Farming



Farming is a skill in which players grow crops for profit or use in other skills. Crops can grow slowly or very rapidly, and can be harvested for produce. Farming begins at potatoes, and eventually the famed Spirit Tree can be grown.

The player starts out by obtaining seeds, which are then planted in one of several farming patches across Gielinor. After growing for a period of time, crops can be harvested, assuming that the crop has not died along the way. Crops grow even though players are not online, so they can plant them and come back at any time. Once they are fully grown, they stay there until harvested. This means that farming is a skill that requires little attention, as players can plant, walk away, and harvest later on.

Obtaining Seeds


There are several ways to get the seeds needed for farming :


 * If players pick a vegetable from one of the non player owned fields dotted around RuneScape, there is a chance they will get a seed for that vegetable.
 * Players with level 10 thieving can pickpocket farmers, which will occasionally give potato seeds.
 * Players with level 38 thieving can pickpocket Master farmers (Including Martin the Master Gardener) for all seeds except tree and special seeds.
 * Some low level seeds can be bought from Olivia who runs the seed stall in Draynor Village.
 * Players can steal from Olivia's stall if they have 27 thieving.
 * Tree seeds are mostly obtained from bird nests.
 * Players can receive many herb seeds, and bird nests, from the Managing Miscellania Minigame. To do this, they need to first need to complete the Throne of Miscellania and Royal Trouble quests. If they assign subjects to cut maples, they will get some bird nests. If they are assigned to pick flax, players will get some herb seeds.
 * Killing the Giant Mole located under Falador park will drop mole claws and mole skin which can be traded into Wyson the Gardener at Falador park for nests which contain various seeds.
 * With level 39 slayer you may kill Molanisks which also drop mole claws.
 * Some monsters drop seeds. Ogres, Moss giants, and Dagganoths are particularly good.
 * Implings give seeds, but only the Nature impling will give a reasonable quantity.
 * Buying some from other players.
 * Picking up dropped seeds from players training their thieving skills on the Master Farmer near the stalls in Draynor Village. Many seeds can be obtained this way with some patience.

Farming For Beginners


The best place to start farming is at an allotment patch such as the one south of Falador. If you do not have any seeds, start out by buying some potato seeds from Olivia in Draynor Village. Next, buy a set of farming tools from a farming shop (see section on tools below). Farming shops can be found near each allotment patch. Your tools can be stored with the Tool Leprechaun found at each patch, avoiding the need to carry them from the bank each time.

If a patch has weeds in it, they need to be cleared using a rake. Raking a patch will produce 3 sets of weeds for each patch raked. Compost can be made using these weeds, by putting them in the Compost Bin, along with anything else that has been harvested. Once the Compost Bin is full of 15 compostable items of any sort, close the lid, and it will start to rot down into compost, which takes about an hour. Once that has finished, take 15 empty buckets, open the lid of the Compost Bin and use the buckets on it to fill the buckets with compost. If you don't want to wait for your compost bin to rot, you can buy compost from any farming shop. Compost Bins can also be used to make super compost (see section below).

Back to the allotment patch. If compost is being used, it should be used next, before seeds are planted in the patch. A seed dibber is needed to be able to plant crops. Normally only one seed is needed to plant something. The exceptions are vegetables, which require 3 seeds per allotment patch, and hops (except Jute), which require 4 seeds. Jute only requires 3 seeds to plant. Don't hang around waiting for them to grow, they will take quite a while. The approximate growing time can be found in the seeds table below. Come back later to harvest the crops.

If your crops have not died (see section below on keeping your crops alive), you can harvest them by clicking on the patch. Harvesting crops will normally require a spade in your inventory. The exceptions being fruit trees and bushes, where you can just pick the fruit. These two also do not need to be replanted to produce more fruit/berries, the fruit will grow back of its own accord once picked. If patches are just being farmed for experience, then the harvest can be dropped, but if the harvest is to be used, then you may find that growing vegetables especially, grow more crops than can be carried at one time. Sacks and Baskets can be used to carry more produce back to the bank.

A patch will be normally be cleared for new crops after it has been harvested. The exceptions are trees and bushes. If a player does not want to wait for the berries on a bush to regrow, they can clear the patch for digging by using a spade on it. Wood and fruit trees first need to be cut down with an axe before using the spade on the tree stump. Clearing a non-fruit tree in this way will give them a set of tree roots, which can be used for making supercompost. Dead crops can also be removed with a [[spade[[ in the same way.

Keeping Your Crops Alive


After you first plant a crop, it will go through several growth cycles before it is fully grown. At the end of each of those growth cycles, there is a chance that your crop will become diseased. If you don't do something about it before the end of the next growth cycle after that, your crop will die. Once a patch is fully grown, it can no longer get diseased.

Prevention


 * You can pay a gardener to watch over your crop. The cost varies. The gardener will make sure that the crop doesn't die. It is recommended you do this for expensive seeds such as trees. Gardeners can be paid with noted items, and can be found next to all types of patches, except for the specials. The payment cost for each type of seed can be found in the seed table below.
 * Certain vegetables are protected by certain flowers (see the seed table below), but only when those flowers are fully grown. Like using a gardener, you need do no more as your crops are fully protected. If a protecting flower is planted at the same time as the crop they are to protect, watering them all before you leave will increase their chance of survival.
 * Compost and supercompost both reduce the chance each cycle that a crop will become diseased. Supercompost is far superior in this regard. As well as this, they increase the yield, which is why it is useful to apply them to the patch before planting even though they are protected by a gardener or the relevant flower. If you can't protect your crops any other way, supercompost is recommended.
 * Watering the patch with a watering can will stop a crop becoming diseased at the end of the current growing cycle only. Unless you plan to hang around, this is not a reliable way to keep your crops alive. Only allotment patches, flower patches and hop patches can be watered in this manner.
 * If treated with supercompost, bushes are rarely diseased (about 1 in 10 die). Therefore, payments are not needed unless it absolutely has to grow.

Cure


 * All crops except for trees can be cured of disease by buying a bottle of plant cure, and using that on the crop.
 * If a tree becomes diseased, it can be cured by pruning it with secateurs.
 * An alternative to buying plant cure is to use one of the Lunar Spells called Cure Plant.

Experience


You gain farming experience from planting and harvesting your crops, and in the case of trees and bushes, from checking the health of them after they are fully grown. The experience gained is listed in the seed list below. You don't get experiencing from cutting wood from a tree you have grown, but you do get experience from harvesting from a fruit tree or a bush. In addition to this, minor experience can be gained by doing the following farming tasks :


 * Filling a bucket with compost from the Compost Bin - 4.5 experience
 * Filling a bucket with supercompost from the Compost Bin - 9 experience
 * Putting compost on a patch - 18 experience
 * Putting supercompost on a patch - 26 experience
 * Weeding a patch with a rake - 4 experience per weed

The key to attaining substantial farming experience is a regular harvesting routine, as opposed to focusing on the growth of plants. For example, seeds or saplings should be planted, left to grow, then harvested in a specific course. Once the crops are ready for harvesting, they will stay that way till they are harvested. A patch could be planted and not harvested for a week, and it would still be ready for harvesting.

Growing mainly vegetables and herbs is a good way to get decent experience at lower levels. Additional experience can be gained by growing trees, bushes and special plants. Hops tend to get largely ignored, but if you are in the area, plant some anyway. It is recommended to be able to go around all of the patches of a particular type using teleports where necessary. Completing the quests Ghosts Ahoy for the Ectophial and Plague City for Ardougne teleport are extremely worthwhile for fast access to patches. Additionally, owning several Amulets of Glory and having completed Heroes Quest will help for fast banking too, though using Rings of Dueling for fast banking is acceptable too. At low Farming levels, traveling between the four allotments and growing crops, flowers, and herbs at all four locations simultaneously is the fastest way to gain experience. At higher levels, trees, bushes, and hops can be grown at the same time for maximum experience. For more information, see the Crop run guide.

Magic secateurs should always be used when appropriate to increase the yield, and therefore the experience gained. If you are purely interested in the experience, but not the resulting crops, always grow the highest level crop you can on a particular patch. Planting plants in a player-owned house's garden using the construction skill also helps with farming experience, however far more expensive. A cheaper way to get farming experience without having to grow anything is to play the Sorceress's Garden minigame, where you gain experience from picking the fruit or herbs there. For quests that give farming experience, see Quest experience rewards - Farming.

When farming was initially introduced on 11 July 2005, jute was 72 exp for harvesting making it one of the best training methods around, this was not corrected for three weeks.

Tools
The tools required for farming can be bought at Farming shops.


 * Rake - for removing weeds
 * Secateurs - for pruning diseased trees or removing Willow branches.
 * After A Fairy Tale Part I quest, they can be upgraded to Magic secateurs, when wielded increases by 10% yields from allotments, herb and hop patches.
 * Gardening trowel - for putting a tree seed into a plant pot
 * Seed dibber - to plant any seed except trees
 * Watering can - to water vegetables, flowers, bushes, and hops as well as potted tree seeds
 * Compost and Super compost - for helping your plants grow
 * Spade - for harvesting or clearing patches

All the above tools, 255 of each of the 2 composts and 31 empty buckets can be stored with the Tool Leprechaun who can be found near every farming patch.


 * Plant pots - for planting seeds; when watered, the seed grows into a sapling which can then be planted (saplings are not notable or tradeable)
 * Gardening boots - no function, strictly decorative
 * Woodcutting axe - for chopping a wood or fruit tree down before it can be dug up to plant another tree on same patch
 * Sacks - fill with 10 vegetables to pay nearby gardeners to watch your crop, purchasable from a farm shop
 * Baskets - fill with 5 fruit to pay nearby gardeners to watch your crop, purchasable from a farm shop

Patches

 * Note: sortable table, click on heading box to change sort order. Reload page for default sort by patch type.

Seeds, payments, and experience

 * Note: Sortable table, click on heading box to change sort order. Reload page for default sort by patch type.


 * All growth times assume that patches are treated with supercompost.

Planting Tree Seeds


Trees, including fruit trees, are somewhat different to other seeds, in that there is an intermediate growing stage where you have to grow the seed into a sapling before planting it in the patch. Firstly, you need to use a plant pot on any cleared farming patch with a gardening trowel in your hand. This will fill the plant pot with soil. Then, if you have a high enough farming level, you can plant the tree seed in the pot, which will create a seedling, which needs to be watered with a watering can to make it grow. After a few minutes, the seedling will grow into a sapling, which can then be planted in a tree patch or fruit tree patch, which requires you to have a spade in your inventory. The seeds cannot become diseased whilst growing in a plant pot. It is only when they are in the patch that they can become diseased and need to be protected.

Supercompost
You should always try and use supercompost whenever you plant crops. It improves yields and lowers the death rate. Even if you're paying the gardener to watch your bush and tree patches - the xp gained using supercompost on the patch adds up.

The Lunar Magicks spell Fertile Soil can also be used to treat a patch with super compost. You can also use this spell after a crop has been planted in a patch.

Any farmer by a patch can tell you whether an item will make supercompost or not. Just 'use' it with the farmer. The compost bins are located on each of the 4 farming allotments. They take 15 items, then you must close the lid and come back an hour later when it will have turned into compost. You must use all supercompost ingredients to obtain supercompost, using 14 supercompost ingredients and 1 weed will mean you get normal compost. If you're emptying and filling up all 4 compost bins, it's very helpful if you load the leprechaun up with empty buckets before you start your compost run.

The items that are supercompostable are
 * Watermelon
 * Jangerberries
 * White berries
 * Poison ivy berries
 * Pineapple
 * Papaya
 * Coconut from palm tree
 * Calquat
 * Cactus spines
 * Mushroom
 * Any herb Avantoe and higher
 * Any tree root
 * Empty coconut shells
 * White tree fruit from Garden of Tranquility quest.

Pineapples can be easily bought from Arhein in Catherby, or collected from the plants south of Brimhaven (just east of the Brimhaven Dungeon), or collect Jangerberries from the Ogre Island west of Yanille.

Regular compost and supercompost take about 40-50 minutes to rot.

Amulet of Nature
The amulet of nature can be bound to a particular patch, you can either rub the amulet to find out how your crops are doing, or wear it and it will tell you of any changes to your crops. To make one, you will need to spin a magic root on a spinning wheel, make a normal emerald amulet using the crafting skill and string it with the magic string. After enchanting the *pre nature amulet* with the emerald enchant spell, you will be able to use the it with a patch to watch progress on that patch. You can only obtain one amulet of nature, and they are non-tradable, though all the ingredients to make it are tradable as is the un enchanted pre nature amulet.

Magic secateurs
The Magic Secateurs are a reward for completing the A Fairy Tale Part I quest. When wielded they increase yields by 10% when harvesting vegetables, herbs and hops.

Supercompost potion
Can be obtained after the Garden of Tranquility quest. It is wise to use it on the compost bin instead of a bucket of compost so you get 15 buckets of super compost out of it instead of wasting it on 1 bucket.

Temporary boosts

 * A cider will boost farming by 1, this is brewed using the Cooking skill.
 * A Mature cider will boost farming by 2, this is brewed using the Cooking skill.
 * A Garden pie will boost farming by 3, this is made using the Cooking skill.
 * A brown spicy stew has a chance of boosting or lowering farming by 2, 4, or 6 (available as a result of the Evil Dave subquest of Recipe for Disaster.)