When is speed-gro worth it?

[Jack]

It is hard for me to decide whether to spend an obscene amount of money on quality speed-gro, because the tooltip is vague and seems untrustworthy. I tested it on strawberries in Spring to try to get an extra harvest out of them, but I realized later that it didn't work on multi-harvest crops (pls fix!). Anyway I would like to know what it means when it claims to boost speed by "at least 25%". I assumed this would work on a per-crop basis, but all of my strawberry plants matured simultaneously, slightly ahead of schedule.

[NotThatHarkness]

For crops that have multiple harvests, the speed-go only affects the growth time up to the first harvest. It doesn't affect subsequent harvests.

For other crops, it speeds up the growth too. Assuming you keep the ground tile planted each day, speed-gro will work all season.

So, to get a full season's worth of effect, only use on ground you'll be planing single harvest crops and then replanting the whole season. Depending on the crop, if you can get another planting and harvest in (of anything), then it could be worth the expense. However, you'd have to know the normal and accelerated harvest times of the crop in question, and I don't know if that information is in the wiki yet.

I've done some experimenting, but that was after I took Agriculturalist, which supposedly increases growth times by 10% but more acts like deluxe speed-gro as far as I can tell.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/413150/discussions/0/405693392930981246/

I haven't timed harvest length of deluxe speed-gro without Agriculturalist. I'd need to start a new game or edit my save file which I don't want to do.

[Magic Mike]

Surprisingly this game is pretty broken both in mechanics and in actual game disrupting bugs. In general fertilizers are way too expensive to even considering buying, also what's the point of those soil retaining thingies? Early on they are quite expensive you won't have the money to use them, and later on you get sprinklers, never bought or crafted a single of those.

Don't waste your money on Speed-Gros, the fallacy is about using Speed-Gro to cycle one extra harvest for some season plants but the trick is that you are still paying for the seeds of that extra harvest, so practically you are using that profit to recover what you invested in the Speed gro, aka you got nothing.

[anonymous316]

Soil retaining soil and the basic soil stuff is super easy and cheap to make though, for example the first tier retaining soil is made of just rocks lol

[Dorin]

I only use deluxe speed-gro for all my crops because I process everything into artisan goods.

[The_Pastmaster]

Originally posted by Magic Mike:

Surprisingly this game is pretty broken both in mechanics and in actual game disrupting bugs. In general fertilizers are way too expensive to even considering buying, also what's the point of those soil retaining thingies? Early on they are quite expensive you won't have the money to use them, and later on you get sprinklers, never bought or crafted a single of those.

Don't waste your money on Speed-Gros, the fallacy is about using Speed-Gro to cycle one extra harvest for some season plants but the trick is that you are still paying for the seeds of that extra harvest, so practically you are using that profit to recover what you invested in the Speed gro, aka you got nothing.

Well if you BUY fertilizer then that's what you're doing wrong. Craft them. The basic Fertilizer costs 2 Sap to make. I have a stack of 500 that's been sitting in my cest for three seasons. XD
Speed Grow isn't THAT much more difficult. A clam shell and pine tar. I have 10 pine trees with tappers on them working 24/7 making the stuff. Clams you can get from the beach in the spring and/or summer.

[Proteus]

Speed-Gro has one special use however:
If season end is approaching and (after harvesting a field) you have one crop that would become harvestable just one day after season end (and that is either valuable enough, or that you need (for example for community center bundles)
In this case the use of Speed-Gro is a good idea

[Amicus]

Buying Fertilizer CAN be worth it, but only on certain crops. Have been playing with a spreadsheet to have a way to see if its worth it if I have left over cash after buying seeds at the start of a season -

http://community.playstarbound.com/threads/irr-rate-of-return-for-profit-and-other-crop-research.110047/

And i complied the results on an image for comparison - http://imgur.com/8wemNHu

For quite a lot of crops it doesn't make much difference, and you can lose money if you don't preserve or keg them. For some, using the Deluxe speed grow fertilizer will gain a extra harvest or two, which does make enough of a difference to make it worthwhile buying it if you don't have enough crafted - especially for hops and starfruit.

Doesn't give a full picture however as some crops will gain the same number of crops per season if you use Speed grow instead of Deluxe speed grow. I'm going to have a play around with the crop planner and try to do a definite list when I have the spare time. The values for basic and quality fertilizer factor in the chance of silver and gold star crops, but if you were going the artisan route, probably wouldn't want too many of those.

As Magic Mike said, it's not usually worth it. But if you know the times it is, then you do get a some profit.

[Magic Mike]

Originally posted by The_Pastmaster:

Well if you BUY fertilizer then that's what you're doing wrong. Craft them. ..A clam shell and pine tar. I have 10 pine trees with tappers on them working 24/7 making the stuff. Clams you can get from the beach in the spring and/or summer.

Originally posted by Morgath:

Buying Fertilizer CAN be worth it, but only on certain crops. Have been playing with a spreadsheet to have a way to see if its worth it if I have left over cash after buying seeds at the start of a season -
...
And i complied the results on an image for comparison - http://imgur.com/8wemNHu
..
As Magic Mike said, it's not usually worth it. But if you know the times it is, then you do get a some profit.

The thing about comparing Speed-Gros is that you have to consider how much you could have gotten by selling the ingredients themselves, Speed Gro = Clam(50g~75g) + Pine Tar (100g) = [150g~175g] , Deluxe S.-G. = Coral(80g~120g) + Oak Resin (150g) = [230g~ 270g(!)], so if we are talking about trying to get profits with'em I believe it's better to use their Store prices (100g and 150g respectively).

So I guess the calculation spreads the fertilizer's cost along the full season for the tile applied or how the fertilizer's costs are involved in the calculation?

[Daniel_USA]

Originally posted by Morgath:

Buying Fertilizer CAN be worth it, but only on certain crops. Have been playing with a spreadsheet to have a way to see if its worth it if I have left over cash after buying seeds at the start of a season -

http://community.playstarbound.com/threads/irr-rate-of-return-for-profit-and-other-crop-research.110047/

Finally a spreadsheet, thanks!


Deluxe Speed Grow I find is better than fertilizer simply because I can harvest and plant more crops per month.

I don't even worry about fertilzer anymore.

PS Just Buy it from Pierre.

[Jack]

Thanks for the insight, it seems that speed-gro is as useless as I suspected. I think that if it was patched to apply to multi-harvest crops it would definitely be worth it, such as for strawberries with their 4-day regrow time being shaved down to just 2 or 3 days per harvest. 2 sap regular fertilizer seems to be the way to go both in terms of investment cost and effectiveness.

[Amicus]

Originally posted by Magic Mike:

The thing about comparing Speed-Gros is that you have to consider how much you could have gotten by selling the ingredients themselves, Speed Gro = Clam(50g~75g) + Pine Tar (100g) = [150g~175g] , Deluxe S.-G. = Coral(80g~120g) + Oak Resin (150g) = [230g~ 270g(!)], so if we are talking about trying to get profits with'em I believe it's better to use their Store prices (100g and 150g respectively).

So I guess the calculation spreads the fertilizer's cost along the full season for the tile applied or how the fertilizer's costs are involved in the calculation?

That's a good point about the selling prices of the ingredients, never thought about it that way. Not sure exactly how the costs are calculated.

Originally posted by Aristocrates:

Thanks for the insight, it seems that speed-gro is as useless as I suspected. I think that if it was patched to apply to multi-harvest crops it would definitely be worth it, such as for strawberries with their 4-day regrow time being shaved down to just 2 or 3 days per harvest. 2 sap regular fertilizer seems to be the way to go both in terms of investment cost and effectiveness.

Definitely more a situational thing than to use all the time.

Btw, I mentioned before I would work out the details of exactly how many harvests you could get with each fertilizer, so improved my last image to include them, along with flowers and the last date for planting. Hope people find it useful.

http://imgur.com/CLkr3Tq