Your Crop Fields

Tasked with revitalizing the Zephyr Town farm, one of your jobs is to grow crops to sell at the bazaar. At the beginning of the game, there is only one crop field available; the rest of the farm has become overgrown and unusable. The remaining fields can be restored by hiring Wilbur's Workshop as the bazaar increases in rank. The additional two fields must be purchased in sequential order.

The three crop fields are 18 squares by 27 squares in size. While you can't increase the size of the fields, you can upgrade the soil quality via Garon's Construction.

A $1 million cellar field unlocks after reaching Rank 6 (National Bazaar).

Tilling

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Before planting seeds, the field soil needs to be prepared. Equip the hoe and use it to till the dirt. You can do this one square at a time, or perform a Super Jump to cover a wider area in one swing.

Sometimes you'll discover items hidden in the dirt. Up to 5 goodies per field can appear each day when tilling undisturbed soil. For common items, up to 3 of the same item can appear.

The Sandrose, Fluorite, and Agate can be sold at the bazaar or handed over to Ivy the Nature Sprite. These three stones aren't used for accessories or other important items. The medals can be used at the Prize Palooza later in the game.

Power Berries are eaten to permanently increase maximum stamina. You can eat up to 10 Power Berries. Any extra berries you find can be sold during the bazaar.

Tilled soil will return to its undisturbed state after 2 days.

Sowing

Seeds can be purchased from Miguel's Mercantile or the applicable bazaar stalls. Each bag of seeds covers 1 square of crop field space. The description on the seed bag explains the seasons in which the crop can grow: spring, summer, autumn, or winter. Some crops can only grow during a specific season, while others can grow across multiple seasons.

To scatter the seeds, hold the bag as the active item and interact with the field. As with tilling, using the jump action and then planting the seeds will spread them over a wider area.

Seeds can only be planted during the seasons in which they grow (e.g., you can't plant spring seeds on Winter 30). Crops will wilt on the first day of the new season if they cannot grow during that season.

Watering

Crops need to be watered daily in order to grow, whether by using your watering can or through natural precipitation. There is a small well next to the red windmill where you can fill your watering can, then interact with the crops to water them.

Crops can be watered twice per day, with a 10-hour interval between waterings. Doing so increases the crop's growth rate by 40%. For example, Cabbage takes 7 days to mature when watered once per day, but only 5 days when watered twice per day. Watering twice isn't very useful for crops that only take 3 days to grow, such as flower seeds, but it does help with Fertilizer influence (see below).

Rainy and snowy weather automatically waters crops twice per day.

If you forget to water your crops, they'll look a bit brown the following day. They'll perk back up if you water them the next day, but they'll wilt if you neglect watering them for 2 days in a row.

Storms

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Rain can also come in the form of storms, which may occur during summer and winter. The farmhouse radio will warn you when a storm is expected to arrive the following day. To protect your crops, install Windscreen Kits around each field. These protective barriers are crafted at the red windmill by combining 1 Lumber, 1 Stone, and 3 Iron.

Windscreen Kits can also protect Mushroom Logs and Hive Flower Fields against storm damage.

To install a Windscreen Kit, hold the kit as the active item in your inventory, then interact with the wooden sign next to the field. Each farm field requires 3 kits. The windscreens automatically dissolve the day after a storm passes. You can install the kits days before the storm arrives, but the kits limit access to the field area for crop maintenance and are kind of a pain in the butt to work around.

You're out of luck if you forget to install Windscreen Kits before a storm. The kits cannot be installed on the day of the storm. Any unprotected fields will suffer random crop destruction. Applying Fertilizer or sowing seeds is also not possible during a storm.

And if you do forget, it'll be okay. Things happen, and it's okay to give yourself a break. The video game crops can always be replanted.

Storms won't occur again for at least three days after a storm. Since you're guaranteed to experience at least one storm during both summer and winter, plan ahead and keep enough Windscreen Kits on hand to protect your fields before a storm is forecast.

Fertilizer

Adding fertilizer to your plants will increase the star rank of the harvested crop. Higher-quality crops sell for more money, have a greater chance of winning the seasonal Crop Show, earn more friendship when given to a villager as a gift, and restore more stamina when eaten or cooked. Fertilizer also has a star rank, so higher-quality fertilizer will improve a plant's quality more quickly.

The cheap stuff at Miguel's Mercantile and the various bazaar shops is always 0.5 stars of quality. Better fertilizer can be made by processing Weeds in any of Zephyr Town's three windmills: 2 Weeds = 1 bag of Fertilizer. Rotten items can also be converted into Fertilizer, though using Weeds is more efficient.

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Increasing the star rank of Weeds is the result of giving offerings to Ivy the Nature Sprite. This magical fellow hangs out by the red windmill on your farm from 10:00 am until 2:00 am after reaching Rank 2 (Village Bazaar) and then visiting the Nature Sprite's House on the eastern edge of Zephyr Town, just past Gabriel's workshop. Ivy's power-up influences the wild Weeds found throughout Zephyr Town, as well as other forageable items such as ores and wild flowers. The star rank of Weeds increases by 0.5 for every four offering levels. The higher-quality Weeds can then be harvested and processed to produce higher-star-rank Fertilizer.

Applying Fertilizer once per day is done by selecting it as your active inventory item and then interacting with the plant. You can apply it before or after watering, but Fertilizer has a 40% greater oomph for your plants when you water 2x per day. Just as double watering increases growth speed, it also makes Fertilizer more effective. If you are increasing the star rank of a flower by applying Fertilizer, watering 2x per day won't increase crop maturity (since flowers already mature in 3 days), but it does increase the flower's star rank more than watering only 1x per day while applying Fertilizer.

Fertilizer will NOT increase a crop's star rank beyond its star-rank limit. If your Turnip can only reach 5 stars, applying 7-star Fertilizer will not increase its star rank beyond 5 stars.

Harvest and Repeat

After you care for the crops, eventually they will mature. Harvest the crops by interacting with them; you can harvest more than one crop by jumping and then interacting. If a crop is a one-time harvest, then the soil will return to its natural state after harvest. Crops that can be harvested multiple times (a maximum of 3 times) will return to an earlier growth stage to be harvested again after a few days.

Most field crops are harvested by hand. Flowers and grains (Rice, Wheat, etc.) must be harvested using the sickle.

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Crops also have a chance of mutating at the point of harvest, even when the plant is only 0.5 stars. The higher the crop's star rank at harvest, the greater the chance of obtaining a rare crop. There are 29 rare crop varieties that correspond to the game's 29 field crops. These rare crops sell for 3x the regular price of their normal counterparts, restore more stamina when eaten (whether raw or used as a meal ingredient), and are more impressive at the seasonal Crop Show. Some meal recipes also require rare crops as ingredients.

Rare crops come in three varieties:

Flowers, tea leaves, and grains do not have rare varieties.

Once your crops reach star rank 7, applying Fertilizer to growing crops will increase the chance of harvesting rare field crops.

Because the town merchants only sell 0.5-star seeds, increasing a crop's star rank beyond that is done by converting harvested crops back into seeds. You can do this at the blue windmill or any windmill with the White Wonderstone attached. One crop = 1 bag of equivalent star-rank seeds. Then replant the seeds and repeat the process.

A rare crop can be converted into 1 bag of normal seeds with a boost to the seed's star rank (e.g., processing a 0.5-star Brawny Onion will result in a 1.5-star Onion Seed).