The new and improved Greenhouse setup!

I have a more general question. Is it still worth it to fill the Greenhouse with ancient fruit if I'm only looking to produce seeds and grow say 100 Ancient Fruit plants at the start of Spring? I recognize hops are profitable but they can only be grown for 1 season.

 

An interesting premise, however I believe you're both misunderstanding the nature of the greenhouse and, more importantly, misunderstanding how propagation of ancient seeds actually works.

First off, you aren't going to get any significant ancient fruit propagation for Y2. Not possible. Even assuming you have an ancient fruit drop in your second week (because mines won't open until the end of the first week), and assuming you plant it immediately, netting you two fruits in summer plus another two in Fall before greenhouse unlocks, netting you... let's say an average of 2 seeds per each so 8 fruits, you STILL aren't going to be able to get more than 32 ancient seeds before the end of the year, and that's assuming you don't replant anything because you won't have time for them to fully grow before spring arrives. That's not enough to get the sort of returns you're suggesting, not in the least.

So... for Y2? Nope, sorry. You're screwed either way. You simply don't have time to get the ancient seeds propagated enough to be worth it before spring actually arrives. Now Y3? Sure, absolutely. And I *DO* appreciate what you are trying to say... you can plant hundreds of ancient fruit 'out in the yard', which is the single most profitable thing to do... assuming they are planted on Spring1. But there's no possible way you could have '3.3k ish' ancient seeds by Spring1, Y2, even under optimal conditions.

Even Y3 will struggle to get that sort of propagation. Even assuming you somehow have all 116 ancient fruit fully grown by Spring 1, Y2 (spoilers: you won't, but let's nudge things in your favor anyway), you will have 16 harvests before Spring 1, Y3. So, 116 * 16 = 1856 fruit. NOT the 3.3k you were referring to. That would be a Y4 strat. However, even using the layout I provided with only 30 ancient fruit would net you 480 ancient fruit. Now, assuming you plant them on Deluxe Speed grow for one additional harvest, you're looking at 9 harvests of 480 fruits - 4320 fruit. *2310g/ea for the wine = 9,979,200g. Plus you'll still be getting another ~4m from the greenhouse for a total net of 14m for Year 2. Not too shabby.

You can probably pick up another 10-20m in Summer from the three harvests of Starfruit from the Deluxe Speed Gro since you can just buy the couple thousand seeds you'd want. Since we're talking Y3, you could also do Strawberries for Spring to grow around your Ancient Fruit. Granted, Fall is still going to be lackluster, other than your Ancient Fruit, but you can still get three harvests of Pumpkins that you can turn into Pickles to ease your processing woes without trashing your gold output significantly. You could probably hit 50M-ish without too many troubles by the time Grandfather's ghost comes back.

You won't need to fill the greenhouse for just 100 seeds. The initial layout with 30 ancient fruit can still produce more than enough to satisfy that requirement in under a month. Just stop kegging in winter, you'll have your spring harvest.

 

I actually got an ancient seed on Spring 6 Y1 in my current playthrough. Also fished up an iridium band in spring, and the first two drops from my rabbit were rabbit's feet, which were the last thing I needed for the Community Center. I think Elizabeth was blessed by the luck spirits.

(Not that your conclusion isn't correct. Just felt like bragging a bit )

And then I proceeded to waste it by leaving 31 ancient seeds in a chest and forgetting about them until after I filled the greenhouse... Many facepalms were had that day.

 

You definitely can, and although it's hard work, it's not even RNG dependent, you don't require a bug drop in the mines in early spring. Although it definitely helps things along if you do get one or two.

But whether or not you find one


Agriculturist profession in spring
+
approx. 100 quality sprinklers, or more if possible
+
800+ blueberries planted on summer 1 to get a 5th harvest
+
seed makers
+
joja repairs
=
greenhouse full of ancient seeds by mid fall and grown by mid winter.


The more sprinklers you can get, the sooner it's full. Start adding some iridium sprinklers in for fall, and cranberries to go through the seed makers too, and you can easily have 600+ seeds ready to go in the ground on Spring 1 Y2. Plant them with deluxe speed gro and they're mature on Spring 20 for ten harvests in the year. OK, it's not every tile full, but it's certainly a decent start, and the first three harvests, along with the greenhouse, can fill out most of the farm as long as you have enough sprinkler capacity by then, leaving the other 7 harvests to be turned into wine. Once everything is fully grown and you actually have something to sell, then you go to the sewer and change profession to Artisan.

It's doable; hard, because it needs so much ore, which does mean a hard mines grind for most of the year, but it's definitely doable. The sprinklers by summer were comfortably proven here by @PrincessBubblegum. It definitely opened my eyes, and I've repeated it myself on more than one occasion. I've never quite got as far as 124 sprinklers, but definitely >100, so it's not like it was just the luckiest run ever.

 

That's a lot of seed maker micro, and I think you're overestimating the number of Ancient Seeds (only a 1% drop) you can get out of that (barring cheesing the ancient seed logic and building columns designed to exploit it), but that's an interesting point.

However, that's talking about planting on the farm itself, not in the greenhouse. You can do this strat and still have the optimized greenhouse running full bore simultaneously. The claim that a greenhouse full of ancient fruit is needed to get this to work was still faulty, Specifically, the majority of the seed generation with this strat is going to be the blueberries churning through seed makers, and you're still only looking at 600+, not 3.3kish as claimed. Which, granted, is certainly nothing to sneeze at, and certainly higher than my initial estimate of simply using the greenhouse, but nowhere close to the claims in the post I was rebutting.

 

It's amazing that someone was capable of coming up with such a good optimization of the greenhouse this is great for anyone to know about! This Green house alone could easily pay all the bills!

 

Let me preface my post by reiterating that I AM NO GOOD WITH NUMBERS!!!!! But I don't understand why Garden Pots don't saturate the feet of the trees. I use mine for Cactus Fruit because with an Iridium Watering Can I have only a few places to stand and can cover them all quickly, for a yield every 5th day I think it is. This I posit on the basis of accepting that off-farm Kegs footprint and swap hassle are still better than Crystalariums per Greenhouse plot, for this exercise revolves around only the Greenhouse itself per se. I have no idea if Cactus Fruit is really the best, but definitely would like to know if my Garden Pots idea enhances the layout's optimization.

 

Several reasons, actually.

1) The post was made in 1.2 era, before garden pots existed
2) Garden pots cannot be watered by sprinklers
3) Garden Pots block movement like a Trellis does, making it all but impossible to reach significant quantities without breaking and replacing them constantly
4) If I was going to do garden pots, I'd probably put something more valuable than cactus in them. Strawberries would be the passive route, Starfruit if I wanted more profits.

It's an interesting idea, and I'll see if I can squeeze in a few extra crops that way, but they are going to be a marginal addition to the greenhouse at best.

 

I leave the particulars of optimal details (e.g. crop choice) to you, but I do think I can clarify that I had Pots in mind only for spaces directly adjacent to the trees on the margins of the field, tiles that are otherwise unused. I've attached my own layout (again, being on mobile I cannot harvest diagonally so there would normally be more Pots and fewer (if any) wild trees).