Farming

This article contains spoilers for Paleo Pines.*Continue reading at your own risk and watch out for falling archaeopteryx!*
**Farming** is a core gameplay mechanic in Paleo Pines. It is the player's primary means of obtaining crops that are required for quests, befriending dinos, and cooking.

You will need a Hoe, a Watering Can, and a Shovel to begin farming. Marlo gives them all to you on the first playable day of the game.

## Tilling

Tilling is a fairly standard affair in farming games, and you will need the Hoe to do it. To use the Hoe, first equip it while on the ranch and you will see a colored outline on the ground. If you're on clear ground that can be tilled, the outline will be white. Hold LMB or right click to till the highlighted ground. Once you have tilled a piece of ground with the hoe, you can plant seeds on it. You can keep pressing LBM or right click and walk around the ranch. This will keep using the hoe everywhere you walk.

However, in Paleo Pines there is another way to farm! By using a **Tiller** dino, such as a Styracosaurus, you can till long swaths of land much more quickly!

To use a Tiller dino's skill, mount the dino, and press LMB or right click where you would like to begin tilling. An outline will appear on the ground, highlighting the first square to be tilled. Keep holding down LMB or right click and the dino will move in the direction they are facing, creating a row until you release LMB or right click.

## Watering

To water the crops you will need your watering can. Equip it on the ranch and you will see a colored outline on the ground. If you're on a patch of tilled ground that can be watered, the outline will be white. Hold LMB to water the highlighted ground. Once you run out of water in your can, refill it by equipping it and interacting with a pond on your ranch.

By using a **Waterer** mount, such as Gallimimus, you can water whole patches of crops at once! Each Waterer can water 25 crop squares with each fill. In order to use your mount's Waterer skill, mount them and fill them at the nearest pond. Once your mount has slurped that water it will move much more slowly. Position it in front of the squares you would like to water.

If you do not water your crops, some of them will turn into withered types of the crops you planted. If you pick up the withered crops, you will get a seed of the crop back if the crop you gathered usually gives you multiple of the crop. However, if the crop you planted usually gives you one or two of that crop when you harvest it, you will not get a seed back.

## Crop Care

Every standard crop needs to be watered and weeded to make sure they are well taken care of, but tending to your crops and maximizing crop quality is an intensive process.

### Journal Usage

Equip your Journal and hover over a planted crop to get a readout of its quality. Holding the journal activates a pop-up that shows you the name of the crop, whether the crop needs weeding, and whether it's been watered today. Crops that haven't been weeded have slower growth and have a higher chance of failing.

### Quality

The **Quality** section of the journal pop-up shows you what quality crop to expect. For the best quality produce, crops need to be harvested in the right season, have the right soil, and be fertilized. Each condition met awards an extra star to the quality score of your crop, with three stars being the greatest quality. The sell price for each crop scales depending on the number of stars your crop has, and quality crops used in cooking recipes raise the overall score of the food produced.

### Crop Rotation

Crops modify the tilled soil they are grown in by sapping the nutrients out of the tiles. This changes the soil type.

Soil can have one of four types- **Normal**, **Soft**, **Sticky**, and **Firm**. Equip your journal and hover over an unplanted patch of soil to see its soil type. Freshly tilled soil that hasn't been planted is always Normal, but that changes after crops have been planted and harvested. The favorite soil type for each crop is shown in the journal.

After a crop has been harvested, the soil type of the tilled ground it's planted on will change to the soil type shown as **depletion soil** in the journal. For example: a carrot grows best in **Sticky** soil, and it will leave **Soft** soil behind after harvesting.

Bushes: These must be planted in a hole made by a shovel.
 **Blueberry** | 9 Days
 **Cranberry** | 9 Days
 **Gojiberry** | 9 Days
 **Gooseberry** | 9 Days
 **Raspberry** | 9 Days

### Fertilizer

Using fertilizers on a crop improves the quality of the crop, and it also changes the soil type to the type of the fertilizer. Use the fertilizer that matches your crop's preferred soil type for the best results. You can only use fertilizer on seeds or plants that have just sprouted.

### Composters

Composters can be used to turn weeds into fertilizer. There are three composters that can be found within the ranch. One for each type of soil: **Sticky**, **Soft**, and **Firm**. Each composter is found in a different part of the ranch that is blocked off by obstacles. In order to get all three, you need to have dinosaurs with the **Smasher**, **Slasher**, and **Stomper** skills. Once the composters are found, they will need to be fixed using wood before they can be picked up and moved.

Composters can be used two different ways. They can either be used to produce fertilizer as items, or they can directly fertilize any soil within a 4 space radius of the composter. This means that a single composter can fertilize an entire 9x9 patch of soil if it is placed in the middle. (**Note**: It's not clear if this is intentional or not, but a composter can fertilize soil even after seeds or plants have sprouted. Unfortunately, doing so does not count towards the quality, so be careful with using the composter in this way as it will waste weeds)

### Bumper Crops

If a crop is harvested in the right season and has the correct soil type, you have a chance of generating a **Bumper Crop**. Bumper Crops give you a bonus to your harvest, which can be extra produce or even seeds to grow more crops with. Plan your planting to maximize the chance of bumper crops, and you'll see a big boost to your farming results! Equipping your journal and checking on a ripe crop will show a golden bumper icon in the top right corner for bumper crops.