Fall crop choice

[Squigglyruth]

I don't want to spoil the results of my experiment into summer crops - I have a few days in game to play still. However, I am now in a place to consider what I ought to be planting in the Fall.

I have 537 watered spaces to fill. Is it best to fill them with pumpkins? Or maybe something else?

I did some calculations to guide me...

Unless specified otherwise, the following calculations assume DSG on every space - 179 of which will be carried over from Summer by planting wheat where I don't have hops. So I am assuming a DSG cost of (537-179)*80 = 28,640 on the last Thursday of Summer. That is taken into account in the profits.

All calculations assume Agriculturalist throughout the season. Where growth cycles allow an extra harvest of wheat, the costs and profits from that are included in the figures.

Crop	Initial outlay (g)	Total seed cost for season (g)	Profit for season (unprocessed)	Profit for season (best processing)
Pumpkin	53,700 + DSG @ 28640	161,100 + wheat @ 5,370 = 166,470	384,582	1,100,850
Cranberry (no DSG)	128,880	128,880	347,493	1,079,370
Beet	10,740 + DSG @ 28,640	96,660	448,619	1,111,590
Bok Choi	26,850 + DSG @ 28,640	349,050	285,505	1,116,960
Amaranth	37,590 + DSG @ 28,640	225,540 + wheat @ 5,370 = 230,910	297,459	1,004,190
Wheat	5370 + DSG @ 28,640	69,810	107,490	1,326,390
Yam	32,220 + DSG @ 28,640	128,880 + wheat @ 5,370 = 134,250	234,222	767,910
Eggplant (no DSG)	10,740	10,740 + wheat @ 5,370 = 16,110	185,668	547,740
Grape	32,220 + DSG @ 28,640	32,220	347,260	1,106,220

So, unless my calculations have gone wrong (quite possible), beets or wheat look like my best bet for Fall Y1! Though they would involve a lot of harvesting and replanting. Pumpkins, cranberries and grapes are also very respectable and much less effort. Hmm, choices...

 

[LoveElliotsHair]

Great mathematical accounting. Just remember you have a couple of achievements that you must do if your ultimate goal is 100% completion. So you must ship at least 15 of each of those items (polyculture) and 300 of something (monoculture) at some time.

Part of your wheat turns into hay, which is good for any animals you might have.

 

[hexnessie]

Do you include your actual processing capacity in the calculations of "Best processing" result? For example, cranberries, to achieve the best processing, would have to go into kegs, right? Do you have enough kegs for the cranberries to not have to stop processing summer's starfruit? If not, putting cranberries in kegs is not profitable.

With bok choy and beet, you'd have to have enough jars to process them fast enough to match the price of pumpkin pickle.

 

[Honeywell]

I'm really enjoying your threads on how you're picking the crops to grow each season. Choosing Agriculterist changes the calculations a bit for sure! Like hexnessie, I look at processing capacity and grow based on that instead of potential profits.

My kegs would be processing starfruit (or hops when I ran out) so I wouldn't have any keg space to spare. But I would have a shed of empty jars so I'd grow to fill them. Pumpkins are the best Fall crop to jar so I'd grow all 1611 pumpkins I could. I grow winter seeds and could also potentially grow 671 crystal fruit (537*5)/4 so that's what I'd put in the jars when the pumpkins ran out.

I always go with the 40% artisan perk year one which favors low yield, high value crops so that's a factor. TBH, even without the extra profit from artisan I'd be willing to leave some money on the table to avoid every other day harvests! :)

 

[Boo1972]

I’m actually shocked that grapes are that profitable. I never plant them. Do you turn them into wine or jelly?

Even before you finished your summer experiment, I decided to go with wheat, melon and starfruit. I was surprised at how much I liked producing beer. Unless I’m mistaken compared to hops, you need fewer kegs for a wheat field, less harvesting (plus you get to use a scythe) and the processing time was nice-partly because fewer kegs. It’s made me consider a wheat and grape combo for fall. Not sure how Penny would feel about that.

 

[One More Day]

All things considered, the best fall crop is still pumpkins IMO.

Yes, you can squeeze out an extra 1% profit with one or two other crops, but only at the cost of a huge amount of extra work.

Plant pumpkins, and use the time saved not replanting or kegging other crops to make money in other ways, or to build more infrastructure, or to socialise, or whatever

 

[LoveElliotsHair]

All things considered, the best fall crop is still pumpkins IMO.

Yes, you can squeeze out an extra 1% profit with one or two other crops, but only at the cost of a huge amount of extra work.

Plant pumpkins, and use the time saved not replanting or kegging other crops to make money in other ways, or to build more infrastructure, or to socialise, or whatever

Unless someone just really loves doing nothing but farming, then I completely agree. Passive income is the best! Sometimes time is the best commodity.

 

[Giant Octopodes]

Looking forward to the results! A couple notes, based on some assumptions from your previous test:

If I recall, your kegs are spoken for through winter, right? And certainly it won't be more profitable processing any fall crops in them before the hops are done. So Wheat seems like it'll struggle to actually get proper return on investment, since it fares the worst from lack of processing vs other good alternatives. Pumpkins both add the fewest new products (which helps with total time to get caught up, if that matters to you at all), and fares relatively well on the unprocessed side should that be desirable.

Beets I'm surprised they do so well, with and without processing, though that is indeed a LOT of replanting, and again a LOT of product for the kegs. Cranberries I'm just throwing out there, they are more problematic than wheat or beets in terms of processing requirements, providing a total of over 5000 new crops to process. However, just to make things more undesirable for them, though their total profit after being processed is quite competitive, the gold per day they're providing those kegs while they're in there is nowhere near as high as wheat or pumpkins.

Personally I'm predicting either pumpkins or wheat to win out, and based on what you liked and didn't like in regards to summer free time, I'm somewhat expecting Pumpkins to be the winner here, but of course you never know until you try it! Again hope it's a blast and looking forward to hearing how it turns out.

 

[Elenna101]

Haven't actually checked your math but the results look about like what I would have expected - it's not really the same as my spreadsheet but I'm pretty sure that's because Agri + DSG gives extra harvests compared to just DSG for short-growing crops like wheat and beets.

I'm also curious about your processing capability at this point. Sounds like you still have a lot of leftover hops/starfruit to go through, might be better to go with something that gets jarred if you have enough jars.

Also kinda wondering about the timing of switching back to Artisan to sell, although crop growth time is only calculated when you plant and when you add fertilizer, so you should be okay to switch to Artisan and back as long as it doesn't happen on a replanting day (and of course that'll cut down on profits). I don't think that really affects the question of which crop to plant though.

 

[FlyingCatPhillips]

Wow, you have some mad accounting skills. As well as some spare time for those calculations! I am assuming that you really like math. I never thought to math base it, but seeing how you do it, it makes total sense.
I would probably go with the unprocessed beets though that's more of laziness talking though. Wheat once processed would be the best for maximizing profits, but I also am suspecting there is a trade off, it probably has a processing time that is no laughing matter.
What year is that farm on?

 

[Giant Octopodes]

Wow, you have some mad accounting skills. As well as some spare time for those calculations! I am assuming that you really like math. I never thought to math base it, but seeing how you do it, it makes total sense.
I would probably go with the unprocessed beets though that's more of laziness talking though. Wheat once processed would be the best for maximizing profits, but I also am suspecting there is a trade off, it probably has a processing time that is no laughing matter.
What year is that farm on?

Year 1. For what it's worth, the unprocessed beets have 10 days of 28 spent planting / replanting. Pumpkins have 4, so you're trading 6 days of replanting for 60,000 if you go unprocessed beets vs unprocessed pumpkins. That's certainly not laziness in my books! Wheat being processed has those same 10 days of planting / replanting, but processing it you've got 5,000 some odd wheat, which, if you have 200 kegs, is 50 days, or 2 seasons, of processing. Pumpkins you'd get 2,000, it'd take 40 days of processing at 200 kegs, though they can be processed almost equally well in preserves jars or kegs, whichever is available, and preserves jars are faster.

 

[Hill Myna]

I have three things to add:

1. This and your other thread are great! I can't wait to find out the results of both. I never really considered anything other than mass Hops for Summer and then covering everything with Wheat during Fall, so this has been interesting!
2. Something I like to do on the last day of Summer is pickaxe any re-harvesting crops that I put DSG on. Then I plant Wheat in its place. This ties the DSG over to Fall. Although it sounds like you didn't put fertiliser on your Hops, is that right? Also, it'd probably be a bit of pain doing it for 300+ crops.
3. If you don't have the Keg/Preserve Jar capacity to process Beets, you can always run them through a Mill. Selling the resulting 3 Sugar would give you 40G more than selling a normal-quality Beet, and 13G more for silver, assuming Tiller. The Mill costs 2,500G + 1,500G worth of Wood + 1,880G worth of Cloth = 5,880G (as well as the trivial 50 Stone) so you'd have to process 1,470 normal-quality Beets to make a profit. You'd be planting 4,833 Beets over the course of the season if my math is right, meaning if you have the 4 Cloth to spare it would be a profitable venture.

Keep up the good work!

 

[Laissez_Faire_Farming]

that's interesting data science insight. Thank you so much for sharing