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 :


 * Picking a vegetable from one of the non player owned fields dotted around RuneScape.
 * Pickpocketing farmers with level 10 thieving, which will occasionally give potato seeds.
 * Pickpocketing Master farmers (Including Martin the Master Gardener) with level 38 thieving for all seeds except tree, fruit tree and calquat seeds.
 * Buying from Olivia who runs the seed stall in Draynor Village.
 * Stealing from Olivia's stall with level 27 thieving.
 * Bird nests give tree and fruit tree seeds.
 * from either random events in woodcutting, or
 * trading mole claws / mole skin with Wyson the Gardener at Falador park, or
 * killing Molanisks with level 39 slayer for mole claws.
 * Playing Managing Miscellania Minigame for herb seeds, and bird nests. Being assigned to cut maple trees or pick flax, bird nests or herb seeds will be awarded respectively.
 * Monster drops. Ogres, Moss giants, and Dagganoths have good seed drops.
 * Catching implings, especially Nature impling.
 * Foraged by a Compost mound.
 * Trading with players.

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

How to get started
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 near any allotment patch (see section on tools). Your tools can be stored by the Tool Leprechaun found at each patch, just take them out whenever you need (all tool leprechaun can get access to your tools)

Weeds and compost
Before you can plant anything, you need to clear your patch of weeds. Weeds should be cleared using a rake. Raking a patch will produce 3 sets of weeds. Compost can be made by putting weeds into Compost Bins, along with any crops harvested. Once the Compost Bin is full of 15 compostable items, close the lid, and it will start to form compost, taking about an hour. When compost is ready, take 15 empty buckets, open the lid of the Compost Bin and use the buckets with it. Compost Bins can also be used to make super compost (see section below). You can also obtain compost from a farming shop or compost mound.

Planting
Back to the cleared allotment patch. First, compost shuold be added. Second, seeds are planted in the patch with a seed dibber. Finally, water the patch with a watering can if it needs it (see section below on keeping your crops alive). Normally only one seed is needed to plant something, except for allotment patches (3 seeds) and hop patches (4 seeds). Don't hang around waiting for them to grow, they take quite a while. The approximate growing time can be found in the seeds table below. Come back later to harvest the crops.

Harvesting
You can harvest grown crops by clicking on the patch. Harvesting crops will normally require a spade in your inventory, except for 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. Sacks and Baskets (see tools section) can be used to carry more produce back to the bank.

Repeating farming in a patch
A patch will be normally be cleared for new crops after it has been harvested, with the exceptions of trees and bushes. If you do not want to wait for the berries on a bush to regrow, the patch can be cleared for digging by using a spade on it. Wood and fruit trees 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.

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.

Prevention

 * Pay a gardener to watch over your crop. The cost varies, and is shown in the seed table. It is recommended you do this for expensive seeds such as trees. Gardeners can be paid with noted items.
 * Certain vegetables can be protected by certain fully grown flowers (see the seed table below). If a protecting flower is planted at the same time as the crop they are to protect, it is wise to water both the flower and the allotment patch to increase their chance of survival. You can leave a fully grown flower alone to protect the next batch of vegetables planted.
 * Compost and supercompost both reduce the chance that a crop will become diseased, with supercompost being more superior. They also increase the yield. If you can't protect your crops any other way, supercompost is recommended. If treated with supercompost, bushes are rarely diseased (about 1 in 10 die). Therefore, payments are not needed unless it absolutely has to grow.
 * Watering the patch with a watering can will stop a crop becoming diseased at the end of the current growing cycle only. Only allotment patches, flower patches and hop patches can be watered in this manner.

Cure

 * All crops except trees can be cured of disease by buying a bottle of plant cure, and using that on the crop. Plant cure can be bought from the gardener at each patch, or a farming shop.
 * Diseased trees 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.

Minor experience
In addition to experience shown in the seed table, 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.

What to grow?
Unless you have the farming level and money to plant lots of trees, growing mainly vegetables and herbs is a good way to get decent experience. Hops tend to get largely ignored, though you can plant them if passing. Bushes give good experience at higher levels. If you want quick experience, it is recommended to go around all of the patches using teleports. For more information, see the Crop run guide. If you are purely interested in the experience and not the crop, grow the highest level crop you can on a patch and drop the crop to avoid banking time.

Other Sources of Farming Experience

 * Magic secateurs should always be used when appropriate to increase the yield, and therefore the experience gained.
 * Planting plants in a player-owned house's garden helps with more farming experience, however far more expensive.
 * A cheaper way 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.

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 fill a plant pot with earth and putting a tree seed into a plant pot.
 * Seed dibber - to plant any seed except trees.
 * Watering can - to water vegetables, flowers, and hops as well as tree seedlings.
 * Compost and Super compost - for helping your plants to grow quicker, and reducing the chance they will become diseased.
 * 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 tree seeds. When watered, the seedling grows into a sapling which can then be planted in a tree or fruit tree patch.
 * 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
 * Plant cure - for curing any crop but trees of disease.

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 inventory. 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. Seedlings and saplings are not notable or tradeable.

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. Compost bins take 15 items, then you must close the lid and come back an hour later for 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(talk to him) in Catherby, or collected from the plants south of Brimhaven. Jangerberries can be collected from the Ogre Island west of Yanille.

The easist way to make supercompost is to grow watermelons, because when both patches have fully grown watermelon, most of the time there's more than 15 (for a whole batch of supercompost) so you end up with leftover watermelon that you can either sell, or use again for supercompost later.

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.)
 * A Dreadfowl will boost your farming by 1.
 * A Compost mound will boost your farming by 1 + 2% of your farming level.
 * A Stranger plant will boost your farming by 1 + 4% of your farming level.