Profitable Plants: what to grow when

You can finish the Quality Crops Bundle in Summer Y1 if you go with Parsnips/Melons/Corn, which is faster than if you have to wait for your Pumpkins to get done, and even longer if you have to wait for Pumpkins on Quality Fertilizer instead of Deluxe Speed Gro to ensure you actually GET the five gold-star pumpkins.

I fully concede that planting parsnips is in no way economically sound, however it does help speed up bundle completion, if you care about such things.

 

OK, while I've never played this on iOS (I don't have an iPhone), I'd be extremely surprised if the bundles are different on the iOS version. I suspect your memory has betrayed you, otherwise many people would have mentioned the discrepancy and there would have been major edit wars over it on the official wiki. The wikia is wrong, although I'm not going to make an account just to change it.

If you use Deluxe Speed Gro then the quality ratios will be the same as unfertilized soil. Farming level will be much higher than it was in Spring. If you're not actually at 10 then you'll certainly be getting close to it, so 30 will be plenty to get 5x gold pumpkins without even Basic Fertilizer, and you'll need to wait that time for a pumpkin for the Fall Crops Bundle anyway, so it doesn't delay the main prize of finishing the Pantry for the greenhouse. The reward for the Quality Bundle is only a single Preserves Jar, so IMO it's not exactly worth so much inconvenience just to rush it.


In Fall I'd simply spam Pumpkins because the start up cost is so much lower, and the required processing capacity is a fraction of that for cranberries while only losing a few percent on income at the end of the month. If kegging then cranberries need about five or six times as many kegs as pumpkins for an equivalent number of plots, and if using jars then cranberries require about three times as many jars, for what, maybe 5% extra? Even if you're not on a touchscreen device, it's hard to justify the extra effort for cranberries, especially going into winter where preserving tilled soil isn't an option.

 

You know what it was, was that I forgot about it by Summer and sold too many of my gold melons, then failed to yield enough gold corn ('cause I grew so little) so still couldn't complete the bundle until Summer of year 2 with the melons. Now I remember.

I couldn't stand my memory gap so burned through completing the Spring Foraging bundle on a throw-away playthrough just now purely to make the Pantry bundles visible and obtain the attached screenshot *lol*

That is exactly the type of calculus that itched at the back of my mind. Math is not a strong suit of mine (to put it mildly) so without an inordinate amount of grinding and number-crunching I couldn't explain myself fully versus the standard recommendations, but I think you've said it well. Thanks

 

More than 5%. Let's do some math, shall we?

Pumpkins can be harvested twice in a season. In the first year, it's unreasonable to expect any significant percentage to use Deluxe Speed Gro, so you get two harvests per season. Pickled Pumpkin go for 690g/ea or 966 if you have Farming 10 with Artisan. So that's 1,380g/season/square or 1,932g/season/square with Artisan. Subtract 200g for the two seeds, and you're looking at 1,180g, or 1,732g with Artisan.

Cranberries, on the other hand, can be harvested five times, for two berries each, for a total of ten berries per plant per season. At 200g/ea for Preserves, or 280g/ea with Artisan, you're looking at an even 2,000 or 2,800g with Artisan. Subtract the cost of 240g, and you're looking at 1,760 or 2,560 with Artisan in profit for the season.

So you're looking at around a 30% loss by going with Pumpkins instead of Cranberries.

Having said that, you are perfectly valid for pointing out how many more jars it would require. You only need around one Jar per five or six Pumpkins, while you'd need roughly 1:1 ratio for Cranberries.

 

I have concluded that my preferred rubric to evaluate plants on mobile (in particular, my tiny iPod) is earnings per unit of time.

Twice I timed swapping my Shed of 61 Kegs and clocked in at almost exactly 1 hour, an average of 1 second per swap. Harvesting is substantially slower, perhaps ~1.5 seconds, even strategically placing myself several plants away at a time to minimize walking. To this must be added any transit time between fields and Kegs (as well as to and from fields).

I timed most of the game's top Keg earners, only to find that all take 6 days; the exceptions were coffee at 1.5 hours, beer at 1 day, ale at 1.5 days, and 3 days for eggplant, red cabbage, bok choy, amaranth, and beet (of those I tested—I didn't track Jars because cauliflower seems like such a clear winner).

For Spring, strawberries win in direct cost-earnings analysis but have double harvest and Keg times vs caulifower while monopolizing double the Kegs thereby also doubling swap times twice over, effectively quadrupling Keg maintenance time, together more than sextupling strawberries' required efforts. At just 1 Shed's worth (7.5 Quality Sprinklers), strawberries command an extra 4.5 hours to harvest and an extra 6 hours to Keg for a total of 10.5 extra hours and a grand total of 13 hours. That's well over half a 20-hour in-game day. In practice, really it's close to the full day since it effectively constrains what else can be accomplished given the metrics employed are fulfilled only by the most intense possible activity directly applicable to their demands.

At 6 days to Keg, 6 strawberry harvests occupy a Keg for 36 days, more than 1/4 beyond a full season, versus cauliflower's 12 days, well less than 1/2 a season. This means nearly 17% of strawberries' potential fails to be captured within a season, dragging their total gross down to 2,515, while cauliflower more than doubles its to 2,640 at the cost of doubled field and Keg footprint and harvest/swap times. For a Shed's worth of 61 cauliflower per 28 day season's worth of Keg time, cauliflower nets 175,440 from a 122 plot and 61 Keg (183 total) footprint with just over 3 hours' harvest time and 2 hours' Keg swap (5 total) for a rate of 35,088 per hour or 192 per hour per plot versus strawberries' 153,415 season net (22,265 less already) from a 61 plot and 152 Keg (213 total) footprint with 8 hours' harvest and 6 hours' Keg swap (14 total) for a rate of 10,958 per hour but a paltry 51.44 per hour per plot, making cauliflower nearly 3 & 3/4 times as cost-effective for me per unit of time on my tiny touchscreen.

Over multiple seasons, other candidates must compete for Keg time/footprint. This makes the advantage to heavy hitters even more potent. I still haven't encountered Ancient Fruit, so Starfruit, melon, and pumpkin still lead for kegging while cauliflower rules Jars.

This took me hours upon hours to derive and calculate (I am not being modest to claim math is not my strong suit). This message represents about all the math my brain can muster, at least for now.

Writing this I just am remembering cauliflower is Jars not Kegs, but that means it is even better if you dedicate more plots to it since it's faster than Kegs, all the more compelling over strawberries given it is the best to Jar of anything whatsoever (except Ancient Fruit?) whereas strawberries would later tie up Kegs that could be working on pumpkin, melon, or starfruit that fetch double the price, again for less harvest, plot, and swap outlay. Annual priorities for your fermentation fleet balancing time and footprint with profit against other priorities like mining and animal issues if you choose to raise any would take a whole lot more figuring than I'm prepared to attempt right now, let alone how it all parses out for a playthrough. I will say year 2 will still likely be different than year 3+ given it seems like you'd still be getting your fleet up to full speed. This message I just wanted to deal with once it is, in a way that is adaptable to be whatever proportion of the game one wants. I hope it at least is, pardon the pun, food for thought folks find worthwhile. Remember, this is all very different than Shneeky's original post unconstrained by a tiny touchscreen. Please forgive me if you feel I have polluted the thread despite the OP's perhaps inadvertently broad title.

Ultimately, this message is just a rough proof-of-concept and I invite embellishments upon it, particularly including total cost inputs vis a vis Speed-Grow and how that impacts earn rate—perhaps Speed-Grow is fiscally counterproductive under touch constraints. Fertilizer proper I consider mostly so given I plan to ferment virtually everything yet produce quality doesn't impact final ferment prices…

 

I'm sure there is a reason and I love the Thread but in spring 2+ You only applied 4 harvest for potatoes. Deluxe Speed grow allows for 6 harvest not 4. This means 1816.8 profit going with your math. Coffee is a 2 season crop however in your math you only included 1 seasons worth of growth. Also it is true using Deluxe speed grow on coffee doesn't yield extra between harvest however it will give you 2 extra harvest in spring because of the shorted growth rate to fully growth from 10 to 7 days. That is 14 from summer 2+ and 11 for spring 2+ for a total of 25. That is 100 for both. Now I know you were trying to show only the summer months grow profits but for multi seasonal crops you have to include the extra profits somewhere. That makes 20 coffee cups for 3000 or 1260 for spring and 1665.

Also no one should be growing based on "Best profit" Most times these don't take into count processing times. At end game it is true that you can have enough kegs to process your fields of crops what I like to call the Infinite Processing Argument. For reg season a Keg will only process 5 wine max. How ever a Preserve Jar can Process 14 Jellies. Using the Strawberries as an example wine in 1 keg will only net 2,515 each season. Preserver Jars will net you 5,684. Using "crappy" Coffee assuming you only process coffee on non harvest days will net you 18,900 per season or 37,800 for both Spring and Summer. This is because Keg only take 2 hours to process. One keg can process 126 coffee if you only process every other day. If you are doing Multiplayer you can take turns making coffee and get 252 per keg for double profits. You have to take into account all things when deciding on profits per crops which is why people show profits for every processing method and for selling raw crops.

 

In the very first post, Shneekey explicitly said that this was an objective mathematical measurement of pure profitability of each crop, on a "per plot" basis, not a "per keg/day" or "per jar/day" comparison. By implication, it therefore assumes sufficient keg or jar capacity for your processing needs. He also made clear that it is not a subjective guide to the "best" crop, which will depend upon your playstyle, and is ultimately a matter of opinion.


FWIW, in Spring Year 2 I'd make Rhubarb Wine, because three harvests of that, going into kegs, is going to be the best money for effort. I'd expect to be over a thousand kegs by the end of the month, either enough or at least nearly enough to process Rhubarb, with more continuing to come through. Managing Coffee into kegs every 2 hours is going to suck balls, in terms of playability, because you can only empty and refill about 150 kegs in that two hour cycle, which caps your earnings, whereas you can do literally thousands in a week-long cycle. Coffee will also suck in terms of making money, compared to the big hitters, because you can't plant and harvest enough of it to compensate for its puny value. And Strawberries are out for Year 2 because you can't buy them early enough. Even if you could get seeds for them on the first day of Spring, Strawberries also have the disadvantage of needing twice as many kegs. By Year 3+, if I actually run the farm that long, I'd expect to be planting Ancient Fruit at the start of Spring anyway, so Strawberries are a Year 1 only crop as far as I'm concerned

Yeah, obviously I was assuming Deluxe Speed Gro by Fall, in which case I'm probably not too far out with saying about 5%. I know it's not quite within the original remit you gave the thread, which had year one as raw sales only, with the Sweet Gem Berry sneaking a dodgy win under the very specific rules. But if making the most money is your playstyle, which is also what this thread is about, I don't think it's asking too much to have repaired the bus in time to go to Oasis by Summer 25 and buy DSG for your Pumpkins. In fact I like to get there the week before and get 150-ish Starfruit.

And I don't think it's too much to ask to have a decent number of kegs online by Fall either, with many more coming available through the winter. And unless you get into Ancient Fruit very fast, I think Fall of Year 2 should be exactly the same as Year 1, with Cranberries still the lesser choice, because of all that processing for so little benefit. It's why Starfruit is preferable to Hops in Summer, for me at least; the tiny extra amount is just not worth the huge daily grind of Hops. So anyway, back to Fall, technically, going Pumpkins sacrifices a small amount of profit vs. Cranberries, but it only takes a fraction of the effort if you're trying hard and get DSG on them, leaving much more time for resource acquisition for more kegs, and also keeps keg space available to continue processing whatever Hops were grown in that first summer, making it my subjective "best" crop for Fall. But yes, this then diverges slightly from the original point of this thread, which has clearly identifiable, objectively measured winners.

 

Ok for one I would point out I was not saying to grow anything in my post just pointing out why people like looking at the whole pics. The post from the OP is about over all season profitability which is flawed if you don't take into account the time for production factor.

SO 150 every 2 hours...that is 18,900 coffee every other day for a total of 529,200 coffee for 79,380,000 for spring and summer. This assumes single player non modded as modded you can use the Automate mod. However you can only grow enough coffee in summer in spring assume 3000 plots are used 60,000 coffee cups for 9,000,000 Gold for both seasons assuming you don't use your green house or indoor Garden Pots.

Let look at Rhubarb then. 3000 plots for 3 harvest makes 9,000 total Rhubarb. 1k Kegs can only process 5k wines in a season assuming you sleep right. That is 4,615,000 gold for Spring. You can use 643 Jars to make 9,000 Jelly in Spring. That is 6,174,000 gold. That is why People use the Infinite Argument for kegs. They say well I can just make as many as I need to process all the crops and sure you can do that but that doesn't take away the flaw in Wine making which is it take longer and on a reg basis you will make more money from jelly in a season then wine.

If you are going to show profitability then show it for each method that can come out of the crop not just the highest net profit item because Profitability include process time. This would allow players to look at the thread and choose what to grow and which method you process based on all the facts. If it was stated like hey wine making kegs can only make 5 wines a season and then show the profits for those 5. This lets the player know that if they want to max profits they will need more kegs to make that profit and then do the same for Jars.

 

No, it really isn't flawed at all. The OP is spot on, and process time literally doesn't matter.

The reason for the infinite processing assumption is that, no matter what you grow, you can make enough artisan equipment to process it all. Resources to craft artisan equipment are unlimited, and there is a vast amount of space in SDV to place them, eg tunnel, quarry, desert, forest and so on. On the other hand, there is a very definite cap on the amount you can grow, because your farm and greenhouse have a finite size. The space for processing is so much larger than the space for growing that, for all intents and purposes, it can be considered infinite.

So, with no restriction on the quantity which can be processed, if one wine makes more money than one jelly, you make wine. The number of wines an individual keg is able to make within any given timeframe (week, month, year) is irrelevant. If you put all your crops into wine (because you have infinite capacity) then you can't grow more crops to put into jars for extra jellies, because all your available crops are already going into wines.

Your calculations are irrelevant. Taking Rhubarb again, the standard farm will support the growing of a theoretical maximum of approximately 10,000 Rhubarb in Spring. One Rhubarb wine sells for more than one Rhubarb jelly, therefore 10,000 Rhubarb wine will sell for more than 10,000 Rhubarb jelly. OK, to process it all, you need about 2,000 kegs compared to only about 1,000 Jars, but you can't then say "But what if I make 2,000 Jars?", because you can't magic more Rhubarb into existence to fill those Jars.

 

Time in the day remains a potential limiting factor (even for those not, like myself, on a touchscreen), does it not, especially if dealing in the thousands of swaps daily, some as often as every 1.5 hours (e.g. coffee), and if as far-flung as mines and fields, even if you could swap by running past on horseback? I find infinite processing valid an assumption to calibrate how much of what to grow whether or not money is my objective, but infinite processing still doesn't confer infinite processing expediency. It seems to me that trellis crops' blocking traversal could also introduce additional constraints…

I can accept the intellectual exercise of infinite processing capacity for its conclusions as bases for further deliberations that do take more into account for a separate goal not dictated by price, so I'm not trying to shoot that down or anything, I just encourage you not to stop your thought process at price since even with that as the sole goal, available means of achieving it may alter its possibilities.

 

I think people have been reading more into this thread than was originally intended. Permit me to clarify:

This thread is *NOT* a cost/benefits analysis for optimizing cash per season. It can be used as a starting point and a foundation for such an analysis, but is not, in and of itself, one. There are many variables which were defined from the outset which may not be realistic depending on personal play style or platform.

This is a thread that was designed to see how much profit you can wring out on a per crop per square basis. Which isn't the same thing. It can be used as a general guideline, however ultimately it isn't a min/max guide, nor is it intended to suggest what the 'best' planting methodology is. It was a purely mathematical number-crunching exercise designed to see how far you could push the crops on an individual basis. That's it.

I am working on an improved version of my 'first season build order' thread, which has a somewhat more realistic expectation of what you have available for planting and harvesting, taking into consideration both time and stamina, and all other environmental variables. But it is sadly out of date. I have since discovered many new strategies after that thread was posted, in no small part due to discussion within that thread. This will be closer to what some people are probably looking for. But this is not that, and you should not mistake it for that. There are many assumptions built into the calculations of the thread that explicitly do not make sense when you try to take it out of the context of 'how can I push crops to their individual max' and into the context of 'what should I plant per season'.

 

Infinite supplies?? You have to tap Oak trees to get the Oak Resin...I mean you can just buy the ingredients for jars mind you that would be expensive. Assuming the 40 tree set up it would take over 2 game years to get 2k kegs worth of Resin.

 

Yeah, obviously you're going to have way more than 40 trees tapped. Even on the farm you can easily fit twice that quite early on, without impinging on the space you're likely to use for growing. If you're good about picking up acorns that fall, and plant oaks outside the farm, another 100+ is pretty easy to do. Another good reason IMO, to have crops that require as little attention as possible, so you can spend as much time as possible getting all the ore (and coal) you require for tappers and kegs, even if it sacrifices a few % of income.

 

Ok first in order to get your kegs in 5 days your going to have to sleep before 5 pm. That leaves about enough time to process 1,650 kegs each day. You could stagger them to get more done but there is no way you are doing 2k kegs in one day and still processing in 5 days. That means you will be taking the full 7 days. The space needed assuming you use a 10 by 10 area would be 900 plots. You could reduce this as low as 144 depending on your planting method but that isn't a little loss. 100 tree also take time to grow. Assuming you plant all of them at once that is up 46 days for them all to grow mind you that would be only like 1-2 % but means not full producing resin for 46 days. Most people plan out the tree are and plant as they get them. But I am looking at these facts and it hit me.

https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Keg_Productivity

https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Preserves_Jar_Productivity

No Matter how many Kegs you get the flaw is still there. Check the charts in the links. 95% of all items that can be processed in both will give you more gold per day processing in Jars. Yes you can process 9k crops in one season with 2k kegs. How ever Jars will be done in 9 days and on to precessing what ever you decided to grow in the green house.

Also Note: Check out the Productivity of Coffee and wild honey...hehe!