What is the most profitable crop to grow?

I'm currently in summer year 2 and just finished getting my greenhouse so I'm wondering whats the best crop to grow inside the greenhouse and then put into kegs or Preserves jars.

 

Starfruit
Preserve Jars only work's well with low profit.

The best crop per season is in my opinion:
Spring: Potato and Strawberry
Summer: Blueberry and Starfruit
Fall: Cranberry

 

So starfruit would profit more in kegs rather than hops?

 

The starfruit is the most profitable crop.
But you will need a heavy stock of seed's or some seed makers.
If you can't get this yet then go for Hops n Kegs

 

Ancient Fruits are a close contender. They take a whole month to grow but afterwards they fruit every seven days.

Hops are another good crop. They regrow everyday and take a little less than two days to brew into Pale Ale.

 

hops are more profitable than starfruits.
Here a calculation:
You can set 120 starfruits or 88 90 hops.
A star fruit will be fully grown after 13 days. Hops can be harvested every day.
-> After 13 days you have 120 starfruits or 18*33=594 13*90=1170 hops
-> You can produce 13 starfruit wines or 594 1170 pale ales.
-> A starfruit wine is 2250 g worth, a pale ale 300g (Without artisan bundle and without aging)
-> You can get 29250g from star fruits and 178200g 351000 from hops.

I did calculate with maximum. So you have no space for sprinkler and have to water every day. And i didn`t calculate casks, which would make things much more difficult.
Otherhand i would prefer starfruits. They will make much less work

Edit: I forgot, that you have with star fruits running costs about 400g per seed. For hops you will have these costs only once (and only 60g)
So you get with star fruit a profit about only 24050g

Edit 2:
Correctig a calculation mistake and found a better setup for hops (90 instead of 88)

 

http://www.gamewalkers.com/games/st...3/whats-the-best-crop-to-plant-in-the-spring/

 

It has a link to a spreadsheet for best crops in all seasons, foods, etc.

 

Hops is a funny crop. If you have the kegs required to keep up with the daily harvest they are actually square for square better than the legendary starfruit. Let me explain.

Hops - No Fertilizer - Produces its first crop on day 12 and continues until 28 producing a total of 17 harvests. Each of these harvests is put into a keg and 2 days later comes out 12x more valuable as 300g Pale Ale. (420g with Artisan) This produces a season total of 5100g. (7140g) The best part is, these little miracles only cost 60g each. Therefore the final no fertilizer season total per plant is 5040g without Artisan. (7080g with)

Starfruit - No Fertilizer - If planted on day 1, the Starfruit will mature on the 14th. When planted the same day a second harvest can be acquired on the 27th, a season total of 2. Each is placed into the keg for a whopping 2250g per starfruit, 3150g if you didn't accidentally pick agriculturalist. With 2 harvests per season the player gets 4500g. (6300g) Ouch, not quite up to hops. But, I haven't mentioned seeds. These cost 400g a piece and that doesn't even factor traveling to the desert to acquire them. This makes the final season total 3700g without artisan and jumping to 5500g with Artisan.

So in this case Hops wins, by quite a bit, with each planted crop bringing in 5040g vs. the Starfruit's 3700g. This is all on the condition that the player has enough kegs available. (Roughly x2 the number of planted Hops. Starfruit however requires 1/2 kegs to process. So unless you have a lot of resources, time in other seasons to process surplus crops or are only working in small numbers Starfruit may be a better pick.) But, lets be though and speed things up a bit.

Hops - Deluxe Fertilizer - This time hops produces it's first crop on day 9 adding 3 harvest and totaling at 20. After some keg magic the player gets 6000g. (8400g) Once you remove the cost of seeds the player is left with 5940g without Artisan and 8340g with. I haven't included the cost of fertilizer because it effects both scenarios equally. Additionally, it is possible to craft fertilizer and therefore not adding to the cost.

Starfruit - Deluxe Fertilizer - With extra fertilizer Starfruit gets quite the boost adding a full harvest. Allowing the player to collect on the 10th, 19th and 28th. Now with three harvests the season's wine value becomes 6750g, topping at 9450g with Artisan. But, that's before the Starfruit's secret weakness. (In fact, if Ancient Fruit didn't lose 200g with the recent update it would still be number one.) Now with 3 harvests the season's total seed cost is 1200g leaving the player with 5550g. (8250g) Once again, this excludes any costs associated with traveling to the desert.

Once again, by pure numbers Hops takes the gold, with a season per square total of 5940g vs 5550g. (8340g vs 8250g via artisan) However, this time there is a much smaller difference. When you consider it takes nearly 4 times more kegs to process the same amount of hops as Starfruit the difference in value, doesn't really justify Hops over Starfruit. (Unless you are purely about the numbers or resources aren't an issue.) Also, for anyone curious. If your hand slipped and hit agriculturalist instead of artisan it only makes the gap between hops and starfruit larger. Hops gains one additional harvest worth 300g. (You don't have Artisan) Starfruit on the other hand does not get another harvest. Bringing the totals to 6240g vs 5550g.

I hope that helps in making an informed decision on your summer crops.

 

The question is about greenhouse, which was build up. There you don´t have to mention an exact month

 

I still prefer Starfruit, 7 days to harvest and 7 days on the Keg.

Be a simple man don't buy a microwave and hops with the hops (But you will need a ton of Keg's to keep up with the daily crops.)

 

I see it as a balance between profit and time/effort required.

From the numbers I've seen hops can be crazy profitable in sheer numbers, but you're going to be spending a significant time daily harvesting, taking out the previous batch and adding in the new batch, not to mention the massive number of kegs you'll need to keep up with production.

Starfruit is crazy profitable on an individual basis, but you're looking at about 20 days per batch(13 grow, 7 keg), needing to replant after every harvest, plus needing to run to the Oasis to get seeds, which are themselves anything but cheap in large numbers.

The happy middle I went with is Ancient Fruit. It can take a bit to get going(grow one plant, harvest, put fruit in seed maker and plant the next one or two. Rinse and repeat until you have all the plants you want), but once it's in place you can harvest once a week, nicely matching how long it takes to turn the previous harvest into wine(or at least it should, the wine always seems to be ready a day early for some reason), giving you a nice payday every week with only a modest amount of work required.

 

Time goes quickly for keg's depending on the hour you sleep (or something like that)

 

That could very well be it, yeah. I was thinking it might have been the Speed-Grow causing the plants to be ready for re-harvest quicker, to the point I was even planning on having a test plot come summer with and without Speed-Grow and re-harvestable plants, but the kegs 'speeding up' due to sleeping early would make more sense.

 

My apologies, it seems my statement is misleading. I meant the "summer crops" line to identify that the contest was between two summer crops, not that they should only be grown in summer. Though, I suppose I made it worse by only comparing a single season worth of growing. (I assumed that it was obvious that being better over 28 days makes it better over a full year. Without having to complicate the math.)

Anyway, the assessment still stands, Hops is better than Starfruit in the greenhouse. But, since I'm here I'll leave this. http://community.playstarbound.com/threads/the-new-and-improved-greenhouse-setup.125580/ It was written by ShneekeyTheLost and outlines what is basically the best possible set up for the greenhouse.

*Edit* Wanted to add, I was in the process of typing my post when your hops vs starfruit assessment was made. So I submitted my post before seeing yours, not realizing you said basically the same thing.

Actually, even with agriculturalist it takes 8 days to grow Starfruit. 9 Days if you have Artisan. Also, with Hops you don't need that many kegs. (In the grand scheme of things.) For Hops you only need 2-3x the number of crops you have, due to the daily growth. If you follow the steps in the link above that's only ~144 for maximum profit. (The trees will be more of a burden though.)

Also, as I understand it, time processes as 60 minutes while the player is awake and 100 while you sleep. (You are guaranteed 400 minutes per night, plus what you get during the day.)

 

This stuff is too much math and too complicated for good ol' simple pillow. Red cave mushrooms are the way to go.

 

So ancient fruit isn't even up there?

 

Ancient fruit has a good value but it takes very long to grow each fruit. So things like fruit trees or hops who produce multiple crops over the time it takes to get one ancient fruit are worth more. This is especially true with the artisan trait.

 

This is a very good line of thought! We could look for a list of pareto optimal crops.

 

I always hope that sooner or later someone will come out with the different tier of high profit outputs based on effort motivation. Like "high input=high reward" to "moderate input every other day" to "once a week input" and just lay out the various profit margins you could get going by those different tactics.

Like most of the time I find a lot of the high profit strategies to sound very tedious and the kind of thing I'd have to spend most of every single day doing exactly the same. I tried before and I find after a certain point I just feel burned out on it. It'd be nice to have a few variety of "this may not net you as much as the big league, but you'll get a few days in between to just toddle about in the skull caverns if that's your thing. " Really one of the reasons I like ancient fruit is mostly because I only have to shuffle through once a week to harvest it, leaving the rest of my week to toddle about goofing around with other plants and products.