Crops (GrB)

Growing your own crops is the best way to make money in the beginning of the game, when you don't have any animals to care for or access to the Manufacturing Windmill to make jewelry. At the beginning of the game, Felix will visit your house and give you a Watering Can, a Hoe, and some bags of Turnip Seeds.

To plant crops, go to your crop field south of your house and use the Hoe on the soil. Then equip the seeds, plant them in the ground, and water the seeds until the crops are full grown and harvestable. Don't forget to fill up your Watering Can by using it at the water pump. Your harvested crops can be sold as-is at your bazaar or you can process the crops; either cook them in your kitchen or process them into new items at the Fermenting or Grinding windmills.

You can buy seeds from Raul's shop in Zephyr Town and at Chen's, Felix's, and Raul's bazaar booths. Raul's town shop will always have basic seeds. Crop seeds sold at the bazaar are random; Chen might sell Carrot seeds the first week of fall, but he might not sell them again the second week.

Crop Growth Rate
To get your crops to grow as fast as possible, you will want to water them twice per day. Watered soil will dry up after 10 hours of in-game time, so the earlier you water your crops in the morning, the earlier you can water them at night before going to bed.

Watering a crop three times per day won't make it grow faster. Watering a crop twice per day is the maximum.

If the day's weather is rainy or hurricane, you don't have to water your crops. Unfortunately because you can't water your crops a second time on rainy days, the rain will actually slow down your crop growth rate. You may have extra time to do other tasks that day, but your crops may mature a day later than you expect them to.

Fertilizer
You can buy Fertilizer from Raul's Zephyr Town shop for 10 G a bag or you can make your own by combining a Branch and a Weed in your Fermenting Windmill. The advantage to making your own is that you can get Fertilizer with higher star rank compared to Raul's .5 star Fertilizer. A higher star rank means the crop's star rank will increase faster. Fertilizer can be placed on a crop or tree while it is growing in order to increase the star rank of the produced item. For crops, placing Fertilizer once it has matures won't do anything (especially for regrown crops like Yams or Tomatoes) but for trees, Fertilizer will increase the number of fruit it produces.

You can put the Fertilizer on the crops before you water or after you water. It also doesn't matter what time of the day you use it. A crop will sparkle once the Fertilizer has been placed on it.

Generally, you may not want to use Fertilizer until you have the Grinding Windmill unlocked in Fall of your first year. The Grinding Windmill allows you to turn one crop into two bags of seeds. As you increase the star rank of your crops, put some in the Grinding Windmill to produce seeds with the same star quality. When you plant the new seeds, the crop will start out having the seed's star rank; adding Fertilizer will increase the rank further. This technique is how you reach the maximum 5 star rank for crops and trees.

Crop Damage
Be careful not to run through your crops. Doing so will damage them and cause their star rank to fall. If you accidentally do it once or twice you'll most likely be fine, but doing so on a regular basis will result in low star rank crops. Remember to toggle into walk-mode by pressing the Left Shoulder button on your DS.

Hitting your crops with your Axe, Hammer, or Hoe will cause more damage than just running through them. Summer Hurricanes will not hurt your growing crops. In past versions of Harvest Moon, the bad storms would destroy crops in your fields. In Grand Bazaar, the crops are not affected by a day of bad wind and rain.

Multiple Season
Note: These crops must be harvested using a Sickle. They will grow during Spring, Summer, and Fall. You don't have to water these two crops, as they'll grow without any attention.