Farming strategy for summer Year 1?

Any thoughts on best strategy for summer year 1 after a very strong spring? What are the best crops to invest in during year 1? (I'm guessing it's possible to plant too many hops and not get them all processed.) Is it a good idea to keep expanding farming space beyond what's already covered by sprinklers? How big should I go?

 

My two cents:

• Blueberries are a good 'filler' cash crop. It isn't the most valuable, but they make decent money short-term while you are still trying to get yourself established. Also they make a metric TON of blueberries, so you can run them through Seed Makers. This not only increases their value (blueberries sell for 50g, but while the seeds only sell for 40g, you tend to end up with, on average, around two seeds per berry, for a net profit), but gives you a good chance of netting an Ancient Seed, which is the key to true profit later on in your greenhouse. Having said that, they are not the most profitable thing you can do in Summer, so don't go too wild with them. Blueberry Preserves literally triples their sale value, so a good way to enhance their sales margins.
  
• Melons are a pleasantly profitable staple crop, especially seeing as how you'll be wanting the 5x gold star melons for the quality crops bundle. The best way to process them is in kegs, of course, but melon preserves are also quite a profitable sale item. It doesn't triple the value like it does for Blueberries, but it does slightly better than double, going from 230g/ea to 550g/ea. And that's without Artisan perk, which brings it up to 770g/ea.
  
• Hops are probably the single most profitable crop for your first summer... assuming you have the kegs to process them. However, processing time for hops in a keg is substantially lower than processing time for most other things, being roughly equal to what it would take for most things to be turned into preserves. The number of hops you want is going to depend on how many kegs you plan on making before the end of the year. Keep in mind that Fall kind of really sucks for farming income, and the two heavy hitters don't really profit all that much from kegs, so you can continue processing your hops into fall and winter if necessary. The limiting factor with Hops is that it is a Trellis crop, so there's space considerations, since you need access to all of them. That, more than anything else, will determine how many Hops you plant.
  
• Starfruit probably won't be an option in your first year, but also does quite well brewed into wine, and the only thing that can actually compete with Hops on a profit per season basis. You'll probably want to get the starfruit from Gunther for your artifact/mineral turn-in rewards and planted.
  
• Poppy makes for a decently profitable honey, if you have some beehives. It'll be profitable to get a poppy to increase the honey profits. Penny also happens to love them, so if you are courting her and are willing to risk the DEA's negative attention, go for it. But they aren't going to be profitable from a cash perspective.
• You'll want at least one Sunflower for the dye bundle, even though they are a net sum negative profit.
  
• You'll want some Corn planted for the Quality Crops Bundle. I tend to go with 16 of them on Fertilizer. Keep in mind they stick around for the fall, so if you don't get your five gold-star corn by the end of summer, you still have time. However, as they tend to be an unprofitable crop, minimizing your corn is a good idea.
  
• You will also probably want at least one Tomato plant and one Hot Pepper plant. If you plan on going into the Pepper Popper production for a speed boost food that stacks with coffee's speed boost, you'll likely want more. Keep one or two around for George, he likes to rub them on his knee for some reason.
  
• IF you already have coffee plants held over from Spring, don't dig them up. However, planting now is going to be a fool's errand. Save them for the following first of spring if you insist on planting them. Or just buy your coffee from Gus.

Sprinklers are like peanuts... go nuts! In my first spring guide, I am suggesting starting the season with 20x Quality Sprinklers around a single scarecrow. Really, the only limit is space and scarecrows and resources. You'll only need to hoe and water one day out of the entire season, so the more you have, the better off you are. If you can manage another 20x Quality Sprinklers, then that's twice the crop profits for you!

HOWEVER... anything planted outside the reach of sprinklers will be a stamina drain on a daily basis, which is anathema to the overall goal of being able to do Other Stuff while your crops grow. So try to avoid this as much as possible, even if it means making a sprinkler for just one or two crops (such as something to increase profitability of honey). And anything planted outside the reach of a Scarecrow is effectively gone, eaten by those feathered felons. We're looking at a minimum of over a hundred crops, that brings those birds out in flocks (the chances of a crop being eaten by crows if unguarded by a scarecrow increase as the number of crops increase).

Processing is the key to financial success in Stardew. Thankfully, the 1.4 update brought us the Deluxe Shed, for which we give our thanks and praise (all glory to CA!). With a Deluxe Shed, you can safely manage 120 kegs/jars in a single building, which makes them ideal processing factories, now strictly better than Deluxe Barns due to overall lower cost and smaller farm footprint. Which is why, even before Summer rolls around, you're going to want your stand of 20-30 Oak trees tapped to produce Oak Resin for your Kegs. You'll also likely be spending much of your 'free' time in the mines at levels 30-50 to collect the copper and iron necessary to keep up with your keg production.

Preserves Jars are another thing you will be wanting in bulk, for blueberries and for melons. And next season especially for cranberries. You'll want your own shed with at least 60 preserves jars in fairly short order. The upside is that you can, at least in theory, purchase all the materials necessary from Robin and Clint. The downside is that they're *expensive* if you do so, especially for the coal. Coal costs 150g/ea (in year one) * 8 coal per preserves jar = 1,200g in coal per preserves jar. Now multiply that by sixty, and you begin to see why this can be a problem. All told, you'll need 480 coal for the 60 jars, however you can manage it. The sooner you can, the sooner you can multiply your harvest profits.

To be honest, focus on the preserves jars first, because both Blueberries and Melons see generous bonuses for them. Blueberry wine costs the exact same as Blueberry preserves, and takes over twice as long to process, so that's a bum deal. Melons DO get a decent bump in profitability, but you're going to want to reserve your kegs for your Hops, which produce a ridiculous amount of cash when brewed into Pale Ale. However, you're going to want to wait until you hit Farming 10 and the Artisan perk to sell them. So you can harvest them and store them while building your preserves jars, then build a batch of 30-60 kegs once you hit Farming 10 to start raking in that 420g/day/hops income.

Make a few Seed Makers when you hit Farming 9. Five or so ought to do. They process in like 10-20 mins, so you can process a LOT of blueberries that way. As I mentioned, not only is it more profitable than just selling the raw berries, but it can also net you an Ancient Seed to plant when you get your Greenhouse unlocked. You'll want them for propagating your ancient fruit in your greenhouse anyway.

 

That's a fantastic guide to summer, thank you!

I agree that the layout of hops is its main limiting factor. I normally try to plant 5 around each quality sprinkler, with 3 filler crops. This play-through, I have gone with 300 hops. Just under 200 could be planted right away in a good configuration, in ready-hoed and watered spaces (I have 42 quality sprinklers already up). I planted the rest without sprinklers, since I think I can water that many crops and still make the rest of the sprinklers before the end of the week. I think I will get all of the hops processed by the end of winter - I've done that before with 300 hops - but it may be a push. I only have 6 tappers on oak right now, but I have an awful lot of oak trees ready to be tapped, including the whole of the backwoods path and the area above Robin's house, as well as a large amount that I've left growing on my farm. I have plenty of copper ore to make more copper bar for tappers, but not enough coal. On the plus side, I've planted a whole bunch of extra pine and maple trees to cut for wood. This might work out.

I've filled in non-trellis spaces with 150 blueberries, 36 melons, 18 corn, 15 hot peppers, 15 tomatoes, 3 poppies (near the hive), 2 sunflowers and 2 summer spangles. I'm sure I've planted too many peppers and tomatoes - I've always done that in the past because they're both good for cooking, but it isn't very efficient of me. The 2 sunflowers are because of the possibility of lightning - I'm still at foraging 5...

I think this is where my real dilemma lies. I've always done well in spring by watering a large bunch of stuff by hand. It's good to invest money if you have it, since most crops in SDV give a good return on investment. Now, with potentially 150,000 or more to spend at the start of summer, I just can't work out the sensible balance between what to sell, what to plant, what to keep for processing, and what to invest in infrastructure. I can obviously buy many more crops than my sprinklers can handle, and it's clearly fine to water some crops by hand temporarily, so how many extra crops ought I to buy? I need to temper my gut feeling which says, "Spend all your money on nice crops! It will be fine!" So I've gone with just doing the stuff I would have done on any other play-through. But I'm sure I'm missing something, given how much money I have available to invest.

I do wish I had tapped more oak trees already. I have more than enough trees, but I haven't had the wood or copper bars to tap them. It's been a big push to get coal to make my sprinklers, so I've had nothing left for processing copper. Possibly I should have been buying wood from Robin and processing it through the charcoal burner, but I'm not fully convinced that's a good use of time. Possibly I should spend my spare money on coal?

Ruth

 

My typical layout for Hops is a circle of eight around a Quality Sprinkler. You never need to access the sprinkler, so surrounding it with hops just makes sense. You just have to make sure that everything around the hops circle is going to be able to be traversed.

With 150k walking into Summer, you've got enough for quite a bit. You're going to have to juggle keeping Robin busy making infrastructure (sheds, maybe a silo, coop, and barn, and getting the coop and barn upgraded as available) and being able to purchase wood from Robin (you're going to need a LOT of wood). Take it as a given that you're going to want to purchase at least a full stack of wood (999) any time you order a building. Stone shouldn't be as bad, you should be getting enough stone from the mines to cover those bases, but you'll definitely need to purchase wood every time you visit.

I would say that your number of sprinklers is going to be your primary limiting factor in how many crops you want to obtain. The rest can be dumped into infrastructure fairly rapidly. Heck, 480 coal is a cool 72k right there for making 60 Preserves Jars as soon as the first Shed is built. It'll pay itself back before the end of the month, keeping it full first of blueberries then melons. If you're worried about that and all the buildings you're wanting to get down this month, split the difference and start with 30 instead of 60 of them.

It's only around 10k to purchase a full stack of 999 wood. That's good for around 20 or so preserves jars, 30 kegs, 25ish tappers, or a few major building upgrades (sheds, coops, barns, house upgrade... that sort of thing).

Whatever you don't spend on crops, there's plenty to invest in for building infrastructure. Most of it may end up going to building infrastructure *faster*, such as buying the coal and wood for the preserves jars instead of just collecting them, but it'll still make your farm more profitable as a whole when all is said and done. Priorities are buildings from Robin. The sooner you get those done, the sooner you can complete the animal products bundle for the greenhouse unlock, and the sooner your sheds can get up and running the sooner you can start processing your bounty to multiply your profits.

I will agree that the charcoal burner is mostly a bum deal. Technically, it is cheaper (10 wood is only 100g instead of 150 from clint for coal), but the added inconvenience ties you to a series of machines instead of going out to gather metals. So I consider the 'premium' for buying direct from Clint to be worth it.

 

Thank you - again, that's really useful.

I think you're right that I want to invest in infrastructure at this point.

I was always likely to make the biggest barn fast this season, and buy some pigs. Though I have now chosen forester as a perk at level 5, which might make pigs somewhat less good - no guaranteed iridium truffles. Still, I think I will be doing those upgrades, as well as putting my coop up to the version that allows ducks.

That's interesting. I tend to go for 5 in a 'c' shape around each sprinkler, arranged in a way so you can run up and down and harvest them all in columns. Basically 2 columns out of 3 are hops, but the sprinklers are placed within the middle (hops) column. So you get 5/8 hops on your farm, except for where you put in paths to get to water. I like this because it's really easy to harvest by running up and down.

Basically I need to buy coal. Coal makes for more sprinklers, and also for preserves jars. Should I sell my strawberries to make coal? I don't know...