Farming

During exploring, fighting aliens and gathering materials, you might get hungry or even injured. That's why it's always a good idea to keep some food and medics on you. One of the best ways in doing so is with farming. Crops can be planted and harvested for a variety of goods for crafting food that satisfies your hunger and fills stamina or medics which can cure diseases and regenerate your health.

Not every ingredient for high-tier medicals and food can be acquired through farming, most notably Purified Water and Eggs.

Unlike gathering plant products, farming does not yield experience points.

Prerequisites

To set up a farm you will need

• A Base or Capital Vessel with at least
  • A Small Constructor or better
  • A Food Processor
  • Energy
  • Oxygen
  • Some basic materials

Growing Crops

Farming requires an oxygenated radiation-free space

Any plant must be placed on a Growing Plot, with a Plant Grow Light in a 3 by 3 area above, centred on the block above the plant and the block it's in needs to oxygenated or else it will stop growing, but continue as soon as all of them are provided again. If the plant is radiated it will die. On planets with a breathable atmosphere, no oxygen must be provided with a Ventilator. Note that plants don't need to be watered and there is no way to do so anyway. To remove a plant use the Multitool.

Products

As of v1.10.1, there are 18 Sprouts that produce a total of 12 different products. Vegetables, Fruits, Grain and Natural Stimulant can be produced by multiple plants with different average yields per hour. The most efficient crops of these types are marked bold

A small functional farm

Sprout	Type	Growth time	Yield	Yield per hour
Blue Pepper Sprout	Vegetables	50 min	2	2.4
Wheat Sprout	Grain	40 min	6	9
Tomato Sprout	Vegetables	80 min	4	3
Pumpkin Sprout	Vegetables	145 min	8	3.31
Corn Sprout	Grain	70 min	12	10.29
Pearthing Sprout	Fruit	90 min	4	2.67
Space Kavae Sprout	Natural Stimulant	33 min	2	3.64
Aloe Vera Sprout	Herbal Leaves	40 min	1	1.5
Ahax Plant Sprout	Plant Protein	90 min	5	3.34
Akua Berry Sprout	Berries	74 min	4	3.24
Space Orange Sprout	Fruit	135 min	8	3.56
Alien Honey Plant Sprout	Natural Sweetener	62 min	2	1.94
Large Eggplant Sprout	Vegetables	31 min	1	1.94
Fiber Plant Sprout	Plant Fibers	43 min	8	11.16
Mushrooms Sprout	Mushrooms	110 min	4	2.18
Spice Sprout	Spice	50 min	3	3.6
Coffee Plant Sprout	Natural Stimulant	91 min	6	3.95
Big Alien Flower Sprout	Buds	27 min	1	2.23

Emergency Ration Farming Ratio

The best food type both in total market price and nutrition value is the Emergency Rations, which has the significant benefit of not requiring a Fridge to prevent perishing. The farmable ingredients required are 2 Buds, 4 Fruit, 15 Plant Protein, 3 Vegetables and 3 Spice plus 1 Purified Water (which can endlessly be absorbed from a body of water using a Water Generator at negligible fuel cost).

To optimize passive Emergency Ration farming when exploring, keeping yield amounts in mind as opposed to hourly rates, use the following ratio:

0.75 Pumpkin : 1 Space Orange : 2 Spice : 4 Big Alien Flower : 6 Ahax Plant

A single "set" thus uses 14 plots, with only 0.25 Pumpkin going to waste. You'll also gain excesses of anything you harvest in between Pumpkins (the slowest crop to mature).