Are Parsnips the best spring crop?

[Snowy Sprout]

Considering the needs to raise farming XP, have early energy food, and have gifts most people will like, I think a strong case could be made for spamming parsnips more than any other crop in first spring.

What are the drawbacks, and what direct comparisons can we make to decide if other choices might be better?

[Sszl]

I usually do a mix of parsnips and potatoes in first spring. I like potatoes for early cash and you can sometimes get more than one potato per plant. By the way - love your posts on your challenge runs. Been following them for last couple weeks. thanks!

[Snowy Sprout]

To be fair, we have to consider how much time/work they are to grow, how much they cost, and how much we get out of them compared to any other choice.

The reason I thought of this was because I considered buying an apple tree in spring, for the sake of having daily apples to pick in fall for giving as gifts. But then I remembered that while apples are universally liked, parsnips are liked by all but five people. And while an apple tree costs $4000 and gives you 28 apples, you could get 200 parsnips for the same price. But then again, you'd have to water each parsnip for four days, and that's a lot of work.

Still, that would get you almost to level 5 farming skill all by itself. And really, 200 parsnips is only like 34 parsnips at a time for six harvests in the month, and that leaves you six spare spaces to plant something else and still only use one watering can of energy.

(I always think of farming in terms of rows of 40 plants because that's one watering can's worth of work. Don't you?)

[Snowy Sprout]

Originally posted by Woofus:

I usually do a mix of parsnips and potatoes in first spring. I like potatoes for early cash and you can sometimes get more than one potato per plant. By the way - love your posts on your challenge runs. Been following them for last couple weeks. thanks!

Gosh, thanks! :D Please feel free to comment any time! I like feedback and new perspectives, and to know if anyone is interested.

[Snowy Sprout]

So comparing potatoes to parsnips: for the same $4000 we could buy 80 potato seeds, which might get us 120 potatoes if we're lucky, and will get us most of the way to level 4 farming.

But 80 potatoes are super easy to water, compared to 200 parsnips.

The question is whether you're growing this crop to be gifts, or to be cash. I was thinking in terms of gifts because I'm comparing it to an apple tree.

[Snowy Sprout]

Potatoes and parsnips have the same energy/health value, so if we're thinking in terms of food to bring mining etc. then the parsnips would be better because they're cheaper and faster.

Although, once salmonberry season comes, those are obviously much better to use as food since they also have the same energy/health value.

[Snowy Sprout]

I guess an important question is: How much do you want to water in first spring?
How much time and energy feels good to invest in taking care of all the crops on your farm?

For me, I tend to think of the range of one scarecrow as the maximum I'm willing to tend on any farm. That's about four watering cans' worth, laid out the way I do them in circles of eight each so there's space for the "someday sprinklers" to go in the middle.

Four watering cans takes more than half my daily energy, and pretty much all of the morning to do. Is it worth it to do that much work? Compared to spending the morning fishing or mining or chopping trees?

[Snowy Sprout]

I think i'm gonna do a quick test comparison, and see how many fish I could catch in the same time slot that I would spend watering 80 potatoes, and see which one gets better money for me. Obviously fishing is dependent on skill, but I'm a pretty fair fisher. Not perfect but I usually catch stuff, except maybe catfish.

BRB, i'm gonna start two comparison worlds and report back.

[NBOX21]

Funnily enough, Lewis gives you 15 parsnip seeds when you start a new game. That's because crows only eat your crops when there are at least 16 crops growing on your farm, so by giving you only 15 seeds, you can grow your first lot of crops without worry considering you don't gain access to the scarecrow recipe until farming level 1.

Which is why I usually plant all my parsnip seeds at the start, and wait until my first harvest before I start investing any money into new seeds for my farm. I learned that the hard way...

[Snowy Sprout]

Originally posted by NBOX21:

Funnily enough, Lewis gives you 15 parsnip seeds when you start a new game. That's because crows only eat your crops when there are at least 16 crops growing on your farm, so by giving you only 15 seeds, you can grow your first lot of crops without worry considering you don't gain access to the scarecrow recipe until farming level 1. :corncob:

Which is why I usually plant all my parsnip seeds at the start, and wait until my first harvest before I start investing any money into new seeds for my farm. I learned that the hard way...

This is very true! And a good strategy. It's not what I did in this comparison, but I didn't want to spend more time than I had to on it.

[Snowy Sprout]

Phase One: Potatoes

Earned the money to buy 80 potato seeds by day 3.
Got them planted, and watered until harvest on day 9.
Lost 4 plants to crows. Forgot to count exactly how many potatoes I harvested.
Earned $7500 and reached level 3 farming overnight.
The work took me about 3/4 of my energy daily, and took until about 8am.

So for a fair comparison I would walk to the best fishing spot and fish until 8am for six days to see if i could earn $3500. I'm pretty sure that the walking time would make it impossible to hit that goal. I might squeak it out if combined all ten hours into one day of fishing, but that isn't exactly a one-to-one comparison, since I did walk to my gardening spot every morning.

I think for the 200 parsnips comparison I should do two crops of 100 each, which will be ready to harvest on day 11.

[Dimensional Traveler]

I actually made a spreadsheet to compare the profits from crops based on $/day growing & processing, taking into account cost of seed, avg # of crops from one seed, and the base sell price.

For spring crops:
Ancient Fruit $120.00/day
Tea Leaves $51.83/day
Coffee Bean -$9.33
Strawberry $17.86
Rhubarb $9.23
Cherry -$7.12 (but that's just one season)
Kale $6.67
Cauliflower $7.92
Garlic $5.00
Green Bean $5.14
Potato $5.00
Apricot -$3.68 (same note as Cherry)
Parsnip $3.75
Rice (Unmilled) -$1.67
Rice (Milled) $8.57
Blue Jazz $2.86
Tulip $1.67

That's just the unprocessed crops, things get much better when putting in a keg or preserves jar even taking into account the additional time.

Based on this your best spring crop first year is Cauliflower.

[Nakos]

Parsnips. Parsnips are the ONLY Spring crop.

You will join us.

Prepare to be assimilated.

Parsnips ... parsnips .... parsnips....

[Snowy Sprout]

Okay, this was unexpected!

As I said, I did parsnips in several harvests, not just one. That gave unpredicted advantages.
Instead of selling the gift parsnips, i was able to plant them and count them towards my 200.

Because they got harvested a day earlier than the next crop, I was able to make a scarecrow, so I only lost two parsnips. I also got the recipe for basic fertilizer.

So I planted 15 on the first day, 96 on day two, and 89 on day five. The last 89 got fertilizer.

I reached farming level 4.
I was done watering by 8:20 every morning, except it also rained two extra days so I had some help there. The energy bar didn't seem all that much lower than when I did potatoes, because it was really only 9 or 16 more, most days, if it didn't rain.

When I sold them on day 11, the profit for the parsnips was $7,555!

The parsnips were slightly MORE valuable than the potatoes! Probably thanks to the fertilizer, but I call that a fair advantage. One might disagree with me. That is a personal judgement call.

But I say that parsnips won that particular contest!

Given that the original motivation for the contest was the wish to give gifts, and comparing the investment of $4000 for an apple tree to investing the same money into crops, the parsnips were FAR and away the winner because they produced 200 gifts to give, very many of which had silver or gold stars, compared to getting maybe 115 potatoes with only a few having silver stars, or 28 apples with no stars.

[Snowy Sprout]

Originally posted by Dimensional Traveler:

I actually made a spreadsheet to compare the profits from crops based on $/day growing & processing, taking into account cost of seed, avg # of crops from one seed, and the base sell price.
...
Based on this your best spring crop first year is Cauliflower.

While I do not dispute any of your numbers, in the practical test I just did parsnips actually won. The thing is, sometimes pure numbers don't take everything into account. And sometimes different parameters are valued highest compared to other times.

Obviously the circumstances for my experiment may not fit for all playthroughs. But it was educational for me!

[Snowy Sprout]

Originally posted by Nakos:

Parsnips. Parsnips are the ONLY Spring crop.

You will join us.

Prepare to be assimilated.

You are not far from correct!