50 – Fall Crops
18:16 – Special Crops

🕹️ Stream Archives: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfYxeuIkNALOBeSpVEI4ipQ
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View 49 Comments

49 Comments

  1. Salmence on

    Because I always have to pin a major correction:

    Turns out fertilizer DOES work on multi-harvest crops. Where is DOESN’T work is when you get multiple crops per harvest, like blueberries or cranberries. In this case, only one of the crop will get the fertilizer boost.

    You’d think 600 hours in-game would be enough…

  2. A Guy Named Guy on

    11:40 This moment, where Salmence was at a loss for a reason to grow radishes, inspired me to do a bit of a research-dive to prove that not only can radishes be economically viable, pretty much every lower gold-per-day crop with relatively lower growth times have a lot of money-generating potential, mostly depending on if you have tiles yet to fill on the farm.

    The gist is this: You make more money growing more crops at once, so if you can't fill a field with a bigger value crop, filling it with a smaller value one will result in a much bigger payout. If you can't fill 100 tiles with Starfruit then go for Radishes, essentially. Therefore, the use for Radishes then, is if you can't afford a bunch of Melons or Starfruit, but you can afford a lot more Radishes, they will make you more money in the long run.

    I wrote a guide on the math behind these ideas, with some graphs and calculations that prove the "why" more mathematically, but for the sake of shortening this comment (and also I think linking the guide directly will sink this comment a bit?) I'm just gonna go over the big ideas and concepts and save the guide in the first reply for those that want to check more in-depth with some visuals (the graphs help a lot in seeing how this stuff all works together, and what the GPD numbers themselves actually end up meaning in the grand scheme of things)

    And before I start, quick note: From now on I'll be shortening gold-per-day to GPD.

    Okay, so the radishes: Why bother with them? Radishes are much like crops like Parsnips, Kale, etc. where they don't have a ton of GPD, and they have a quicker growth cycles of 4-6 days compared to higher GPD crops like like Cauliflower and Starfruit. Starfruits are considered the most lucrative crop for good reason, as they have the highest GPD. However, the most important factor for generating cash through crops is noting that every tile of growing a crop effectively applies its GPD every day until it grows. Growing more Starfruit than Radish is more profitable, but if you don't have the money to completely fill your field's capacity with Starfruit due to budget constraints, Radishes can pull ahead for two reasons:

    The first reason is upfront investment into filling the field. Say you've got like, 100 tiles of farmland you're willing to tend crops on, and you've only got 2,000g to spend at the moment. Starfruit seeds are 400g, while Radishes are 40g. Therefore you can choose to either buy 5 Starfruit or 50 Radishes. Starfruit sell for 750g base quality (and since quality generally has the same distribution we can ignore its effect on price for the sake of this example), while Radishes sell for 90g per crop. Those 5 Starfruit sell for 3,750g by day 12, while the 50 Radishes sell for 4,500g by day 6. So it seems the radishes made a little bit more. But remember that these radishes grow 6 days in, and the Starfruit otherwise wouldn't be finished yet. You can then spend another 2,000g on another round of 50 Radishes to produce a second 4,500g. Subtracting the 2,000g buy-in of the Starfruit and the 4,000g buy-in of the Radishes respectively, the Starfruit earns 1,750g in 12 days, while the Radishes earned a whopping 5,000g in that same time using the same initial 2,000g starting investment. However, note that I mentioned a 100 tile field was ready to use. Only 50 of those tiles were used at once.

    This is the second way cheaper crops can pull their weight: Reinvestment.

    We'll jump back to the first 6 day harvest of Radishes with our 4,500g. Instead of buying 50 Radishes, we can instead reinvest as much as we can to fill all 100 tiles using 4,000g. After 6 days, the 100 Radishes sell for 9,000g. Adding on the leftover 500g after reinvestment, 2,000g was turned into 9,500g after 12 days using in total 100 tiles of land, a 140% increase of the ending wallet compared to the 3,750g the Starfruit route turned into. The reason the Radishes were able to produce so much more cash is due to the fact that its GPD was applied so much more often than the Starfruit.

    Tile for tile the Starfruit's far better, but if you've got the space you're pretty much always gonna make a whole lot more filling it all as much as you can. Therefore, Radishes make more money when you can't afford as many Starfruits, or other similarly high GPD and slower growing crops, instead.

  3. Kevin birdofgreen on

    I know I am a bit late to this party but I needed to add a comment to the speed grow line and agriculturist skill. For long growing crops (11 or more days) agriculturist shaves off two days of growing for free and short growth crops (the 4 day guys) grow 25% faster so 25% more gold per day. This makes wheat to beer super quick and profitable and helps make star fruit even more insane.

    If you have crap to burn to make Hyper speed-gro to pair with agriculturist, that 43% reduction in growing time makes 4-5 day crops grow in 2 days, 6-7 day crops take 3 days, 8 day crops grow in 4 days, 9-10 in 5 days, 11-12 in 6 days, and 13-14 in 7 days.

    Other random notes. You forgot cactus' for plants. Blue Jazz are also used as part of the lucky lunch which gives the most luck possible in the game. Sunflowers sell for less at jojamart than Pierre's and make roughly 3 gold per day instead of a negative amount if you get more than 10 of them to smoothe out the random seed drops.

  6. Dawn V on

    Another reason to plant tulips or even better blue jazz is they're liked by most of the villagers. Cheap gifts early.

  10. Albino on

    The intro alone has won you so many brownie points with me, I’m more than likely subscribing after this video.

  11. Mental Quorum on

    A note that rare seeds are viable with the seed maker strat if you plant them in the greenhouse or Ginger island. I normally grow my 6 to 8 rare seeds in fall, seedmaker all but 2 (one for the stardrop, and a gold to sell) and start the new growth in my greenhouse.

    I normally do a 3/8 split rare and ancient fruit dedication to start (rest being coffee) before transferring the greenhouse solely to ancient fruit.

    At this point I have a plot for repopulating my rare seeds for fall In ginger island, a plot for pineapples as my mining food of choice (eat gold, sell the rest), and everything else is star fruit or ancient fruit.

    This means I can feel good about dedicating the rest of the farm to the pretty crops and pure aesthetics rather than making money

  21. Lady_Taursu on

    You a lot of people think they can’t grow any crops during winter but you actually can that’s with winter seeds it’s literally one my money makers during winter

  27. Yifei on

    You should’ve seen my face when i got rid of my corn at the end of summer just to see it at Pierre’s store in fall.

  28. Trump Lost LOL on

    There is no need for fertilizers if you can pickle or make wine out of your crop. By the end of summer, you are supposed to have enough preserve jars for your fall crop. So, fertilizers are pretty much useless. It all depends on the number of preserve jars you have and the amount of capital you hold by the end of the first summer.

  31. Krispenchisp on

    There are certain set ups that make stuff like hops S tier especially for early and cheap money making. You just have to make your farm centric around making kegs for a while and then actually making the pale ale at the time you get it. But this with what I currently have equates to around 50000 every two days (25000 a day) bit you need a set up central to them. The trelis part sucks but overall you can make hops extremely overpowered

  33. Caio Caetano on

    Red cabbage is actually a better melon. It grows faster and it sells for more. It’s unfortunate that it can only be bought at year two and onwards, but it’s still not bad at all.

  36. Axel on

    Thanks, this helps me a lot. I wanna play Stardew Valley again after 1,5 years of not touching the game and will probably use a few mods you recommended too

  37. CosmoBPlays on

    Hahaha Nice intro! Great effect editing. And thx for the video that I also came to see about crops XD.

    Got me mesmerised, wasn't expecting that

  42. Intel_Coar on

    New to stardew here, I’m in my first winter and preparing for year two. Would it be worth planting an ancient seed with speed grow on spring 1 to get as many fruits as I can?

  43. Harry Price on

    Talking about how long it takes to get ancient fruit seeds and I'm in fall of year 2 with a full greenhouse and 60 more on the farm lol. I'm now learning I must've got mega lucky

  44. Matthew Ksiezak on

    It seems like cranberries would have low profit margins unless basic fertilizer yielded 3 ⭐️ berries each on 1st harvest and even then profit after seed expense isn’t great. Looking at the wiki the price for a basic berry with 4 harvests only makes you 88 G after cover the 240G cost of 1 seed. Some of the cranberry recipes are kinda good though. The wiki really shows cranberries are best in wine. If I’m reading preserves correctly on wiki that’s even a narrow profit margin for 1 berry.

  45. Kylie Atkins on

    Your videos have helped me so much playing this game! When I first started, I didn't even make it past spring because I was so frustrated. Thank you for making Stardew Valley fun for me again <3

  47. Ruben Sánchez Ramírez on

    It is a farming game but it kind of isn’t, in the sense that there’s a lot of things to do other than farming, and at te beginning of the game the money you can make by farming is pretty limited, since you have to pay for seeds. Farming is useful though for completing bundles and having a little bit of everything to give as gifts or for mission and quests.
    By the point farming starts to become lucrative you probably have access to farm buildings and artisan goods.

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