When looking to expand a farm's potential profits, it may seem best to disregard the lower value crops like Parsnips and Radishes. Cranberries, Strawberries, Starfruit, all sorts of highly dense gold-per-day sources make the most money. However, while true on paper, in practice it takes a farm full of crops to truly generate profit, and whether it's not feasible to fill up with Cranberries or it's just plain easier to stock up on Radishes, the cheaper, faster crops show their worth in their numbers.

As will be demonstrated, growing a greater number of crops results in far greater money returns almost regardless of the gold-per-day value of what's grown. Where expensive and valuable crops make good use of an individual tile, lower-priced and faster growing crops can be bought in far greater bulk and reinvest into itself to expand even further. Scale is king, and the more crops growing at once, no matter which crop, the more money is earned. Furthermore, the use of these smaller crops expands through the use of Speed Gro, making as much use of a month of growth by squeezing in as much gold-per-day in a month as possible.

The value of lower gold-per-day crops can be taken advantage of by growing more crops at once. This idea will be demonstrated with visuals of how these crops grow and reinvest into themselves over time, allowing greater use of more tiles of land. The practical use of shortened growth times from sources like Speed Gro and Agriculturalist generate more cash per tile by fitting more crops into a season, a task that otherwise lower value crops too are essential for.

To set up for understanding how to evaluate what will work best for which resources available, it is important to know what "gold per day" actually means for a crop, and the implications it presents.

From this point on, the "gold-per-day" of a crop will be abbreviated to GPD.

To calculate the GPD of a crop, you take its base sell price, subtract the cost of the seed, then divide the result by the number of days to grow to maturity. Taking a Cauliflower as an example, it sells for 175g, minus the 80g to purchase the seed, which equals 95. 95 divided by the 12 days to grow results in 7.92g, thus this is how the number for the Cauliflower's GPD was calclulated on the Stardew Valley wiki.

The GPD of a crop effectively means that, for the tile it is planted on, that tile is accruing that respective crop's GPD every day until it reaches maturity, after which its max potential is reached. Higher GPD, slower growing crops accrue their GPD for a longer span of time, getting more value out of an individual tile. However, the true profit lies in multiple tiles running that GPD simultaneously. Every tile growing a crop applies that effective GPD again and again. More of a high GPD crop gains more money, but when money is a constraint, you may not be able to fill the capacity of a field as full as you can. This is where the lower cost, lower GPD crops can earn you more money by both filling a field more completely, as well as allowing you to fill a field even further by selling your crops earlier than you can with long-term GPD crops. The more GPD run at once, the better, and Reinvestment is a strategy that can help greatly in this regard.

High and slow GPD is best when your field is as big as you're willing to go, but when you've got space to expand, it's the faster crops that will let you fill it out. Running a greater amount of crops will universally beat out running fewer crops using those tiles more efficiently.

Crop Simulation

The following simulations begin with a set amount of money. This money cannot be changed in any way other than farming, only being spent on seeds and increased by selling crops. The result of every crop will always be normal quality to keep the numbers as baseline as possible.

For the first round of simulations starts with 80g and only uses four tiles of land maximum. A single Cauliflower seed at 80g and 4 parsnips at 20g per seed are compared to see how their earnings are reflected over time. The Cauliflower takes 12 days to grow, while the Parsnip takes 4 days, thus the Parsnips are repurchased and grown over three cycles.


This graph shows how the value of each crop changes over time. There is a dip initially for the buy-in cost of the seeds, which is 80g for both Cauliflower and the Parsnips.

The Cauliflower grows at its 7.92 GPD steadily up until the last day, where the value jumps due to adding the initial seed cost back into the resulting 175g crop. A simple end total of 175g.

The 4-tile Parsnip is the red line (which starts the same as the yellow line, the Reinvestment strategy covered later) demonstrating growing four Parsnips and choosing only to repurchase those four tiles of Parsnips up until day 12. Earnings spike at each 4 day mark due to regaining the initial seed cost, then dips again when that same cost is spent on 4 seeds again. This cycle repeats twice until the final total of 260g on day 12, roughly 49% more profit over the 175g single Cauliflower. The GPD of a single Parsnip is 3.75, which is applied 4 times at once for a total of 15 GPD. Parsnips earned more than Cauliflower, but the rate of return only stayed constant. The best value is in building this rate over time.

The "Reinvestment" Parsnip uses the entire profit of each harvest to purchase as many Parsnips as possible. It starts the same at a harvest of 4 Parsnips, but instead of only buying 4, 7 Parsnips are bought instead. By day 8, 12 Parsnips are purchased with a leftover 5g, until selling 12 Parsnips results in a final total of 425g, a 142% increase over the 175g single Cauliflower and a 63% increase over the 260g 4-tile Parsnip plan.

The reason the Parsnips generated more cash than the Cauliflower is that despite its lower 3.75 GPD compared to Cauliflower's 7.92 GPD, growing multiple of that crop applies the GPD multiple times. While Cauliflower's GPD stayed constant, Parsnip's initial set of 4 crops applied its GPD 4 times, generating 15 GPD. When only 4 Parsnips were grown throughout, this rate stays constant, but reinvesting the total profit to buy more Parsnips results in increasing returns as you're able to apply that GPD more often, eventually reaching 45 GPD across the 12 Parsnips in the last 4 days of the 12 day growth cycle.

While the slope of the Cauliflower and 4-tile Parsnip's GPD stayed constant throughout, the Reinvested Parsnip's GPD rose over time. This rate of GPD increase will continue to increase. This time, the same simulation will be run from where we left off, running another 12 days with the total of the Reinvested Parsnip at 425g.


425g buys 5 Cauliflower with a leftover 25g. Those 5 Cauliflower sells for 875g by the end, resulting in 900g after adding the initial leftover, which is a 414% increase over a single Cauliflower at 175g.

Parsnips grow into 21, 37, then 65 total Parsnips by the end, with a grand result of 2,275g, a 152% increase over the 5 Cauliflower's results, and a whopping 1200% increase over the single Cauliflower at 175g.

Rolling over into 5 Cauliflower helped quite a bit in keeping up with the Parsnips, but the Parsnips continued to grow its returns quite ahead of Cauliflower. At 65 Parsnips by the end, 243.75 GPD was achieved by the final 4 days, a sizable increase over the 5 Cauliflower's constant 39.6 GPD. Parsnip's GPD began slower, so this massive rate wasn't across the whole 12 day cycle, but as demonstrated by the 4-tile Parsnip rate before, this 63 Parsnip rate could be maintained in the remaining Spring season, or invested in other crops in the next season.

What Does This All Mean?

The main takeaway from this series of simulations is this: More crops equals more money. While this is a pretty obvious fact at face value, it is the key reason why smaller crops are worthwhile. If you lack upfront cash and have space to spare, spending on cheaper plants results in greater profits since you can reinvest the money into filling more tiles.

However, the Parsnip method takes a substantially greater amount of land to take advantage of, which has two main implications. The first is if you don't have the means to support more than a set of land you have (whether due to lack of sprinklers and/or just not wanting to water so many crops every day), filling your land full with higher GPD crops is better than filled with lower GPD crops. The second implication is if you have a lot of land that you have the money to fill almost completely with a high GPD crop, it is far more effective to do so. The Parsnip reinvestment ended at 65 tile of land dedicated to Parsnips, with a result of 2,275. Growing a round of Cauliflower in that same amount of land, completely ignoring upfront costs and the need to reinvest, yields 11,375g. Quite a difference.

So the argument is not that "Parsnips make more money than Cauliflowers". It's when your resources are restrained that lower value crops show their worth. If your money's tight, you can reinvest crop profits to buy more crops. If you have plenty of space, you can reinvest crop profits into expanding over even more land.

This is all to say: Scale is king. More crops means more money, pretty much no matter which crop you're growing. If you can get the high GPD crops, do so, but if not, settle for lower tier crops and work your way up. Applying that GPD to as many tiles as possible is the key to the massive income, far more important than the individual GPD.

GPD isn't set in stone, however, and can be even further expanded. Remember that equation a long while ago to calculate it? There are ways to reduce that growth time, boosting the raw GPD of the crop. This GPD can only be taken full advantage of if as many days in a month are grown on, and lower GPD, faster crops are key to this goal.

Before beginning, a weird quirk of growth schedules that wasn't relevant will need to be explained:

A Cauliflower grows every 12 days, so the expected second and final harvest possible in a season would intuitively be on the 24th. However, the count does not start the day the seed is planted, the 12 day counter only starts on the next day. This evens out on subsequent harvests since you combine the productive day of harvesting a Cauliflower along with planting the seed, but this adds an extra +1 to which date of the month a harvest ends on. Every number comparison for every other crop still syncs up (Parsnips growing every 4 days still gets its third harvest on the same day the Cauliflower gets its first harvest, for example), it's only the dates being offset.

With that out of the way: Your GPD actively increases when a crop grows more quickly, but this GPD is can only be claimed if you can harvest the crop. The next logical step then is that a crop's growth must be sped up enough to grant an additional harvest in the season. However, while true, what really matters in taking advantage of GPD is making use of the time given. Even if Cauliflower requires a 3 day reduction in growth time to grow a third Cauliflower, reducing by even 1 day allows room to grow an extra crop in its tile. This still makes even minor time cuts very profitable.

This can be demonstrated in a few practical cases.

First, a control case: Two standard, unassisted Cauliflower growths using a single tile. By Spring 25th, you sell two Cauliflower at 350g. Subtracting the cost of two seeds (160g), the profit of the two Cauliflowers is 190g, which is equal to the 7.92 GPD over 24 days, the usual expected measurements.

When adding either the Agriculturalist profession or Speed Gro (both having an identical 10% reduction), a single Cauliflower growth is pushed back by 2 days. The required growth reduction reduces the Cauliflower's second harvest date to the 21st of Spring, and further reduces whichever you grow afterwards by at least 1 day when using the same tile, so you can easily fit an extra 6-day (in this case reduced to 5-day) Kale crop. Cauliflower's GPD increases to 9.5, and Kale's GPD increases from the base 6.67 to 8 GPD. Cauliflower's 9.5 GPD across 20 days of effective growth results in 190g in profit again, then the Kale adds an additional 40g profit, for a total of 230g profit by Spring 26th, a nice 21% boost over only Cauliflower.

However, using Speed Gro has an catch, given its opportunity cost of using it over a quality-boosting fertilizer. Crop quality has been ignored up until now, but it will be tackled here to determine if Speed Gro is worthwhile over fertilizer.

Fertilizer VS Speed Gro

The follow table illustrates the effect quality has on the profit of growing a month of Cauliflower in a single tile for one Spring. Every option grows at least 2 Cauliflower, Speed Gro grows an extra Kale, while Deluxe Gro grows a third Cauliflower.

(EDIT: Forgot to mention where the quality price multiplier came from: The Stardew Valley wikipedia page for Farming has tables for the stats of using each fertilizer. The relevant formulas are on that same page, and for brevity's sake an explanation will be skipped for how the multiplier was obtained (And also because I doubt I can fully explain the math)).


As shown by the table, whether it's Farming Level 0 or 10, the impact quality has on price is far outweighed by the extra base value you gain from the use of Speed Gro. Speed Gro is always the most profitable fertilizer to use in a given tile, so long as you can grow at least one extra crop of reasonable GPD in there.

Lower GPD crops are essential for making the most out of cut crop growth times, making better use of every tile of land you use these strategies on.

I was doing some extra theory-crafting with Speed Gro, and unfortunately found that there's a bit more complications to the matter than was initially presented.

The main idea is that in cases where adding the extra crop harvest or two makes a major difference in the ending sell price, Speed Gro will have a larger impact than Fertilizer. However, if the intial harvests are very high and the extra crops provided by Speed Gro don't overall change the ending price significantly, Fertilizer generally ends up the better option.

Starfruit, the "star" of making money through crops, is one of the biggest offenders in this idea: With its massive 750g sell price it's very hard to compete with when trying to fit in extra crops using Speed Gro. However, while more basic Speed Gro options don't mesh as well, this reverses on using Deluxe Speed Gro since growing an additional Starfruit instead has a disproportionately greater impact on the ending price.

With no speed modifiers, 2 Starfruit can be grown in one Summer. Basic Fertilizer provides its boosted quality price modifier, and due to comparing Agriculturalist profession boost later the Basic + Agriculturalist combination will be demonstrated using two Starfruit and a Radish in one Summer. A basic Speed Gro allows an extra Radish growth, Speed Gro + Agriculturalist boost allows an extra Red Cabbage growth instead, while Deluxe Speed Gro allows a third Starfruit harvest.

Also, while Quality Fertilizer is a more equivalent tier to Deluxe Speed Gro, its data will be omitted due to its multiplier only ending up as 1.38, compared to Basic's 1.32. This will likely not have enough of an impact to be needed, so the table will leave this information out to be concise, though be aware that Quality Fertilizer can create a bit more comparable prices specifically comparing to Deluxe Speed Gro, if only a little bit more comparable.

The data shows that unlike the Cauliflower scenario, Basic Fertilizer overall provided greater profit than the equivalent Speed Gro. Even in using Agriculturalist, the Fertilizer edged out the profit. However, even in this scenario keep in mind a couple things:

1. While the profits of Fertilizer are slightly larger, it can be argued that since Speed Gro relies more heavily on base price for its profit that it's a more consistent option for income. Remember, this multiplier is an average of the influence quality rolls have on the ending sell total. The true ending sell total can easily vary by quite a bit, especially when using fertilizers that don't guarantee baseline silver or gold qualities at minimum.

2. In the case that kegs and preserve jars are planned to be used, Speed Gro may still prove a better option due to scale. Quality doesn't matter in Artisan-based methods to opting for Speed Gro may eliminate the benefit that quality has, thus Speed Gro becomes a better option again.

That all said, Hyper Speed Gro alone justifies itself in this high-level profit case. Starfruit, being the highest GPD crop in the game, gets only stronger with an extra repeat in the month, not only reaching a higher ending sell total but also reaping the two benefits explained earlier. A more consistent ending sell due to less reliance on quality rolls, and more overall product to process in machines like kegs.

Thus this case provides a new takeaway: If the main money-generating crop in a month cycle is worth significantly more than the extra crops you can grow using Speed Gro, Fertilizer will generate more overall, unless enough growth reductions are used to generate an extra harvest of the respective high density crop.

Unfortunately, Speed Gro is not as universal as was presented before, but it still definitely can be good compared to Fertilizer. This is a case of how late-game the lower quality crops do indeed get outclassed, so remember that the lower value crops get most of their value in developing a strong farm.

When it comes to making use of lower GPD crops, their purpose shines in making efficient use of every tile of land you can take advantage of.

Scale is king. It is much more lucrative to fill as many tiles as you can compared to a smaller set of more efficient tiles. Every tile with a crop growing effectively applies its GPD.

Furthermore, lower GPD crops often growing faster allows for making as much use of a month's harvest time. Much like how each tile produces its GPD, every day growing a crop to maturity applies the GPD of what's growing.

Stardew Valley's a game that holds a lot more than just farming, and there are dozens of other reasons to be growing each crop. With the information presented here, hopefully you can find a good use for the crops like Radishes, Garlic, etc. that can compete with the more "optimal" crops, and hopefully you can consider Speed Gro as a much more viable option than you may've thought before.

I learned quite a bit from writing this guide, and I hope you learned something too. Whether you read through the whole thing or just skimmed for the important details, thanks for taking the time to check this out. Good luck out there in the valley!