I already wrote about Ancient Seeds and Fruit in this guide and how to grow this plant successfully and efficiently on Ginger Island. Today I will talk about the best fertilizers for growing this plant and how to get them.
Key Things about Ancient Seeds and Fruits
There are multiple methods to acquire Ancient Seeds. The first approach is to donate an Ancient Seed to the museum, after which Gunther will provide you with a recipe to craft additional Ancient Seeds using one of them. Another way is to purchase them from a traveling merchant for a price range of 100-1,000 gold or create them with a Seed Maker.
Once you have Ancient Seeds, you can plant them during the Spring, Summer, or Fall seasons. It will take a total of 28 days for them to mature and reach full growth, and from then, the fruit will regrow every week.
Fertilizers for Ancient Seeds
There are three types of fertilizers in Stardew Valley, well for plants, as there is also one for wild trees, so there are four types of fertilizers in total. They are:
- Fertilizer – Improves soil quality and increases chances for better-quality crops.
– Retaining Soil– Keeps the soil watered.
– Speed-Gro– Increases the growth rate.
– Tree Fertilizer – Increases the growth rate of wild trees (it doesn’t work on fruit trees).
You can place only one fertilizer on a tile. it’s wisest to pick the one that suits the best to your situation. If you have trouble with watering, like you need to water many tiles, retaining soil is the best pick.
If you want to grow Ancient Fruits faster, speed-gro is the right option for the job.
And if you want to increase the quality of Ancient Fruits and have better earnings, fertilizer is the best one.
Detailed Information about Stardew Valley’s Fertilizers
To make things easier for you, I have compiled a table with valuable information on every fertilizer in the game, including when to use it and how to obtain it, etc:
| Name | When to use it | Recipe Source | Ingredients | Buying price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic Fertilizer | Before the seed sprouts | Farming level 1 | 2 Sap | 100 |
| Quality Fertilizer | Before the seed sprouts | Farming level 9 | 2 Saps 1 Fish (any) | 150 |
| Deluxe Fertilizer | Before or after planting | Qi’s walnut room for 20 Qi-gem | 40 Saps 1 Iridium Bar | Can’t be bought |
| Basic Retaining Soil | Before or after planting | Farming level 4 | 2 Stones | 100 |
| Quality Retaining Soil | Before or after planting | Farming level 7 | 3 Stones 1 Clay | 150 |
| Deluxe Retaining Soil | Before or after planting | Island trader fr 50 cinder shards | 5 Stones 3 Fibers 1 Clay | Can’t be bought |
| Basic Speed-Gro | Before or after planting | Farming level 3 | 1 Pine Tar 1 Calm | 100 |
| Quality Speed-Gro | Before or after planting | Farming level 8 | 1 Oak Resin 1 Coral | 150 |
| Deluxe Speed-Gro | Before or after planting | Qi’s walnut room for 30 Qi-gem | 1 Radioactive ore 3 Bone fragments 1 Solar Essence | Can’t be bought |
| Tree Fertilizer | After planting tree seeds | Foraging level 7 | 5 Fibers 5 Stones | Can’t be bought |
Which Fertilizers are Best for Growing Ancient Seeds
To better understand and figure this out together, here is the table specifically for Ancient Fruits (including Speed-Gro as Fertilizer improves quality which I’ll list anyway). Plus I won’t include agriculturist, tiler, and artisan skills:
| Regular quality Ancient Fruit | 550g |
|---|---|
| Silver quality Ancient Fruit | 687g |
| Gold quality Ancient Fruit | 825g |
| Iridium quality Ancient Fruit | 1,100g |
| Ancient Fruit Jelly | 1,150g |
| Regular quality Ancient Fruit Wine | 1,650g |
| Silver quality Ancient Fruit Wine | 2,062g |
| Gold quality Ancient Fruit Wine | 2,475g |
| Iridium quality Ancient Fruit Wine | 3,300g |
The conclusion is that it is best to save Ancient Fruit and make some wine first because it’s the most profitable thing to do. Also, the fruit’s quality doesn’t impact the quality of the wine, and making wine from Ancient fruit is the best option. So Quality Fertilizers are not so good in that case.
So that leaves Speed-Gro (as you probably already have sprinklers and retaining soil is unnecessary). Keep in mind that the Speed-Gro works only for the plant’s maturing:
| Regular growing speed | 28 days |
|---|---|
| Speed-Gro | 24 days |
| Quality Speed-Gro | 21 days |
| Deluxe Speed-Gro | 18 days |
Speed-Gro is the best fertilizer for Ancient Fruit as you can produce wine faster and earn money.
How to Grow Ancient Seeds
The best way to grow Ancient Seeds and make an Ancient Fruit farm is by following the “plant, grow, reproduce” technique.
Basically, to get started, all you need is one or more ancient fruits and a Seed Maker (one is enough if you only have one plant, but you can gradually increase the number as you acquire more plants). As the fruit regrows every 7 days, you can simply put some fruits in Seed Makers to generate more seeds. You can repeat this process every seven days when the ancient fruit grows again. By following this method, you can easily set up an ancient fruit farm. Don’t forget to save some of the fruits for selling or making artisan goods, and use the rest for seed generation.
The best place for growing Ancient Fruits is either the Greenhouse or Island Farm.
Here you can read the article about growing Ancient Fruits on the Island farm.
It’s unprofitable to plant Ancient Fruit on your regular farm, especially in summer and fall, as the plant will die during winter. Of course, if you are in late-game that’s not a problem because you won’t feel the financial impact as you would in early and mid-game.
Conclusion
The two most important things about Ancient fruit are to use the “Plant, grow, reproduce” technique and that Speed-Gro is a go-to option for them when it comes to fertilizers. However, if you want to sell raw crops, feel free to use Fertilizers to improve the quality.