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.

Introduction
The key to getting decent Farming experience is NOT to stand around your crops waiting for them to grow. Plant the crops, go do something else for an hour or two and come back when they're fully grown. Once the crops are ready for harvesting, they will stay that way till you harvest them. So, you could plant a patch and not come back to harvest it 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. It is a very good idea 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, travelling 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, do the same but also grow trees, bushes, and hops at the same time for maximum experience.

A few hints/tips:
 * With vegetables, either grow the protective flower (only when it's full grown does it provide proper protection), OR pay the farmer to watch the crops.
 * With bushes, just super compost is needed and no bribe.
 * Conversely, with bushes & trees, if you pay the bribe, compost is NOT needed!
 * With tree seeds being so expensive, it is more than a good idea to pay the farmer to grow them.
 * With herbs and other special crops, just use super compost and hope that they don't die.
 * Another note on herbs & flowers, before leaving to go to another location, right click and "inspect" both. Watering everything that can be watered, before leaving, helps them remain disease-free, too.
 * Remember, plants grow even when players aren't online! This is extremely helpful, as players can gain thousands of experience points by planting trees, paying the farmer to watch them, and coming back a few days later.
 * A very good source of tree seeds is to complete Throne of Miscellania and Royal Trouble quests, then allocate resources to cutting Maples. For every 100 Maples, you will also receive 1 birds nest and a very good percentage will contain tree seeds, regular and fruit.
 * The Lunar spells Fertile Soil and Cure Plant can be used to great effect when combined with teleport tablets. While this uses runes, it is easier to manage than making super compost and provides some extra magic experience.

Guidelines

 * The hardest bit about Farming is all the inventory micro-management that is involved.  Keep it as simple as possible, and do one type of crop in each type of field and teleport around to each farm (see below).
 * Supercompost is great - see special section below

How to avoid disease and increase yields from your crops:
 * Method 1: Use normal compost, and pay the farmer to take care of the crops
 * Method 2: Use super compost and if they're vegetables, make sure you have the protective flower growing. Players won't need to pay farmers to watch their crops as often.

How to get the most farming xp as quickly as possible:
 * Use the above tips to grow your crops
 * Harvest allotments, hops, and herbs while wielding magic secateurs
 * Grow the highest level crop you can on each patch
 * Replant bushes, cactus, and wood, calquat, and fruit trees when full-grown
 * Pick cactus spines, berries, fruits, and calquat as frequently as possible if you do not have seeds to replant the patch
 * Most vegetables are roughly the same xp, except for the high (rare) ones - strawberries, Limpwurt roots, etc.

Tools

 * 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 tradable)
 * 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 required items to pay nearby gardeners to watch your crop, purchasable from a farm shop
 * baskets - fill with required items 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.

The only patches that need watering are allotments, flowers, and hops; if you pay a nearby gardener allotments and hops will not need watering. Allotments that have a full grown protective flower in patch next to it will need watering only once to grow disease-free.

Seeds, bribes and experience
If players choose to pay the farmer to look after their crops, noted items can be used to conserve inventory space. Barley malt is made by roasting barley on a range.

All tree roots can be used for weaving.


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

Supercompost
You should always try and use supercompost whenever you plant crops. It improves yields and lowers the death rate. The only time you shouldn't use it is when you're planting trees or bushes which you intend to bribe for.

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 by each of the 4 vegetable and herb patches. 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
 * Bittercap Mushroom
 * Any herb Avantoe and higher
 * Any tree root
 * Empty coconut shells
 * White tree fruit from Garden of Tranquility quest.

Pineapples can be easily collected from the plants south of Brimhaven (just east of the Brimhaven Dungeon), or collect Jangerberries from the Ogre Island west of Yanille. Another easy option, although it requires a small amount of gp, is to buy pineapples by from the charter ships located by major port cites, such as Catherby and Ardougne.

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.

Compost 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.)

Tips

 * Did you know you can pay farmers to watch your crops with noted items? This is a great way to save valuable inventory space when doing a tree run.


 * Planting plants in your player-owned house's garden using the construction skill also helps with farming experience, however far more expensive.


 * Sometime before you reach level 47 in Farming you should complete the Garden of Tranquility quest. The reward includes 1 4-dose potion that changes regular compost into supercompost (use this on the compost bin!).  This should kick-start your Farming into growing watermelons and making super compost from them.


 * The Thieving skill is closely tied to the Farming skill. This is because it is nearly impossible to buy (from stores) the seeds you'll need to train in this skill.  The easiest way to acquire seeds is to pickpocket the master farmers located throughout Runescape.  Therefore, once players reach a Thieving level of 38, when you need to level up your theiving skill, pickpocketing the master farmers is highly recommended.


 * The Allotment patch and Fruit tree patch in Catherby are conveniently located near the fishing spot, bank, a range, and the Camelot teleport. Whenever you're in Catherby to fish, go ahead and keep things growing in your garden.  You can easily check all patches from either the fishing spots (for the Fruit Tree patch) or from the cooking range (allotment patch).  You won't gain experience terribly quickly this way, but it does provide you the ability to level multiple skills without much extra effort.

Trivia

 * 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.