Pao Pao Farming Guide: Every Crop, Seed and Fruit Tree

Your farm keeps the kitchen stocked with vegetables and fruit, but it doesn’t forgive neglect. A crop in a Simple Garden Bed that goes two days in a row without water dies overnight. Buy seeds and garden beds from the seed merchant in the City, and fruit tree saplings, Tree Beds, sprinklers and fertilizer from Haze, the farmer who lives in the Forest. The harvest goes straight into the dishes in the recipes guide.

How Farming Works

1. Place a garden bed. A Simple Garden Bed costs 100 coins from the seed merchant and holds one crop.
2. Dig the bed. Hold the button until the soil is turned.
3. Plant a seed. Pick any seed you’re carrying.
4. Water it. Watering a freshly planted seed starts its growth straight away, so plant and water on the same day.
5. Harvest. Once the crop is ripe, harvest it. A Simple Garden Bed empties after the harvest, so dig it again before you replant.

Water Every Day

Watered soil dries out every night. A crop in a Simple Garden Bed can miss one day of water, but if its bed stays dry for two days in a row, it dies overnight. The same goes for a seed you planted but never watered. Every day you water resets the count. Clear a dead plant and start again. Rain waters your beds for you, so a rainy day saves you a trip.

Growth is counted in days. Each night a watered crop moves one day closer to harvest, and Days to Harvest in the tables below is the number of nights it needs. A ripe crop doesn’t need water and waits in the bed until you collect it.

Seasons

Most crops and every fruit tree grow in Spring, Summer and Autumn. Eggplant grows all year, Winter included. A new game starts in Summer, and each season lasts 28 days, so the order runs Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring.

Harvest the other crops before the last day of Autumn. The moment Winter starts, every plant in a Simple Garden Bed except Eggplant dies, ripe or not. Fruit trees in a Tree Bed survive the winter but stop growing until Spring.

Every Crop

Days to Harvest counts the nights from planting and watering to a ripe crop. Harvest is how many you collect each time. Seeds Back is the chance to get seeds of the same crop with your harvest. Sells For is what the grocery merchant pays for each one.

Gladiolus is a flower, and you sell it to the seed merchant or Haze instead of the grocery merchant.

Fruit Trees

Fruit trees need a Tree Bed (250 coins from Haze). They never need watering, and they keep producing for as long as you leave them in the ground. After each harvest, the tree regrows its fruit in the days shown under Then Every.

Buying Seeds

The seed merchant in the City sells every crop seed on this page. A few are locked behind restaurant stars, and each seed has a limited supply that restocks every Monday. Stock per Week is how many the merchant puts out at each restock. Haze sells the fruit tree saplings, and she never runs out.

Seeds also come back from your own harvests (see Seeds Back above), and the Farming skill rewards include free seed packs.

Which Dishes Use Each Crop

These are the dishes from the recipes guide that call for each crop.

Best Crops for Coins

Selling your harvest barely covers the seeds for most crops, so treat farming as a way to supply your kitchen. If you do want coins, the table ranks each crop by the average harvest’s sale value minus the seed price, spread over the days it takes to grow. It leaves out seeds you get back, perks and fertilizers.

Lettuce earns the most per bed. Chili Pepper and Pumpkin lose coins when you buy the seeds. Fruit trees pay off over time instead: a Banana Tree brings in about 18 coins a day after its first harvest, so the 200-coin sapling pays for itself about 11 growing days later. The Tree Bed costs another 250 coins.

Garden Beds, Sprinklers and Watering Cans

The seed merchant sells the Simple Garden Bed, and Haze sells the Tree Bed and the sprinklers. Sprinklers switch on every morning and water the beds around them, which saves you the daily watering run.

The Secret Merchant sometimes stocks the Improved Sprinkler for 1,000 coins, more than Haze charges.

The tools merchant sells the watering cans.

Fertilizers

Fertilize a bed after you plant it. A bed holds one fertilizer at a time, and the Growth Accelerator and Harvest Increaser last until you harvest a Simple Garden Bed. On a fruit tree they never wear off, because a Tree Bed doesn’t reset after a harvest.

The table shows what the first two fertilizers do to each crop.

On a fruit tree the Growth Accelerator also shortens the regrowth after each harvest, from 5 days to 3 days. It saves the most on slow crops like Gladiolus (10 days down to 5) and on fruit trees.

Farming Skill and Perks

Your Farming skill rises as you work the farm. Planting a seed gives 5 XP, harvesting 3 XP, digging a bed 2 XP and clearing a dead plant 2 XP. The Improved Sprinkler, Growth Accelerator and Harvest Increaser unlock with Farming skill levels, and each level hands out rewards.

Spend your Farm perk points on these perks.