I havent seen alot of talk about orchards so I figured I'd look into them. Ignoring the large up front cost for a moment lets look at how big an orchard we can get and how productive it would be. On the vanilla farm the largest single rectangle of trees you could get would be 10x20= 200 trees. However, that still leaves alot of farmland left over, so I figured I could get to 300, 100 for each season which is a nice round number. You should still have plenty of room for your other buildings. Each season has 2 trees, but as they dont produce the same valued crops, we'll use the best tree in each season: cherry, peach, and pomegranate. Assuming each tree is grown and producing normal quality crops heres the math Cherry= 80g/tree/day * 100 trees * 28 days/season = 224,000g/season Peach= 140/tree/day * 100 trees * 28 days/season = 392,000g/season Pomegranate= 140/tree/day * 100 trees * 28 days/season = 392,000g/season Total= 1,008,000g/year Noticing peach/pom are equal and vastly superior to cherry I wondered what result would come from axing cherrys and just doing peach and/or pom Peach= 140/tree/day * 150 trees * 28 days/season = 588,000g/season Pom= 140/tree/day * 150 trees * 28 days/season = 588,000g/season Total= 1,176,000g/year By ignoring cherrys we increase or gold gain by more than 10%, which aint bad. Also, you could do any split of peach/pom, the math is the same. I havent factored in crop quality or processing because those numbers would cancel each other out in efficency talks but in final gold output if you kegged all your fruit would be 3,528,000g/year, which is near what a greenhouse of ancient fruit will get you when wined. I'm not completly certain but I think that after the trees are matured you could, if the thick tree canopy doesnt bother you, plant nearly as many crops as before. Now lets return to that massive up front cost to plant this orchard. How bad is it? The peach/pom orchard will cost 6000g/tree * 300 trees = 1,800,000g which is around a season and a half's production per tree to pay for itself before accounting for processing, and after processing each tree will pay for itself in less than a season whether you keg or jar it. So there you have it. Do these numbers make you reconsider orchards?
As trees can be struck by lightning, take up farmland and are annoyingly blocking the sight if you're not standing behind them... Not for me x.x Iridium quality fruit isnt bad for profit, but to make money other stuff is more worthwhile then caring for trees for 4 years+ :/ at least for my personal playstyle x.x I still keep a small tiny orchard of 18 trees in the greenhouse tho~
Let's see. You need 7/4 kegs per exterior tree to process everything which puts you at 525 kegs. Add in the 210 kegs needed for the 30 trees you can place in the greenhouse puts you to 735 kegs. Throw in the 184 kegs for the 78 hops and 28 ancient fruit you can also fit in the greenhouse brings you to 919 kegs. At 135 kegs per barn that's 6.8 barns required to hold all of them. That would likely cut into your available space for trees. You would likely have to put some of the kegs outside around the trees in order to have sufficient space and cut down the required number of barns.
Even if making an orchard sounds nice the money you could make if you make all the fruit into wine we'd only get 4.939.200g/year... If we fill up the Greenhouse just with Ancient Fruit we end up with 4.287.360g/year - and that is only 116 plants i.e. only 116 kegs needed, which in return isn't even one barn full of kegs and leaves you more space for something else... :/ And that's not even the best you can get out of the greenhouse since hops is way better (even though way more work) then Ancient Fruit x.x Im considering getting a few fruit trees for decoration purposes when im finally starting to redesign my farm for style reasons and not for practical get around tho, but not more then a couple of trees.... and definitly not close to the numbers you'd thought of xD
Also keep in mind that trees outside of the Greenhouse only produce during their season, so Peaches only grow in the Summer, Pomegranates only grow in the Fall. On the one hand, this means that if you have a multi-seasonal orchard, the same kegs can be re-used for each successive season. The downside is that they take up space all year yet only produce for one season. In short, large orchards are a trap. Plant your 30 trees in your greenhouse, sure, because those are going to be your single most profitable item since they produce year-round. But trees outside? Nah, takes up too much room for something that only produces one season out of the year. I'm curious about your layout and how you got 78 hops, I only ended up with like 75. Could you post pics?
Just managed to squeeze in the barns without dipping below 300 trees! On the planner I got 300 trees and the 7 keg barns, with enough leftover space for a coop, animal barn, slime hutch, machine shed and a few other structures =p
I don't have a current game with the Greenhouse fully laid out at the moment, but the layout is that shown in the planner here. You can get another 3 hops in if you are willing to lift and replace three of the sprinklers each time you harvest. edit:On further checks, it appears the planner glitched and was counting a few trellis that didn't exist. On redoing the layout here the correct number of Hops that fit in a walkable layout is 76, with 28 Ancient Fruit fillers. You can still get three more Hops planted if you are willing to lift and replace three of the sprinklers each time you harvest for a total of 79 Hops.
Thank you for sharing, it really looks quite interesting. I'm not one for breaking and replacing sprinklers, so I guess I'll have to settle for marginally less profits. In fact, I may well just shrug off and set up 74 hops for an even 30 ancient fruit so I can exactly fill up my aging casks.
You only need, (125/4)/2=15.625= 16 Ancient Fruits to fully fill the 125 Casks that can be placed in the Cellar, as it takes two seasons to fully age. If willing to sacrifice a bit of profit while filling the Cellar, that would allow you to use 12 of the filler spaces for Coffee, giving 12 cups of Coffee every 10 days,
Oh, hey... you got an idea. However, coffee is actually a pretty lousy profit-point. Oh, I have an idea. What about using pure Starfruit as the filler. Because Starfruit has a two-week growth time, you need half as many casks to age them, meaning you could have 32 starfruit slots fully aged. This might actually put it above Ancient Fruit since you can only age 16 ancient fruit, the extra profits from the aging may well put it over the edge, they're already neck-and-neck as it is.
Assuming you plan for them, you can fit a good number of fruit trees outside without them impacting your space too much. Most of us would have 2 tile wide paths for horse access, so fruit trees on either side of the vertical paths cover minimal land which you would use for other purposes. If they are in a location where I don't want to cut between I tend to fill the spaces with beehives. I personally use them on the horizontal paths too for aesthetics, but that does cause issues if you wanted to plant crops north of the tree line. Uses fairly minimal space for a good number of trees, beehives, and makes even a fairly gridlike farm look so much less angular. I think I may have replaced the farm with the clearest example (restart addiction) but some examples: http://upload.farm/1BgpZ0 has a horizontal lane of trees in front of the house, and behind the greenhouse both of which work without covering anything important. http://upload.farm/1BElFi only has two trees planted, but you can see the cobblestone next to the main path planning the spacing for them around the entire farm.
