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[GavJ]

Can't seem to find the answer anywhere. Like, does it only matter if the field is fertilized at PLANTING? Or does it have to remain fertilized for the entire grow duration? Or at HARVEST? Or what?

I plan on having plants growing over multiple seasons, but even in vanilla, a plump helmet could be planted a week before the season ends and move over into unfertilized time. Does that ruin it?

[Chaia]

Wiki topic "Farming":
Fertilizing a farm plot increases the yield (the number of plants that grow in each planted tile). The exact improvement is not known. To fertilize a farm plot, one needs potash, which is produced by processing ash. The plot must be re-fertilized each season, requiring floor(plot_size / 4) + 1 potash. The table on the right illustrates the efficiency of potash as a function of plot size. Generally, larger farms use less, approaching a limit of 1/4 bar per square. The worst sizes are multiples of 4; if one plans to fertilize, it's most efficient to have plots of size 4n - 1, where n is the number of potash used. Suitable sizes are 1x3, 1x7, 3x5, 3x9, 5x7, and 7x9.

Usually fertilizing fields isn't worth the trouble you need to invest. I.e. cutting trees, making potash and fertilizing, while you could easily expand your fields which don't need any fertilizer. Wiki does not say anything about ruining the yield if the fertilizer isn't applied in time. So no idea about that :-/


Edit:
I should read properly, it seems like you need to apply fertilizer the whole time. But fertilizer applied in spring will work in summer, so it shouldn't ruin anything. Which means on the other side you have no fertilizer in the first spring

[GavJ]

Yeah I read the wiki. It's ambiguous. It just says if you want it to be fertilized every season you need to fertilize every season. Which tells me nothing about whether fertilization need apply for the whole period or only one endpoint.

Also, this is for a planned mod, where fertilizing will not only not be worthwhile, but will in many cases be absolutely necessary to make any surplus at all. So just making more plots to circumvent it doesn't solve the issue for me in this particular case. Gotta know the base rule.

[sal880612m]

So I did some minor testing on this. Very small sample size 3x1 plots (that I did nothing but plant in)*.
Conclusions
1- I had one plot fertilized after planting and one planted after fertilizing and got the same results(4,3,2)(4,3,2).
2- It only seems to matter if the field is fertilized at the time the crop matures. I had two fields fertilized in spring and planted them both in such a way that the crops matured in summer and got (1,1,1) on both. Another one I planted so it would move in to the next season and fertilized once it had. It received the bonus from fertilizing (5,2,2)
3- I planted quarry bushes in late summer to see if what would happen when the season changed. Crops where harvested as per normal. I swear I had a crop run out on me because of that,but this run didn't exhibit that behaviour.

Edit:
*ignore this was a leftover from another comment I didn't remember to remove

I should also mention I used basically only dabbling growers to obtain these results. One stepped over into novice and had 540 exp in it when all was said and done.

[GavJ]

Dabbling is the way to do it! Biggest difference. That's pretty convincing, thanks.

[greycat]

3- I planted quarry bushes in late summer to see if what would happen when the season changed. Crops where harvested as per normal. I swear I had a crop run out on me because of that,but this run didn't exhibit that behaviour.

Planted seeds will be destroyed at a season change if the new season disallows that crop.  Since quarry bushes are allowed in Spring, Summer and Autumn, and only disallowed in Winter, you would have had to plant in late Autumn to see this happen.

Thank you for doing this Science.  I've edited the wiki page.

This is conceivably a big deal in certain mods that make plants take much longer to mature.  You could plant in spring, then not fertilize until summer or autumn, or whenever your plants will reach maturity.

[sal880612m]

Hahahaha. Massive fail on my part. I should have taken sweet pods not quarry bushes, and I think I meant to originally but changed my mind and didn't check seasons again.