Farming is growing crops in beds you dig yourself. You need three tools: the Hoe to break the ground and sow, the Watering Can to water, and the Sickle to harvest. Crops grow on the day's clock, so a night slept through counts. What you grow is eaten raw, cooked into dishes, sold, and gives up spirits when you harvest it.
CONTENTS
Getting started
- Make a stone Hoe, Watering Can and Sickle on the TOOLS page of Crafting.
- Find some seeds: pick flowers, cut grass, till new ground, or buy them from a trader (see Seeds).
- With the hoe in hand, aim at open ground and press click or F to till a bed.
- Press click or F again at the tilled bed to sow the chosen seed.
- Water it with the can, then wait. Keep it watered until it is ripe.
- Reap it with the sickle. The crop pops out of the bed and lies there; walk close to pick it up. Some seeds come back too.
You can aim at any bed up to 3 beds away from you (more with some tool spirits). A marker shows the beds the tool will work: gold where it will do something, faint where there is nothing to do, and red where it can't.
Tilling and sowing (the hoe)
click or F with the Hoe breaks the ground into a tilled bed. It clears small plants and grass from the bed as it goes. You can't till:
- on a village's ground,
- on a floor, prop or wall you built,
- in water,
- over a step in the land (a bed must lie flat),
- where something solid is in the way.
When you break new ground, the bed you aim at has a 20% chance to turn up a seed. By day it is a Turnip seed (60%) or a Grain seed (40%). After dark it is a Moon Squash seed, or at full night a 45% chance of a Rootling seed instead. If no seed turns up, there is a 10% chance of a Stone.
Aim the hoe at a tilled, empty bed while you carry seeds and click or F sows the chosen seed instead of tilling. To choose which seed it sows, open the SEEDS page in K and click a seed card, or turn through your seeds with the mouse wheel or the pad's d-pad while the hoe is in hand. The hoe also clears away a dead crop.
A tilled bed with nothing in it slowly goes back to grass: after 1.5 days empty it starts to fade, and soon after it is gone.
The Soil window (right-click or R with the hoe)
With the hoe in hand, right-click or R opens the SOIL window. There you choose a spirit (or two) for the hoe to put into every bed it works, and how strong. This is Spirit Soil. With no spirit chosen, the hoe works as normal. If your hoe works more than one bed at a time, the window also lets you switch between the whole patch and just 1 bed.
With the Watering Can or the Sickle, right-click or R switches between the tool's whole patch and just the one bed you aim at.
Watering
Fill the Watering Can by dipping it at any water. Each click or F uses one pour and soaks every bed in its patch. A tin can holds 24 pours, a copper one 48 and a galvanised one 96.
A soaked bed dries out over time. It dries faster in sunlight and slower at night. A crop counts as dry once its bed has lost most of its water. How long a full bed stays wet:
| Where | Stays wet for about |
|---|---|
| Open sky, clear weather | 1.2 to 1.6 days (depending on the hour you water it) |
| Under a roof | 2 days |
Rain waters every bed that is open to the sky, in a few seconds. Rain also makes crops in open beds grow up to 20% faster (more in heavier rain).
How crops grow
Each crop has a number of days it needs to grow, but light, water, weather and its health all change the pace. The SEEDS page shows each seed's real time in good weather (see Seeds for the full list).
- A crop only grows while its bed is wet. A dry crop stops growing.
- A crop's health slows it: a crop at low health grows at as little as 40% pace.
- Rain on an open bed makes it grow up to 20% faster.
Light: sun crops, the Moon Squash and the Rootling
| Light | Crops | How it grows |
|---|---|---|
| Likes the sun | most crops | Fastest in clear sunshine at midday. Slower under cloud and fog. At night it keeps growing at about a quarter of its midday pace. |
| Grows by night | Moon Squash | Grows day and night, but more than 3 times faster at night than at midday. |
| Only in the dark | Rootling | Grows only at night, and not at all by day. |
A sun crop under a roof gets only a quarter of the light, so it grows much more slowly indoors.
Snow and frost
When it snows, crops in beds open to the sky change:
- Hardy crops (Grain, Rootling, Strawberry, Potato, Carrot) keep growing at half pace and are not hurt by frost.
- The Moon Squash keeps growing at half pace, but frost hurts it.
- Every other crop stops growing, and frost hurts it.
Frost costs a crop health quickly. Beds under a roof are safe from snow and frost. Fire in Spirit Soil protects a bed too: at LIGHT frost can't harm it, and at RICH snow doesn't stop it either. Some hoe and can spirits keep beds warm so frost can't touch them.
Wilting and dead crops
A crop has health. It loses health while its bed is dry and while frost is on it, and gets it back while its bed is wet. A wilting crop turns yellow-brown.
- A dry crop loses about 45% of its health a day. From full health it dies after a little over 2 days without water.
- A watered crop gets back about 50% of its health a day.
- A crop with no health left dies. A dead crop stays in its bed until you clear it with the sickle or the hoe.
A crop that ripens and is left in the ground also goes over. It is at its best from 0.6 to 1.5 days after it ripens. After that its quality falls, and 3 days after ripening it rots where it stands. A crop that fruits again (like Strawberries) loses only its fruit and starts again.
Harvesting (the sickle)
click or F with the Sickle sweeps its patch. Every ripe crop in it comes up: its produce pops out of the bed and lies there until you walk close, and its seeds go straight into your seed pouch. Its spirits rise out of the soil (better crops give more). The sickle also clears dead crops and cuts grass.
- How many you get, and how many seeds come back, depends on the crop (see each crop's page).
- Each harvest has a quality grade, from Poor to Heirloom. An Heirloom harvest gives 1 more seed. See Crop Grades.
- Crops that fruit again (Emberberries, Strawberries, Dragonfruit, Tomatoes and Wildflowers) keep their plant after a harvest and fruit again.
- If nothing in the sweep is ripe, the sickle pulls up the crop you aim at while it is still growing, and gives its seed back. Use this to undo a seed sown in the wrong place.
Cutting grass with the sickle drops Grass (or Dry Grass), and each tuft of green grass has a 30% chance to drop a Grain seed.
Bumper crops
A ripe crop may become a bumper crop. It is flecked with gold as it stands. When you reap it:
- it gives twice as many, plus 1 (a crop that gives 2 gives 5),
- it comes up a grade finer,
- it gives twice the spirits.
Bumper crops come only from spirits: some sickle spirits make a ripe crop come up a bumper crop as you reap it, and some hoe and can spirits make the crops in the beds they work ripen into bumper crops. See the tool pages for the chances.
Feeding your beds
Bone Meal
Use Bone Meal from your pack (FEED THE BEDS) while you stand in your garden. It feeds every tilled bed within 4 tiles of you for 2 days. While a bed is fed, its crop grows 30% faster and comes up finer. You make Bone Meal by Crafting: 3 fishbones, or one big bone (a long bone or an antler), make 4. Traders in the woods sell it too.
Flitter Guano
Flitter Guano, dropped by Flitterbats, is used the same way, on every tilled bed within 4 tiles of you. Each bed it feeds gives 1 more crop at its next harvest. A bed already fed with guano can't take more until it is harvested.
Visitors and storms
Beds in A Goddess's Land get visitors by day: rabbits, deer and birds that come to nibble your crops. Which ones depends on the land (birds in most lands, deer in the woods and the highlands, rabbits in the woods and the desert). Each nibble costs a crop 15% of its health, at most twice a day and 4 times in all, and never takes it below 45% health. They visit while you are away too, and a FIELD LOG card tells you what happened when you come back. Visitors keep off a bed:
- within 2 tiles of a Scarecrow (3 Wood and 4 grass, on the OUTDOORS page of Building),
- inside an animal pen,
- with Fire at RICH or DEEP in its Spirit Soil,
- when a fox, wolf or hen of yours lives at that Goddess (it chases them off).
A storm bends tall crops (Grain and Corn) in beds open to the sky, costing each 10% of its health (never below 30%). Fire at RICH or DEEP in the soil stops it. There are no visitors and no storm damage in peaceful mode.
Help from gear
The Farmer's Raincoat
The Farmer's Raincoat gives 30% less of every stat, but your garden tools also work every bed in a ring round their patch. The ring is 1 bed wide at the first metal tier and 1 bed wider for each tier above, up to 5 beds at the endurium tier. See Raincoats.
The Gardener's Charm
A Gardener's Charm can carry farming perks, such as Green Thumb (what you grow comes up a grade better), Bottomless (a can you fill stays full until the next dawn), Thrift (some seeds you sow aren't used up), Quickening (what you sow grows faster), Plenty (a chance of one more at every harvest) and Bramble Bed (beds you till sting night things that stand on them). See Charms.
Spirits in your tools
The hoe, can and sickle can be spirited at the Spiriting Table like weapons. Their spirits are all about the garden: wider patches, faster growth, beds that stay wet, finer crops, bumper crops, more seeds and replanting. A spirited hoe or can also leaves a boon in the soil of each bed it works: 3 days from the hoe, 1 day from the can. See each tool's page.
The Farmer tenant
A Farmer living on your land waters every bed on it and harvests ripe crops at their best, into a chest in their house. As you become friends they also clear dead crops (and beds never go back to grass), harvest a grade finer, feed your beds Bone Meal from your stores, keep visitors off and stop storms bending crops, and in the end give you the Seed of Plenty. See Tenants.
Saplings, cuttings and bulbs
Trees, bushes and flowers can be planted too. They go in your seed pouch and are sown with the hoe in a tilled bed like any seed.
| Seed | Where from | Grows into |
|---|---|---|
| Sapling | A tree you fell (50%), or a stump you pull up (always) | The tree of the land it is planted in |
| Copper Beech Sapling | A copper beech felled or pulled up | A copper beech |
| Ironwood Sapling | An ironwood felled or pulled up | An ironwood |
| Rimewood Sapling | A rimewood tree felled or pulled up | A rimewood tree |
| Ghost Birch Sapling | A ghost birch felled or pulled up | A ghost birch |
| Bush Cutting | A bush you bring down (50%) | The land's berry bush |
| Wildflower Bulb | A pink, blue or white flower you pick (30%) | A bed of flowers that blooms again and again |
A grown tree or bush takes the bed's place and is a real tree or bush: you can fell it, it regrows, and you can pull it up. This is how you grow beechwood, ironwood, rimewood and ghostwood at home. A Wildflower bed gives 2 to 3 flowers (pink, blue or white) each time it blooms.
