This article is about the current version of DF. Note that some content may still need to be updated.
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- (This article is about crop plants. If you want information about trees, see Tree.)
Crops are plants that can be farmed, traded for, or acquired by plant gathering. The farming of crops happens at farm plots. There are two types of crops: aboveground and subterranean (underground). The seeds of subterranean crops may be brought from the starting embark screen or, with some small luck, purchased from dwarven caravans. Above ground crops and seeds may be purchased from human or elven caravans or gathered by dwarves with the plant gathering labor enabled. Seeds may also be collected by processing the plants or eating them (but not by cooking!). There is a limit of 200 seeds per type (adjustable in d_init.txt), after which no additional seeds will be produced.
A few of the plants listed below are not strictly crops, as they have no seeds and can't be planted (see note "4", below). "Wet" and "Dry" determine where plants are found in proximity to watercourses when gathering wild plants, and do not affect farm plots.
Most plants can be brewed into alcohol, each plant type producing a different variation, and dwarves do prefer some variety in their drink. Some plants may be eaten raw, others must be cooked first, others must be processed (by milling or plant processing) before they are edible, and still others are inedible, producing only non-food products (their seeds may be edible, though). Drinks may be cooked as ingredients in prepared meals, but at least one of the ingredients must be a non-liquid.
All drinks require a spare barrel or large pot for storage, and some other products also require specific containers for storage. Plants can be stored in barrels or without a container; seeds are stored individually or in bags which can then be put into barrels. It may be advisable to have a small stockpile that accepts only seeds next to your farm(s), since dwarves will happily carry entire pots of seeds across the map to pick up a single seed, leading to cancellation spam and irregular planting.
Standard plants[edit]
These are the plants defined in the file plant_standard.txt. Standard plants have been changed very little from the previous version; tiles and colors have been upgraded, and brewing, pressing and processing plants to bags have been re-implemented as reactions, which means these options will be unavailable in the workshop if materials are missing.
Dwarven crops[edit]
There are only 6 underground crops, aka "dwarven" crops. Five can be used for food, booze and/or other fortress needs, and one (dimple cups) is dye only (although the seeds can be cooked). All six are (usually) available on embark and included in the default embark profile.
Above-ground plants[edit]
Notes:
- 1 This is the value for a stack of 5 units, which is the number rendered from a single plant.
- 2 Anything that can be cooked is edible afterwards. Note that cooking leaves no seeds for re-planting.
- 3 These plants cannot be eaten/cooked until they are further processed, either by milling or extracting; see "products" column for process product.
- 4 These plants cannot be grown on a farm plot (in unmodded games) as they have no seeds. They can only be acquired through plant gathering (in season only) or trade.
- 5 To get the products/extracts from the plants they have to be processed, in the following workshops, using the following labors:
- m: mill (cave wheat, sweet pod, longland grass, whip vine, dimple cup, blade weed, hide root, sliver barb): at quern or millstone, using milling.
- b: process to bag (quarry bush): at farmer's workshop, using plant processing.
- s: press paste into oil (quarry bush): at screw press.
- l: process to barrel (sweet pod): at farmer's workshop, using plant processing.
- p: process plant (pig tail, rope reed): at farmer's workshop, using plant processing.
- h: mash plant (pig tail, rope reed): at quern or millstone, using papermaking.
- v: process to vial (valley herb): at farmer's workshop, using plant processing.
- e: extract plant essence (kobold bulb): at still, using plant gathering.
- 6 'Not Freezing' Biome refers to all land biomes except Mountains, Glaciers, and Tundras.
Garden plants[edit]
All garden plants are above-ground, and can grow year-round. Garden plants are defined in a separate file from standard plants, named, somewhat predictably, plant_garden.txt.
Unlike standard plants, garden plants will also produce growths - leaves, buds, flowers, pods and fruits.
As a general rule, leaves can only be cooked, buds can be both cooked and brewed.
Notes:
- 1 This is the value for a stack of 5 units, which is the number rendered from a single plant.
- 2 Anything that can be cooked is edible afterwards. Note that cooking leaves no seeds for re-planting.
- 3 These plants cannot be eaten/cooked until they are further processed, either by milling or extracting; see "products" column for process product.
- 4 These plants cannot be grown on a farm plot as they have no seeds. They can only be acquired through plant gathering (in season only) or trade.
- 5 Some products may require processing; see plant page for details.
- 6 These plants, when grown from seed on a farm plot, don't yield products that can be processed for seeds.
Crop plants[edit]
These plants are defined in the file plant_crops.txt. They grow above ground, in any season.
Notes:
- 1 This is the value for a stack of 5 units, which is the number rendered from a single plant.
- 2 Anything that can be cooked is edible afterwards. Note that cooking leaves no seeds for re-planting.
- 3 These plants cannot be eaten/cooked until they are further processed, either by milling or extracting; see "products" column for process product.
- 4 These plants cannot be grown on a farm plot as they have no seeds. They can only be acquired through plant gathering (in season only) or trade.
- 5 Some products may require processing; see plant page for details.
- 6 These plants, when grown from seed on a farm plot, don't yield products that can be processed for seeds.
Best crop to grow[edit]
There is no "best" crop, but some are clearly superior to others, depending on your needs and available resources.
All-purpose[edit]
Many dwarves prefer the humble plump helmet, which can be grown year-round, eaten raw, cooked, or brewed into wine, and many early fortresses rely on the plump helmet crop as a staple of their diet. All above-ground crops are all-seasons as well, the best of which are probably sun berries, hemp, and whip vines. See the above table summarizing the crop products, limitations, and values.
Because of occasional above-ground inconveniences, having an underground plump helmet farm, or, at least, some plump helmet spawn, may be useful emergency preparation.
Four principal seeds available at the beginning of an expedition (cave wheat, pig tail, plump helmet, sweet pod) all produce underground crops that can be made into booze worth 10☼. Above ground crops will require you to trade or gather for seeds, but the best of them that can be farmed are sun berries, which produce sunshine worth 25☼.
Keep in mind that dwarves care more about the diversity of available booze than its value.
For quantity, cave wheat and sweet pod mature in 42 days, versus 25 for the other crops, so they may yield less alcohol per farm plot. Plump helmets mature in 25 days and grow year-round, which may be a good starting point for your alcohol industry, but exclusive dependence on it will cause stress.
Rope reeds and pig tails can be made into booze, but you might prefer to use them to make thread.
There are four dye crops. Three 20☼ dye crops: blade weed and sliver barb (above ground) and dimple cups (underground). Hide root (above ground) is a 10☼ dye. Dyeing should be considered a low priority because all it does is change the color of cloth or thread and slightly increase its value. You might not want a dedicated farm to grow dye crops; it can be enough to forage for them with herbalism or import them from caravans.
In terms of sheer dwarfbucks, sweet pods produce the most valuable foodstuff: dwarven syrup (100☼). In terms of quantity and value, other good crops are quarry bushes (which yield 5 quarry bush leaves when processed) and whip vines (which can be milled into whip vine flour). Diversity in meals is also important to dwarves.
All plant thread is equally valuable (at 2☼ per unit), so the main decision is between a seasonal underground crop (pig tails) or one of the year-round above-ground crops (cotton, rope reeds, hemp, flax, jute, ramie, kenaf). These plants are also equally useful for making paper. Papyrus is slightly easier to process if you want to make a lot of paper, but papyrus can't be used for any other purpose and it is only available in some tropical wetlands.
- Plant handling/processing is incomplete for some crops.Bug:6940 This results in plants that, when picked, are inedible because the wrong parts are picked, or where seeds are impossible to pull from the proper plant parts. Large numbers of crops are therefore incapable of being farmed.
See also[edit]