First time with potatoes, need tips

[FRANKDREBIN]

Hello there, I´d want some help (not cheating/modding tho).

I just started a new save and on the first days there was this Grimme Ventor 4150 with 50% off - For me is one of the coolest machines of the game - so I couldn´t help but buying it so the save will be potato-oriented.

I got this long strip of land with potatoes already on it, playing in zielonka so the land is very cheap. I already harvested 50% of the field and started some Soup production (I skipped the chips production because I don´t want to work with canola or sunflower just now). Here are my questions:

1- I know you can use the harvested potatoes instead of seeds. How? And how many liters of them to plant on 2 ha land? Do you need to keep it on a silo before or can throw in the soil?

2- I read that you can use the Grimme 4150 also to plant, how? and do you do it during the harvesting letting go some of the potatoes on field? I don´t see how it would work, it would throw away all my harvest.

3- I would like to raise some animals (when money allows me to). Im used to sheeps but pigs would be the obvious choice since they can eat the goods and produce fertilizer. But feeding them potatoes is only 5% of health? Would they produce too few manure if they eat only potatoes that I´d have to buy pig ration? (again, I don´t want to work with other crops at the moment)

4- Also I don´t want to lime the field to save time and money on machinery, how much % of my yeld will be down? the same for weeds, if you had to consider abandoning only one stage, which would be?

[illgib]

There are two potato planter that works both with seeds and potatoes aswell, but they eat seeds like candies.

Pigs feed depends on your difficulty, on easy just buy it, the amount of space and work required to feed them it's not worth the struggle and it's way cheaper, you'll get an huge amount of money back selling back a couple of mature pigs.

Personally i disable lime and weeds, there's a small yeld malus not doing, but if you're not goin' to use them anyway just disable and get the small bonus as you have made it.
I even found a no rolling mod finally, the 2% yeld bonus doesn't click for me.

[FRANKDREBIN]

Im playing on hard.
I didn´t want the pigs to get money reselling them, i wanted only a different thing to do when I was bored with the fields and mainly the fertilizer (and later maybe a BGA) but if I feed them with potato only will the production be much lower than if I buy the processed food?

How do I load the planter with potatoes? Just drive to a pile of them on the field or throw it with the 4150? Well I think Im gonna buy the cheaper one and try

[ProviD]

I have to admit that my experience with root crops are limited to occasional harvesting contracts but few things are pretty universal across the game:

Originally posted by Thiago SB:

1- I know you can use the harvested potatoes instead of seeds. How? And how many liters of them to plant on 2 ha land? Do you need to keep it on a silo before or can throw in the soil?

You need potato planter. While you've prolly figured out that you can't make your own "big bags of potato" (to allow loading straight from the bag by key-press), you can use any bucket/tipper/auger/conveyer system you have available to tip some of your 'loose potatoes' into the planter. This process works just like filling a spreader by lifting a bag over it and letting produce fall in. Make sure you aim into the machine and not next to it. Buckets do not have that Spill Preventer the bags have!

Unfortunately I can't help you with the math on how much potato you need for planting.

Originally posted by illgib:

There are two potato planter that works both with seeds and potatoes aswell, but they eat seeds like candies.

This is noted by many players. If you're planting potatos using "Seeds" (mandatory for 1st run if you don't have leftovers ready from harvest or contract), it's going to be crazy expensive. Interesting way to highlight how specializing in potato can/could be beneficial! (and math checks out, when each potato plant can multiply itself ~5-20 times in the next harvest..)

Originally posted by Thiago SB:

2- I read that you can use the Grimme 4150 also to plant, how? and do you do it during the harvesting letting go some of the potatoes on field? I don´t see how it would work, it would throw away all my harvest.

Not to discount this but.. Are you sure this is correct? Can't find anything about this via quick Google search overview.. Mods included.

Originally posted by Thiago SB:

4- Also I don´t want to lime the field to save time and money on machinery, how much % of my yeld will be down? the same for weeds, if you had to consider abandoning only one stage, which would be?

I play with Precision Farming so I've never actually paid attention to these in normal mode but according to THIS - "Improving Yield on Farming Sim Academy"[www.farming-simulator.com], the loss on Not Liming is ~15%. You should note that once limed, it will last for 3 harvests so the investment is spread over multiple income seasons!

Weeds count for ~20%. Logically, smaller weeds are easier to handle. Also note spraying herbicide gives a small 'penalty' to yield compared to mechanical weeding (loss of growing crops due herbicide). Though difference between 20% and 18% isn't all that noticeable.

When it comes to weeding, you have few options:
1 - Weeding right after planting. Any tool. Cheat-y, but it works.
2 - During 1st grow stage. You can drive over the crops with any wheels. Any tool.
3 - Later on with Narrow wheels using right tools (weeder, up to small/hoe, up to medium/sprayer, up to large weeds)

So, whatever you do: you should NOT neglect the field prep work if at all possible!

[FRANKDREBIN]

Thanks for the tips!

I just saw a video on youtube that you can store your potatoes in the train storage silo. Perhaps it will come handy to me. So I´ll save a bit of this harvest there for the next planting instead of keeping it into the harvester or putting on the ground. The storage silo has an opening at the ceiling and would be easier to load the planter. The bad side is that I´d have to make a lot of trips there so perhaps I´d do better with the bigger most expensive planter.

Originally posted by ProviD:

Originally posted by Thiago SB:

2- I read that you can use the Grimme 4150 also to plant, how? and do you do it during the harvesting letting go some of the potatoes on field? I don´t see how it would work, it would throw away all my harvest.

Not to discount this but.. Are you sure this is correct? Can't find anything about this via quick Google search overview.. Mods included.

I thought it was weird too when I read, that´s why I was confuse:

"Harvesters like the Grimme Ventor 4150 will harvest and plant potatoes at the same time for you. However, this vehicle doesn't come cheaply, so make sure you can afford it."

https://racinggames.gg/misc/farming-simulator-22-potatoes-complete-guide-how-to-grow-sell-store-more/

[ProviD]

Huh.
I'm pretty sure that they've made a slight mistake there...

Been trying to find IRL specifics on 4150 and it doesn't look like there's option for planting or making new rows.

And I don't recall seeing 4150 in the games planter category. This alone would be a big tell as stuff appears in the categories based on what they're tagged in. Multiple tags = entries in different categories. (For example some rollers or cutters can be used as mulchers etc.)

[FRANKDREBIN]

Yeah I´m playing with helping

Originally posted by ProviD:

Huh.
I'm pretty sure that they've made a slight mistake there...

I guess so.
So Ill wait for the bigger planter to appear on sale.

Saved 22,5k liters of potato on the train silo to see how much I need for the next planting, the rest will become Zup Zup Zup. I turnoff weeds and lime for the sake of a quicker progression on the start of the save, maybe Ill turn it on again later, or get used to don´t having it.

Edit: Skipped two days after the harvest and the GRIMME GL 860 appeared on a 58% sale. Im lucky this save

[FRANKDREBIN]

Originally posted by ProviD:

Unfortunately I can't help you with the math on how much potato you need for planting.

EDIT:
I just planted with the GL 860 compacta. It has a 8000 L capacity. My AI pawn spent a little bit more than me. I used almost completely 2 tanks of the compacta. It was approx 16k liters

This field gave me around 160k - 180K on first harvest so it´s approx xxxxxxxxxxx of potatoes to plant on a field that gives you 160k back, so i´ll save something around 10% of the next harvest to use as seeds for the same field.

[illgib]

Yep in general root crops have an high yeld, the donwside it's very small machines, if you don't wanna relay on mods, the bigger ones are crazy expensive, even if aren't really that big regarding harvesting width.

[FRANKDREBIN]

Originally posted by illgib:

Yep in general root crops have an high yeld, the donwside it's very small machines, if you don't wanna relay on mods, the bigger ones are crazy expensive, even if aren't really that big regarding harvesting width.

Yeah I tried to play with carrots yesterday, the only dewulff harvester that had a tank was painfully slow and collected one row each time. It was like cutting a football field with a nail scissor. So I rented the big one that got 4-5 rows and drove alongside the AI worker it was a bit better but took time too.

Im only playing with potatoes because I got on the first day of the game the Ventor 4150 "cheap" for 299k... this is still some money starting a game on level hard but the grind is absolutely bearable with this big one. Also got big stuff for fertilizing and the best planter, the plowing I let to the AI do.


Just bought another terrain already ploughed and fertilized and I will use the potatoes on silo to plant, but It´ll take other couple of years to start making decent money.