Are pumpkins or cranberries better?

[wadethebold]

I always see people use cranberries in fall, so on my year 1 farm I’m working on I was planning on buying cranberries. But I didn’t realize that the money I had wasn’t enough money for 160 cranberries. So I was doing the math and I realized that I could buy 160 pumpkins instead and it would make more money than the amount of cranberries I was able to buy. Am I missing something or did I do the math wrong. ( I used both of their base prices to see how much money they would make and yes I accounted for the other four harvests a cranberry seed gets during fall.)

 

[Magically Clueless]

I won't be able to give you the technical answer you want, but more than one cranberry can be harvested from a crop and it regrows so I think that's why many consider it more profitable. Personally, I prefer cranberries because I really like cranberries and harvesting them is very fun hahaha

 

[Ereo]

At base quality you get:

2 harvests of pumpkins for 2 seeds, so 2*320-50*2=520 G.
5 harvests of cranberries for 1 seed, but cranberries give 2 per harvest, so 75*2*5-60=690.
Plus a 10% chance to get one more per harvest, so that would put it at 765.

 

[wadethebold]

 

[wadethebold]

I won't be able to give you the technical answer you want, but more than one cranberry can be harvested from a crop and it regrows so I think that's why many consider it more profitable. Personally, I prefer cranberries because I really like cranberries and harvesting them is very fun hahaha

Yeah, the cranberry and blueberry crops are pretty satisfying to harvest lol.

 

[imnvs]

2 harvests of pumpkins for 2 seeds, so 2*320-50*2=520 G.

Ugh... no speed-gro involved? I can get 3 harvests of pumpkins easy. Crops that regrow instead of replanting are less valuable when you focus on quantity (for processing) than quality (which only matters if you're not processing). Plants that regrow have a set schedule. Plants that are replanted can have every harvest speed influenced by the speed gro.

 

[wadethebold]

Ugh... no speed-gro involved? I can get 3 harvests of pumpkins easy. Crops that regrow instead of replanting are less valuable when you focus on quantity (for processing) than quality (which only matters if you're not processing). Plants that regrow have a set schedule. Plants that are replanted can have every harvest speed influenced by the speed gro.

Exactly my point, also I fertilized every single one of my 160 pumpkins. It’s really a situational thing but I guess cranberries would be better only looking at base quality.

 

[One More Day]

Setting aside any speed gro or fertilizer considerations, and without processing anything, cranberries are actually marginally better than pumpkins at earning money across the whole season. However, that marginal benefit comes at the cost of, well, the cost, because the upfront investment for cranberries is almost two and a half times that of pumpkins. There's also the added drawback that cranberries require much more maintenance, with a harvest every five days. IMO all that extra cost and extra effort simply do not justify the fractionally better return, so if money is your thing, just stick with the pumpkins

Once you add fertilizer into the equation, pumpkins demolish cranberries, because it boosts the whole harvest of pumpkins, but only half the cranberries - the second berry will always be regular quality.

If you're thinking about processing your crops, cranberries fall apart as a proposition because their low-cost/high-volume strategy needs several times the machine capacity, without providing any meaningful improvement in profits.

TL;DR version - choose pumpkins, because cranberries suck

 

[wadethebold]

Setting aside any speed gro or fertilizer considerations, and without processing anything, cranberries are actually marginally better than pumpkins at earning money across the whole season. However, that marginal benefit comes at the cost of, well, the cost, because the upfront investment for cranberries is almost two and a half times that of pumpkins. There's also the added drawback that cranberries require much more maintenance, with a harvest every five days. IMO all that extra cost and extra effort simply do not justify the fractionally better return, so if money is your thing, just stick with the pumpkins

Once you add fertilizer into the equation, pumpkins demolish cranberries, because it boosts the whole harvest of pumpkins, but only half the cranberries - the second berry will always be regular quality.

If you're thinking about processing your crops, cranberries fall apart as a proposition because their low-cost/high-volume strategy needs several times the machine capacity, without providing any meaningful improvement in profits.

TL;DR version - choose pumpkins, because cranberries suck

Thanks, I guess I made the right choice by buying 160 pumpkins and fertilizing them. :)

 

[Rhiannon]

I like a bit of variety. My main fall crop is pumpkins. On the edges of my planting field, I plant cranberries. That way I get the joy of both!

 

[MogBeoulve]

Personally, I prefer cranberries because I really like cranberries and harvesting them is very fun hahaha

Me too, love the pop-pop-pop-pop harvesting noise.

 

[Elenna101]

Also, it's a lot easier to jar or keg all your pumpkins than it is to jar/keg all your cranberries, because you get less pumpkins than you get cranberries. And because jars and kegs increase the sell price by over double the base price, you want to process as many as you can.

 

[SnoozlyKitsune]

I can neither give you a technical answer nor the basic math but I'm a strawberry, blueberry, and cranberry (and basically, any crop that regrows) fan. I have a love and hate relationship with farming so planting crops that regrow works for me best... Plant them on the first day of the season, build junimo huts, install sprinklers, put scarecrows and voila, you can forget about them for the rest of the season. And you know, you can then spend your time on other things like fishing, mining, foraging, gossiping and flirting with the locals.

For me, there's just too much work involved with crops that need to be replanted every nth day.

 

[wadethebold]

They both have their pros and cons, I think it depends on how far you are into the game and what you like more

 

[FilthyGorilla]

The easiest way to look at it is that cranberries are only better as long as you do absolutely nothing to them.

No kegging
No jarring
No fertilizer that changes growth or quality besides regular speed gro and no agriculturist

If you do any of those pumpkins are the pumpkings

 

[chaskuchar]

i do the processing on both pumpkins and melons. melons have a better price than pumpkins on the keg. cranberries are harder to process.

 

[..?]

I always see people use cranberries in fall, so on my year 1 farm I’m working on I was planning on buying cranberries. But I didn’t realize that the money I had wasn’t enough money for 160 cranberries. So I was doing the math and I realized that I could buy 160 pumpkins instead and it would make more money than the amount of cranberries I was able to buy. Am I missing something or did I do the math wrong. ( I used both of their base prices to see how much money they would make and yes I accounted for the other four harvests a cranberry seed gets during fall.)

Now in the 1.6 update with the introduction of dehydrators there's a likelihood of cranberries being better. No matter how much fertilizer used for pumpkins you're ultimately getting 2-3 harvests with pumpkins and 5 harvests of cranberries. Cranberries is a regrowable crop and when harvested, gives multiple cranberries. On the wiki, dehydrated cranberries go for 587 or 821 with the artisan profession. The most profitable artisan product on pumpkins are pumpkin juice at 720 or 1,008 with the artisan profession. It really depends on your situation. If you run out of fruits to put into kegs, pumpkins are good filler BUT if you want to maximize profits go for dehydrated cranberries. Despite dehydrators taking up 5 of the same crop, it produces the dried product the next day. With big fields of cranberries, you can make more than pumpkin juice. Every 7 days with dehydrated cranberries you get 4,109 OR 5,747G with the artisan profession in the 7 days it takes to make pumpkin juice. The more dehydrators, the more money you'll make.

 

[Antsy]

I would mostly put pumpkins in preserve jars rather than kegs because it's faster and the value of both is quite close. I do use the dehydrator for cranberries, but remember that the dehydrator needs 5 fruits. It's a good boost in value, but less than putting the same amount of fruit into a keg or preserve jar. The dehydrator is great, though, it's given new life to crops that are valuable but not quite valuable enough to displace even more valuable crops from preserve jars and kegs. Like cranberries - I am not going to put them into preserve jars instead of pumpkins, but they are very nice to put into a dehydrator. At least until I get some rhubarb.

 

[Lew Zealand]

For me it ends up being a tradeoff between:

time spent Planting
time spent Harvesting
time spent Processing
game sounds

Things that need Harvesting too often cut into my leisure, Tailoring, snoozefishing, and interior decoration time budgets so anything needing a Harvest more than once a week is less good. Hops are the WORST but I keep one planted for rare use and it gets harvested every 3 days because: Fruit Trees are the second worst. I should really just leave the Fruit on the Tree because that's the aesthetic I like and why they're planted in the first place. But butbut that itch to Harvest a full crop is quite persistent.

Cranberries would seem to be worse for me so I don't plant them, instead going for Pumpkins on the main Farm, but Cranberries have the secret weapon: their harvest sound, especially with the new Iridium Scythe. Harvesting a full field is very satisfying experience but I still don't plant them at the Farm because:

I have a pretty big farm full of Blueberries at Ginger. I just replant Mixed Seeds there, which over time selects for a mix of Pineapples and Blueberries as they're reharvestables. And they grow all year so all you'll end up with is Moar BlooBrRrRrrzzz! Sooo many! I get my Harvest sound craving itch scratched every 4 days or so and if I wanna ignore it, I just don't go to Ginger.

So I plant a small farm of 96-192 Pumpkins 3x/season (Rhubarb and Starfruit the other 2 seasons) and process those into Kegs and Jars.

And here's the real secret:

I just sell the Blueberries as it's just too annoying to process all those Dehydrators once a day. Wayyyy too much work. Sell like 8 stacks of Blueberries once a season or so as they stack up and take too much space.

Time savings is everything.

 

[MogBeoulve]

@Lew Zealand try out the dehydrators! I made five on my last farm and they ate up ALL of my normal quality fruits and mushrooms. Not kidding. I mean, I don't grow whole stacks of blueberries, but the whole process five at once thing is AMAZING.