Farming

Farming is a skill in which players grow crops using seeds and harvest useful items from them, or more commonly, harvest the plant itself. The crops grown range from the standard staples of vegetables, fruit trees, herbs, hops, to more exotic and unusual crops such as wood-bearing trees, cacti, and mushrooms. The harvested items have wide range of uses, but are mostly used to train Herblore or Cooking, or simply eaten as food. Many players sell their harvest for a significant profit.

Once players have reached the intermediate level range and beyond, they can begin to plant wood-bearing trees. Player grown trees function just like their standard equivalents, which can be chopped down and regenerate after a short period of time to yield Woodcutting experience and logs. Player grown woodcutting trees have the added benefit of being only accessible to the player who grew it, which means that players will not need to compete to gather their own tree's wood.

General overview
The first thing any player will do when they begin training this skill is to rake away the weeds from one of the many farming patches found scattered around RuneScape. Once cleared, players have the option of applying compost to the patch BEFORE planting their seeds, which will decrease the chance of the crop becoming diseased, and will also possibly increase the yield of the crop once it reaches maturity. Players can also cast the Fertile Soil spell from the Lunar spellbook at any point during the plant's growth cycle to apply supercompost.

Compost can be bought, but is not cheap; it is usually obtained by placing a total of 15 weeds or various other unwanted vegetables into one of the compost bins. Supercompost, which results in an even higher yield and further lowers chances of disease, is obtained by filling the compost bin with higher level farming produce such as pineapples, watermelons, calquats, coconuts, and high end herbs. Seeds are usually easy to obtain. They can be bought from players and stalls, stolen via Thieving or obtained as drops from an enormous variety of monsters. Any lower or intermediate level seed is usually dirt cheap, ranging from 1-20 coins each, while the higher level seeds, such as tree, fruit tree, and especially upper end herb seeds, are usually thousands of coins each, if not more.

After growing for a pre-set period of time crops will mature and can then be harvested, provided that the crops have not become diseased and died while growing. Once planted, crops grow even if the player is not online, so one can plant a seed and come back at any time. Once the crops are fully grown they will remain in the patch indefinitely until harvested; that is, they will not die once fully matured.

Although this would seem to imply that players can simply plant their seeds and go back to their lives, there is a problem with this tactic. At lower levels, unattended crops are extremely unlikely to live long enough to reach maturity unattended. Even at relatively high levels there will always be a significant chance that crops will sicken and die. Therefore, all levels are recommended to pay nearby gardeners to watch crops. Doing so prevents the selected crops from dying, thus guaranteeing their reaching maturity for harvest.

Gardeners all charge for their services, but not in coins. The price that they ask depends on the crop that the player asks them to watch. For example, the price for protecting a patch of potatoes is 2 buckets of compost while the price for protecting a patch of onions is 1 sack of potatoes. Unfortunately, Gardeners will not watch herbs or flowers. Players can, however, unlock a single herb patch which is perpetually protected from disease, for free, by completing My Arm's Big Adventure.

Getting Started
Note that it is a common mistake for players who are new to members and/or farming to wait next to their patch for the crop they have planted to mature to the point where it can be harvested. However, many crops take more than an hour to grow fully, and most introductory crops take over half an hour. Do not waste your time standing near the farming patches wondering when your crops will do anything; instead, find another skill to train nearby such as woodcutting or fishing, and check back in on your patch at regular intervals, usually about every 5–8 minutes, to water your patch and make sure it isn't diseased.

A good way to jumpstart your farming is to do the quest Fairy Tale I - Growing Pains. The experience reward will raise level 1 Farming to level 17. By completing this quest, players will also receive a pair of magic secateurs which, when worn will increase the yield of crops by 10% while harvesting.

An uncommon, but helpful item is the Amulet of Nature. It is tradeable in it's unenchanted form, but once enchanted cannot be traded. It can be bound to a patch by "using" the amulet on the patch. Once bound, and if worn, the amulet will alert you if your plant becomes diseased or has fully grown. You may also "rub" the amulet to check on your bound patch at any time. It can only be bound to one patch at a time, and you may only have one amulet. If worn when harvesting, the amulet will provide a 5% yield increase. This boost does NOT stack with the magic secatuers AND takes precedence over them, so if magic secatuers are available to you it is recommended that you unequip the amulet before harvesting.

See Farming training for more information on levelling up.

Tools
For farming there a certain tools you will need to use, whether its raking weeds from a plot using a rake or digging up dead plants with a spade. Below is a table of the basic tools and their uses.

You can buy a lot of these tools along with compost in farming shops located below.


 * North of Catherby
 * North-west of Port Phasmatys
 * North of Ardougne
 * South-east of Falador

Tool storage
At any farming patch you will come across a Tool leprechaun whose job is to look after your farming tools.



You can store the following:


 * 1 Rake.
 * 1 Seed dibber.
 * 1 Spade.
 * 1 Trowel.
 * 1 secateurs (enchanted also)
 * 1 watering can (8).
 * 1-4 scarecrows
 * 1-31 Bucket.
 * 1-255 Compost and Supercompost

Seeds
Seeds are essential in training the skill of farming, however, there are only a few ways in retrieving them. These include:
 * Pickpocketing Master Farmers
 * Stealing from Seed stalls
 * Monster drops
 * Bird's nests
 * Purchasing from other players

Compost
Patches treated with compost are less likely to become diseased.

To create compost you will need around 15 pieces of organic material, weeds and rotten fruit work. Put this in a Compost bin near a patch and close the lid and wait for around 60 minutes. Then, with an inventory of 15 empty buckets you can fill them all up with compost.

Supercompost is created in a similar way but the organic materials are different. For example you could use various herbs, berries and fruits. Supercompost also yields more crops than ordinary Compost.

Patches
There are many different patches where you can plant and grow different bushes, flowers, herbs, trees an so on. The patches are located throughout Gielinor.

Plants are categorised as:
 * Allotment
 * Herb Patch
 * Hops Patch
 * Fruit tree patch
 * Tree patch
 * Bush patch
 * Cactus patch

Allotment/Herb patches
Allotments are the most commonly used patches patches in the game. There are four allotment patches in total throughout Gielinor. Players may pay gardeners to protect vegetables and fruit, however it is not possible to protect the herb and flower patches. Gardeners are paid using other vegetables or produce the player has farmed or otherwise obtained.

Below is a table of their locations:

Below is a list of every allotment seed you can plant along with their respective levels to plant, protection payments, and experience from planting and harvesting.

Below is a list of every herb you can plant and their respective levels to plant, experience from planting, and uses.

Hops patches
These patches are used to get ingredients to brew different drinks via the Cooking skill. There are four hops patches, each with one gardener who will protect them for a price.


 * North of Lumbridge
 * North-west of Seer's Village
 * In Yanille
 * Isle of Entrana

Tree patches
These patches are the patches you can grow your own tree in for Woodcutting. To grow trees you need to plant them in a plant pot to get a sapling. After that you plant the pot in the tree patch. This grants a lot of experience, and is the second best amount of experience you can get in farming. There are five different tree patches.


 * Behind Lumbridge Castle
 * In Falador Park
 * In Varrock Palace
 * In Taverley
 * In Tree Gnome Stronghold (Near the Yew Tree)

All of them have a gardener, and it is recommended that you pay him to protect your tree. Below is a list of each tree you can plant, along with their respective levels to plant, growth time, and experience.

Fruit tree patches
Fruit tree patches provide some of the best training for farming. Farming fruit trees grants a lot of experience but it takes 12 hours to grow a single tree. There are five different fruit tree patches.


 * In Tree Gnome Stronghold (next to agility course)
 * East of Catherby
 * West of Tree Gnome Maze
 * North of Brimhaven
 * Lletya

These also have a gardener, and it is highly recommended that you pay them to protect your tree here. Below is a list of each fruit tree you can plant along with their respective levels to plant, growth time, protection payment, and experience.

Bush patches
These patches are not used very often, and can be found in 4 places around in 2007scape. The berries you get are used for Cooking and Herblore.


 * Outside Champion's Guild
 * In Rimmington
 * South of Ardougne
 * Isle of Etceteria (requires Throne of Miscellania)

There is also a gardener here to watch over your patch in return for payment.

Quest experience
It is possible to gain a total of 33,500 Farming experience by completing quests. Below is a list of quests that give farming experience:

Important things to remember
There are many different types of plants and farming crops you can farm, it just depends on your level and the location of the patches.

Try doing Fairytale I - Growing Pains quest as soon as possible in order to get the Magic Secateurs, which increase your harvesting output by 10%, or else use an amulet of nature, which provides a 5% yield increase, but NOT both, as they do not stack.

Hiscores
As of 03 August 2014, there are 287 players with 99. The highest-ranked player has a total of 192,451,317 Farming experience.

Trivia

 * Herbs, like allotments and hops, work as follows:
 * You start with 3 lives.
 * Each time you get an item, you roll the dice.
 * If you rolled unsuccessfully, you lose a life. When you've lost all 3 lives, the patch becomes empty.
 * So if you roll unsuccessfully every time, you'd still get 3 items.
 * In theory, if you rolled successfully every time, you'd get an infinite number of items.
 * If you use compost, you start with 4 lives instead. If you use supercompost, you start with 5 lives instead. Secateurs make you more likely to roll successfully, so you're statistically more likely to get more items, but not guaranteed.