thatOneFarmer011
Greenhorn
I need to know the most profitable crops for each season. Can anyone help?
Best Crops per season
- Thread starter thatOneFarmer011
- Start date
HaleyRocks
Farmer
Cauliflower and Strawberries in Spring?
Melon and Blueberries in Summer?
Pumpkin and Cranberries in Autumn?
Crystal Fruit and Powdermelon in Winter (crystal fruit is from foraged plants, but you can turn them into seed packs, or put some of the foraged plants into your seedmaker alternatively and powdermelon can be found in artifact spots or other sources, in the form of seed sack)?
Starfruit and Ancientfruit for Greenhouse and Ginger Island farm.
Melon and Blueberries in Summer?
Pumpkin and Cranberries in Autumn?
Crystal Fruit and Powdermelon in Winter (crystal fruit is from foraged plants, but you can turn them into seed packs, or put some of the foraged plants into your seedmaker alternatively and powdermelon can be found in artifact spots or other sources, in the form of seed sack)?
Starfruit and Ancientfruit for Greenhouse and Ginger Island farm.
chemster
Farmhand
These are all excellent suggestions. I have a question, though: what do you mean by "most profitable". Do you plan to be putting them all in kegs/preserves jars/dehydrator, or selling them directly? Do you have Tiller, and if so did you take Artisan or Agriculturist? The answers to these questions may change what is "most profitable" for you.
If you're into serious kegging, then Rhubarb in the spring and Starfruit in the summer might be worth exploring.
Salty1
Planter
https://thorinair.github.io/Stardew...plant_false-nextyear_false-disableLinks_false
If you want profit per day calcs, can use this tool.
If you want profit per day calcs, can use this tool.
HaleyRocks
Farmer
I have Tiller and Artisan, which i sometimes change to Agriculturalist for Special Orders (certain quests)!
By most profitable, i mean to sell directly as is, in bulk (Cauliflower, Melon, Pumpkin)... Especially Pumpkin, fetches quite the sum, is the most expensive vegetable! Or Blueberries and Cranberries, that yield many pieces per plant (even more, when very lucky day).
Similarly, Ancient Fruit and Starfruit can be sold as is, when of high quality and you are still making quite the profit!
But you can do whatever you like... Barrels and Kegs can make good work, on those items! Pumpkin pickles or juice for instance, are nothing to scoff at!
I myself have mixed income; whatever it is i plant, it is almost always one type and i keep rotating (my ginger island farm has 15 iridium sprinklers and i have a small garden in normal farm grounds, too). Then, i throw some in kegs and barrels, if i feel like it i slap a few in Dehydrators also (not my favorite method, since i keep those for my large mushroom log lanes) and sell the gold star quality or iridium quality (i use deluxe fertilizer sometimes), as is!
P.S. When i feel lazy, i slap everything in my Dehydrators though, inbetween the mushroom procession days and am done with it! A portion of the profit, but profit nonetheless. WARNING: Only fruits can go there though, no vegetables, alas...
Lew Zealand
Helper
Max g per tile grown outside on the main Farm with minimum effort (so minimum of harvesting and replanting), using Deluxe Speed Gro:
Spring: Rhubarb (Desert open), Cauliflower
Summer: Starfruit (Desert open), Red Cabbage (Year 2), Blueberry (more work but fun), Melon (Year 1)
Fall: Sweet Gem Berry (limited amount), Pumpkin, Cranberry (more work but fun)
Without Speed Gro, the multiharvest Blueberry and Cranberry move up one spot in their ranks.
Coffee is very lucrative and you can expand it quickly but it's time-intensive to harvest and manage. Hops is similar. Strawberry requires either processing your profits for seeds or storing them for 3.5 seasons which IMO is not g well spent.
Spring: Rhubarb (Desert open), Cauliflower
Summer: Starfruit (Desert open), Red Cabbage (Year 2), Blueberry (more work but fun), Melon (Year 1)
Fall: Sweet Gem Berry (limited amount), Pumpkin, Cranberry (more work but fun)
Without Speed Gro, the multiharvest Blueberry and Cranberry move up one spot in their ranks.
Coffee is very lucrative and you can expand it quickly but it's time-intensive to harvest and manage. Hops is similar. Strawberry requires either processing your profits for seeds or storing them for 3.5 seasons which IMO is not g well spent.
smellincoffee
Rancher
For me, "Best" means = less work. So...strawberries in spring, blueberries in summer, cranberries in autumn. My greenhouse is quartered between those three, with the remaining quarter being starfruit. They're my baseline income while I grow other stuff for recipes + hay.
ShneekeyTheLost
Rancher
Okay... let's get into it.
So, first off, we're going to be discussing the difference between theoretically optimum vs practicality, because there's a big difference between numbers on a spreadsheet and actually doing it. As a very good example, you have the coffee beans which, by pure numbers, is amazingly profitable. However, in the first place it assumes that you will have access to them immediately, which either requires destroying your save and restarting every friday if a bean is not present in the cart vendor shop or requires somehow getting all the way down into the colder areas where soot sprites spawn and farming them for one. In either case, this is simply not viable for your first spring.
With that in mind, here's some ideas:
First Spring
* Parsnips. They are incredibly lousy for gold per day yield. They are amazing for iteration and thus for xp grinding. Up to a point. One of the more beginner-friendly starts is to take all of the money you got on day one... and invest them into more parsnips, for a total of 40 parsnips planted on day 1. Outside of that, their value lessens tremendously, but this can give you an early kick.
* Potatoes vs Kale. You'll want at least one potato for the community center bundle, but one of the more vigorous questions is 'kale or potatoes', because they have similar growth times. Kale has theoretically better income, but potatoes have a good chance of a bonus crop for generally better profits, albeit at the cost of xp. Your first year will be focusing on infrastructure, and many pieces of that infrastructure will require Farming levels. As such, Kale tends to win over Potatoes in my opinion, but neither are an 'incorrect' answer.
* Strawberries. Do keep in mind that you don't get access to them until the Egg Festival in the middle of the month, so many spreadsheet projections which assume access on day 1 are... not realistic for your first year. Having said that, even with two harvests (three with a certain trick which we won't be getting into because of the difficulty involved), they're still enormously profitable. This can be the backbone of your economy going into Summer, I've seen playthroughs with 40 or more strawberries planted, and done quite well.
* Cauliflower. If you can get the quest reward from the museum for 5x turn-ins for the 9x cauliflower before the middle of the month, planting them is an enormous boon both in terms of cash and farming xp.
* Rhubarb is unobtainable in your first year, so not relevant to this discussion.
First Summer
This is where we start looking at potential processing production, as well as building our infrastructure so that we can be on a better foot going forward.
* Hops. When brewed into Pale Ale, is one of the most profitable crops in the entire game. Also grows on a Trellis, so you need to make sure you can access them all. It will require a *lot* of kegs to maximize its advantage, though. This requires you to set up an oak tree stand as well as constantly heading into the mines for the copper and iron (and coal!) to really get going. If you want to min/max your profits, avoid selling them until you hit Artisan (because let's face it, you *are* going Artisan if you care about money) so they go for 420 each instead of 300.
* Starfruit. Let's get this out of the way now, you won't have the infrastructure, heck you might not even have access to the oasis depending on your play style, to take advantage of this crop in your first summer unless you really know what you are doing, in which case why are you even reading this in the first place if you already know what to do?
* Melons. Staple summer crop, needed for both the summer crops bundle and 5x gold star for the quality crops bundle. Decently profitable. It's good to put in kegs to make wine, but you'll want to prioritize Hops, and you probably won't have enough kegs for both yet. And you'll probably want blueberries going into your preserves jars because it triples their value while the value increase is more modest on melons.
* Blueberries. There's actually several things you can do with blueberries that can be profitable. First is Preserves Jars, which basically triples their profits. The other thing is the Seed Maker, oddly enough. Seeds sell more than the berries themselves, so it's at least an increase in profit, plus it is a way to 'force' an Ancient Seed (something like a half-percent chance for any seed to pop out an ancient seed) which you'll definitely want later. While strictly speaking by the numbers not the most profitable crop ever, it can get you 'over the hump' so to speak. Selling your first crop of blueberries can be used to reinvest in infrastructure quickly. It is good for a quick cash injection.
First Fall
There's really only two crops to talk about here: Pumpkins and Cranberries. Both will likely be going into preserves jars rather than kegs since your kegs will still be processing your backlog of hops unless you *really* got a jump start on keg manufacturing, and both are decently profitable in jars anyway. You'll want enough Pumpkins to ensure not only the Fall Crops bundle completion but the Quality Crops Bundle as well.
From There...
* Ancient Fruit. And it isn't even close. If the only thing you care about is money, this is all you should be planting Y2+ as long as you have the seeds. Which, if you've been propagating in your greenhouse, you should have more than enough for any reasonable requirements. Drown the world's sorrows in Ancient Fruit Wine. Use Deluxe Speed-Gro and use the statue in the sewer for Agriculturalist to be in effect on the 1st of Spring so you get a couple of extra harvests in spring, then respec back to Artisan the day after to continue selling. Over the course of the three total planting seasons, the combined efforts of the best of each season will not match what Ancient Fruit does sum total unless you start getting into niche Qi-exclusive post-game stuff which is beyond the scope of 'practical' or 'reasonable'.
For the greenhouse, there's a separate guide which was written back in 1.4 but still generally holds true. As a bonus, the basic principles can generally also hold true on your Ginger Island farm plot since it functions like a greenhouse in that everything is always 'in season' there.
So, first off, we're going to be discussing the difference between theoretically optimum vs practicality, because there's a big difference between numbers on a spreadsheet and actually doing it. As a very good example, you have the coffee beans which, by pure numbers, is amazingly profitable. However, in the first place it assumes that you will have access to them immediately, which either requires destroying your save and restarting every friday if a bean is not present in the cart vendor shop or requires somehow getting all the way down into the colder areas where soot sprites spawn and farming them for one. In either case, this is simply not viable for your first spring.
With that in mind, here's some ideas:
First Spring
* Parsnips. They are incredibly lousy for gold per day yield. They are amazing for iteration and thus for xp grinding. Up to a point. One of the more beginner-friendly starts is to take all of the money you got on day one... and invest them into more parsnips, for a total of 40 parsnips planted on day 1. Outside of that, their value lessens tremendously, but this can give you an early kick.
* Potatoes vs Kale. You'll want at least one potato for the community center bundle, but one of the more vigorous questions is 'kale or potatoes', because they have similar growth times. Kale has theoretically better income, but potatoes have a good chance of a bonus crop for generally better profits, albeit at the cost of xp. Your first year will be focusing on infrastructure, and many pieces of that infrastructure will require Farming levels. As such, Kale tends to win over Potatoes in my opinion, but neither are an 'incorrect' answer.
* Strawberries. Do keep in mind that you don't get access to them until the Egg Festival in the middle of the month, so many spreadsheet projections which assume access on day 1 are... not realistic for your first year. Having said that, even with two harvests (three with a certain trick which we won't be getting into because of the difficulty involved), they're still enormously profitable. This can be the backbone of your economy going into Summer, I've seen playthroughs with 40 or more strawberries planted, and done quite well.
* Cauliflower. If you can get the quest reward from the museum for 5x turn-ins for the 9x cauliflower before the middle of the month, planting them is an enormous boon both in terms of cash and farming xp.
* Rhubarb is unobtainable in your first year, so not relevant to this discussion.
First Summer
This is where we start looking at potential processing production, as well as building our infrastructure so that we can be on a better foot going forward.
* Hops. When brewed into Pale Ale, is one of the most profitable crops in the entire game. Also grows on a Trellis, so you need to make sure you can access them all. It will require a *lot* of kegs to maximize its advantage, though. This requires you to set up an oak tree stand as well as constantly heading into the mines for the copper and iron (and coal!) to really get going. If you want to min/max your profits, avoid selling them until you hit Artisan (because let's face it, you *are* going Artisan if you care about money) so they go for 420 each instead of 300.
* Starfruit. Let's get this out of the way now, you won't have the infrastructure, heck you might not even have access to the oasis depending on your play style, to take advantage of this crop in your first summer unless you really know what you are doing, in which case why are you even reading this in the first place if you already know what to do?
* Melons. Staple summer crop, needed for both the summer crops bundle and 5x gold star for the quality crops bundle. Decently profitable. It's good to put in kegs to make wine, but you'll want to prioritize Hops, and you probably won't have enough kegs for both yet. And you'll probably want blueberries going into your preserves jars because it triples their value while the value increase is more modest on melons.
* Blueberries. There's actually several things you can do with blueberries that can be profitable. First is Preserves Jars, which basically triples their profits. The other thing is the Seed Maker, oddly enough. Seeds sell more than the berries themselves, so it's at least an increase in profit, plus it is a way to 'force' an Ancient Seed (something like a half-percent chance for any seed to pop out an ancient seed) which you'll definitely want later. While strictly speaking by the numbers not the most profitable crop ever, it can get you 'over the hump' so to speak. Selling your first crop of blueberries can be used to reinvest in infrastructure quickly. It is good for a quick cash injection.
First Fall
There's really only two crops to talk about here: Pumpkins and Cranberries. Both will likely be going into preserves jars rather than kegs since your kegs will still be processing your backlog of hops unless you *really* got a jump start on keg manufacturing, and both are decently profitable in jars anyway. You'll want enough Pumpkins to ensure not only the Fall Crops bundle completion but the Quality Crops Bundle as well.
From There...
* Ancient Fruit. And it isn't even close. If the only thing you care about is money, this is all you should be planting Y2+ as long as you have the seeds. Which, if you've been propagating in your greenhouse, you should have more than enough for any reasonable requirements. Drown the world's sorrows in Ancient Fruit Wine. Use Deluxe Speed-Gro and use the statue in the sewer for Agriculturalist to be in effect on the 1st of Spring so you get a couple of extra harvests in spring, then respec back to Artisan the day after to continue selling. Over the course of the three total planting seasons, the combined efforts of the best of each season will not match what Ancient Fruit does sum total unless you start getting into niche Qi-exclusive post-game stuff which is beyond the scope of 'practical' or 'reasonable'.
For the greenhouse, there's a separate guide which was written back in 1.4 but still generally holds true. As a bonus, the basic principles can generally also hold true on your Ginger Island farm plot since it functions like a greenhouse in that everything is always 'in season' there.
chaskuchar
Planter
the best spring i had 20 strawberries planted and the next day the fairy spinkled grow dust and 15 of the strawberries were producing. other than that i like ancient fruit in spring, summer and fall. i do some other crops for recipes etc.
FilthyGorilla
Local Legend
It can depend on the things available to you, where you're planting, deadlines, as well as a few other factors
Generally Shneeky covered everything really well though there are a couple other things I'd like to add
New crops:
Not worth even mentioning most of the time, you can get a one day growth time off carrots but they're not buyable easily so it's not even worth bothering with them for cash
Spring:
While not reasonable for everyone, rhubarb is not at all unobtainable in the first year. With deluxe speed gro from Sandy you can plant it as late as the 19th (though you'll need to be at the desert on the 18th to buy the speed gro)
Potatoes and Kale are both decent as if you're going for strawberries you need everything grown and in the shipping bin by the 12th which you can mix parsnips with either of these for that, though you will be utilizing the kale a bit better as you're using all the possible days you have and you'll need to water less as it's more expensive per plant (even if only by a bit).
Strawberries are personally not my thing as I always think you're better off using that early spring day for more productive means if all you're caring for is cash. Also just in general don't keep any of the seeds for the next year or crops to turn into seeds with a seedmaker, it's not worth it and you're far better off selling everything to get that snowball effect in action ASAP.
Summer/Fall:
Another option I see people completely gloss over is wheat. It's super cheap and sells for a considerable amount as beer without being the absolute pain that hops are.
It's also harvestable with the scythe and transitions into fall so you can preserve fertilizer moving into fall while basically risking no cash (1 beer covers 40 wheat seeds).
In fall pumpkins are better if you're not processing at all, so long as you're using something like basic fertilizer on them. Nowadays though it's super easy to get even one dehydrator down which is a game changer while being incredibly cheap for the insane processing power.
Starfruit can also be a very real option in the first summer, especially as you're reaching the halfway mark in summer. I'd honestly do it, most crops have a similar profit margin vs their seed cost so what you're doing with starfruit is cutting down the amount of watering or sprinklers you need/harvesting you need to do/amount of machines you need, you aren't losing profit because you're buying less seeds.
You DON'T NEED infrastructure for starfruit, profit margins are roughly the same between crops, if you're selling raw melons and have access to starfruit, you're better off selling raw starfruit and processing a couple which will make up for any loss. Dehydrators also exist now, and it's absolutely worth using them as they are insanely good
Another general tip but especially for fall as the options are so close together, I wouldn't bother with mixing crops as it's just more harvest days wasting your time. Just stick with one thing and plant a few varied crops for the community center, etc.
Endgame:
I wouldn't say ancient fruit is the unanimous winner for profit. It's the best on the mainland but in the place like the greenhouse/ginger island you're better off with sped up starfruit (33%,35%,43%) for profit. It's also buyable which means it's far faster to get the ball rolling if you know what you're doing.
Generally Shneeky covered everything really well though there are a couple other things I'd like to add
New crops:
Not worth even mentioning most of the time, you can get a one day growth time off carrots but they're not buyable easily so it's not even worth bothering with them for cash
Spring:
While not reasonable for everyone, rhubarb is not at all unobtainable in the first year. With deluxe speed gro from Sandy you can plant it as late as the 19th (though you'll need to be at the desert on the 18th to buy the speed gro)
Potatoes and Kale are both decent as if you're going for strawberries you need everything grown and in the shipping bin by the 12th which you can mix parsnips with either of these for that, though you will be utilizing the kale a bit better as you're using all the possible days you have and you'll need to water less as it's more expensive per plant (even if only by a bit).
Strawberries are personally not my thing as I always think you're better off using that early spring day for more productive means if all you're caring for is cash. Also just in general don't keep any of the seeds for the next year or crops to turn into seeds with a seedmaker, it's not worth it and you're far better off selling everything to get that snowball effect in action ASAP.
Summer/Fall:
Another option I see people completely gloss over is wheat. It's super cheap and sells for a considerable amount as beer without being the absolute pain that hops are.
It's also harvestable with the scythe and transitions into fall so you can preserve fertilizer moving into fall while basically risking no cash (1 beer covers 40 wheat seeds).
In fall pumpkins are better if you're not processing at all, so long as you're using something like basic fertilizer on them. Nowadays though it's super easy to get even one dehydrator down which is a game changer while being incredibly cheap for the insane processing power.
Starfruit can also be a very real option in the first summer, especially as you're reaching the halfway mark in summer. I'd honestly do it, most crops have a similar profit margin vs their seed cost so what you're doing with starfruit is cutting down the amount of watering or sprinklers you need/harvesting you need to do/amount of machines you need, you aren't losing profit because you're buying less seeds.
You DON'T NEED infrastructure for starfruit, profit margins are roughly the same between crops, if you're selling raw melons and have access to starfruit, you're better off selling raw starfruit and processing a couple which will make up for any loss. Dehydrators also exist now, and it's absolutely worth using them as they are insanely good
Another general tip but especially for fall as the options are so close together, I wouldn't bother with mixing crops as it's just more harvest days wasting your time. Just stick with one thing and plant a few varied crops for the community center, etc.
Endgame:
I wouldn't say ancient fruit is the unanimous winner for profit. It's the best on the mainland but in the place like the greenhouse/ginger island you're better off with sped up starfruit (33%,35%,43%) for profit. It's also buyable which means it's far faster to get the ball rolling if you know what you're doing.
Lew Zealand
Helper
Find the Ancient Seed Artifact and turn it in to Gunther in the Museum and he will give you a plantable Ancient Seed in return. The most direct way is to Hoe up Artifact Spots in the Mountains and Cindersap or kill Flies and their Grubs. It's a low probability drop but will eventually happen.
You can also get plantable Ancient Seeds from a Seed Maker as it's a 0.5% chance random output from putting any Fruit or Veg in.
Also if you're not on PC so still playing v1.5 you can get them from the Traveling Cart Lady, but that option was removed in v1.6.
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riklaunim
Cowpoke
I've seen a cute girl on YT do over 100 showcasing the best spring run :D
I would say 20 speed-grow strawberries would be best, the rest just Kale for exp, and if someone doesn't want to tax themselves with hand-watering a big field while having to do mines for quality sprinklers - then skip some crops.
Lazy Summer - blueberries(, and a few peppers for gifts).
Lazy Autumn - cranberry
But I want to do a farm run focused on making a big forest and spamming mushroom logs and combining it with tea bushes - an ultra-low-on-farming farm.
The wheat trick is that you can skip watering it - dump it on a large field and wait for 4 rainy days, then harvest. Although year one without power-run mass kegs/jars won't be an option.
FilthyGorilla
Local Legend
Definitely, especially on something like beach farm which is something I've done before
It isn't going to make you a huge amount of cash if you're considering it an alternative for other crops though, better done if you were going to skip crops alltogether or want to fill out some extra farmland