Intro:
To preface, I want this to be something I can quickly refer back to at later dates for general questions so sorry if it drags on a bit, here is some general information:
1. For anyone reading this, it is a practical guide, YES, you can get higher g per day with fruit trees or hops, is that enjoyable in any way whatsoever or even worth your time at all? Not in 99% of cases. This won't really look super deep into crazy crop maximization with pots either, in general it's not that great a strategy for optimized cash and more annoying than anything.
2. This assumes kegs as we're processing high value crops and optimizing the crops themselves within that practical setting. It is always worth it to process, every machine takes far less time and effort to make much more profit than planting more crops would while being independently expandable. In some cases you will want to use dehydrators, and they're entirely more practical even into the late game, they don't deliver the max money per crop and crop tile however, so we'll stick to kegging.
3. Casking barely fits into the equation, at most you're making the equivalent of like 20 kegs worth of wine per week with casking which is a literal drop in the ocean (This is looking at casking or not casking AT ALL, the difference between af or sf in a cask is so meaningless in the grans scheme of things that I may as well not mention it)
4. SGB is not good, it never has been, still isn't, if it WAS processable it would be barely better than sf, which would make it the best crop in the game but processing basically gives like 4x profit per plant vs it's raw form which says a LOT about how bad it is.
First off, once you get to the late game your focus is in maximizing each tile and/or maximizing your time, as you can pretty much always scale up your infrastructure (machines) but can't really increase some of the base areas or the time in each day you're given. We don't care about machine efficiency per tile for the reason that they're going to be off the farm on space we wouldn't be using anyways, if you would be using it for something like crystalariums just move everything around, if you have literally maxed out all the available space with crystalariums then there is literally no reason to still be processing or even bothering with crops.
I'll lay out a pretty simple and accessible peak efficiency you can aim for. You can always go higher and at a point ditch crops entirely but for most there's a good limit where the returns don't easily justify the effort in the means getting there.
Now some quick lingo:
gi=ginger island
gh=greenhouse
dsg=deluxe speed gro (25% growth speed modifier)
hsg=hyper speed gro (33% growth speed modifier)
drs=Deluxe retaining soil (100% to stay watered- basically permanently watered)
af/sf=ancient/starfruit
agri=agriculturist perk on the skill tree
If you also haven't already noticed I have bolded the important information, you can read what's bolded and get like 80% of what's important.
The first thing to consider getting into everything is the distinction between the 3 plant-able types of soil so to speak. You have the main farm outdoor areas that are subject to season, you have the indoor areas such as the greenhouse and ginger island, and you have pots indoors which have their own limitations. For all these examples we are assuming kegging because it gives the highest per tile yield for your crops. You don't really have to care about per tile profit for machines as you can place them off farm where you have functionally limitless space from a practical standpoint.
1. Outdoors on the main farm: This is pretty straightforward, it's pretty much objectively ancient fruit all the way. It's easy, fast, and gives the most profit by a considerable margin. The only opposing argument for this is if you aren't using AF in your greenhouse/ginger island and don't have the setup for it yet in which case I would just say prep it for next year. I'd use dsg for the extra harvest, if you're using huts to harvest still do this but just for backup for the harvests you have already, the extra days bought by speed gro will just be insurance for the days when it rains and your junimos delay a harvest. The other option for this is dsg(and ideally agri paired to save you a lot of hassle) triple harvests on rhubarb in the spring, sf in the summer, pumpkins in the fall.
2. Greenhouse/Ginger island: Now, in maximizing each tile in a reasonable/practical setting there are really 2 options you have for gh/gi, ancient fruit or starfruit. Ancient fruit is the more practical of the two in harvesting but is slower to set up. Starfruit is faster to set up initially but only makes more money when optimized. It is possible to make starfruit make more money than ancient fruit, this requires either a 8 or 7 day growth cycle (so growing in 9 or 8 days of individual crop growth respectively). The former needs either a 33% or 35% growth modifier, either gotten with hsg or pairing dsg/agri. The latter needs hyper/agri for a 43% growth speed modifier.
Looking at it from a practical sense, there is 0 reason to get the annoying hsg if you aren't using agri paired with it, and pairing agri with dsg isn't super worth it for the one extra day over just dsg. So I would do dsg or hyper/agri but not really anything between. the 8 day harvest cycle barely outpaces af cash while the 7 day harvest cycle is considerably more cash while also aligning with your keg and weekly schedule, which can definitely be worth it for ease of scheduling.
3. Pots: Pots have two main limits, they cannot have ancient fruit in them and they are limited to drs if using them in any practical setting/in any useful number. This means you either have very slow growth starfruit or use pineapples (which are the best regrow able other than ancient fruit for per tile profit). The only real reason to go for this would be for maximizing tile efficiency, and for that, pineapples are better in most regards. With the iridium scythe, you can pack a shed with 167 pots instead of 137 for starfruit (as you don't need to be able to reach each to plant seeds in it, just be able to reach it with the scythe only to harvest). Starfruit with agri will still be better cash but literally takes like 4-5x the time to harvest and replant as it takes to scythe harvest the pineapple shed so it's not really worth maximizing your tile space by 5-10% when you're quintupling harvest time.
Feel free to tell me anything you think would be valuable put on here, I think I'll probably save it and copy paste it when the same question inevitably pops up
