Certain fields never get ready to harvest

[SlowMoJoe]

My butter melon, cotton simulacrum, and silicon plant (I'm translating from German) fields stay at "Yield: 0/XXX". I have no fertilizer yet (dunno how to find or make any, duh), and the soil is 75% suitable. What should I be doing differently?

[Jaggid Edje]

Is it cold? Each plant has a minimum temperature below which it will not grow, which includes progressing to harvest. Most plants that threshold is 0° C (32° F), but for some it is lower.

If you check the tooltip for the field in the Farm menu, it says what this temperature is. It also tells you what the temperature threshold is where the plant will actually take damage (and eventually die) from the cold.

In addition to that, harvestable plants (vs. those that are cut to harvest) produce 0 until they are actually ready to harvest. So you have to wait until the harvest is ready. The time frame for that to happen is also on the tooltip.
And, with 75% soil quality, you need to also factor in a slower harvest rate than what the tooltip shows. The tooltip time is for 100% soil quality.

[SlowMoJoe]

It was minutes after posting the question that suddenly the cotton and silicon fiekds showed crops read for harvest. I apologize for my lack of patience. Thanks for trying to help

[Elgar]

Originally posted by SlowMoJoe:

I have no fertilizer yet (dunno how to find or make any, duh),

You have to "observe" the "Manure" dropped by herbivores and after that you'll be able to fertilize fields using this manure. Manure dropped by wild animals has to be manually tagged for "Use" in their settings each time, but if you tame herbivores they'll drop manure every day that will be automatically tagged for "Use", so your survivors will automatically pick them up.