Palia: The Best Fertilizer For Gardening

Fertilizers are utilized to improve the quality and quantity of crops harvested and boost crop growth. It can also prevent weeds from growing on their crops and require less water when tending to crops, which could benefit certain crops requiring these effects.

Palia has a few fertilizing options for players to choose from, but not knowing which is considered the best depends on the type of crops being planted and the size of the gardening plot. If they’re looking for the most optimal fertilizer to use on most crops, we’ve sourced the answer from the Palian community to determine the best fertilizer to use on crops in Palia.

What Is The Best Fertilizer To Use For The Gardening Skill In Palia

This question is fundamental when factoring in the mid-to-end game when players heavily prioritize gardening for income, crops, and seeds. However, the answer isn’t as straightforward when players have to consider various aspects when gardening, including the type of crops being planted and the size of the gardening plot.

Currently, Palia has five different types of fertilizer that can be purchased from Badruu’s Gardening Guild Store and Zeki’s General Store, which are QualityUp, SpeedyGro, WeedBlock, HydratePro, and HarvestBoost Fertilizers with the latter, HarvestBoost considered to be the best to use. Some fertilizers can be produced when various food items are placed into the Hopper of the Worm and Glow Worm Farms, which can also produce Worms and Glow Worms.

Now, each fertilizer is beneficial to use to a certain degree, but generally speaking, if players have a 9x9 gardening plot and are using a Farm Layout that has crops that boost other adjacent crops, then fertilizer is rarely used. If players are still deciding which Farm Layout to consider, a community-created site, Palia Garden Planner, is widely used to finetune their garden by optimizing their crops based on the buffs they offer and the fertilizer to use on specific crops.

An excellent example is planting Rice and Wheat crops, which has a harvest boost that increases the quantity of crops harvested with a slight chance of receiving Star-Quality seeds if a quality fertilizer is used or an adjacent crop gives that buff. This is highly valuable as Star-Quality seeds when planted, produce Star-Quality crops that increase profit when sold through the Shipping Bin, at Zeki’s General Store, or with the Guild Master, which is extremely important in the early game.

However, as a result, the QualityUp Fertilizer is redundant if players are planting Rice and Wheat crops to get a better result and maximize their income. Likewise, if players aren’t using a Farm Layout that has Rice and Wheat crops, then by default, the HarvestBoost Fertilizer will function precisely in the same manner as if planting these specific crops.

So, How Does The Fertilizer Work In Palia

As the HarvestBoost Fertilizer is considered the best and most optimal to use on crops, when would be the best time or opportunity to use the fertilizer? This is dependent on what the growth cycle for the crop would be, which also directly influences the amount of fertilizer to use; for example, apples take 12 days to grow, meaning 12 batches of HarvestBoost Fertilizer could be used to maximize the quantity of crops harvested for a guaranteed result.

Fertilizer is considered as counted or consumed when the growth tick is triggered at 6 am daily in-game; however, adding fertilizer to the crop before 6 am won’t see the fertilizer being consumed. Another note of mention is that when using fertilizer, do not stack it on crops that are gaining the same buffs from adjacent crops.

An example is if players have planted an Apple tree and potatoes or tomatoes around it that has a water retention boost, you can’t put the HydratePro Fertilizer on the Apple Tree as it gets the same buff from the potato or tomato crops planted nearby. Instead, players will want to use a fertilizer that can be stacked and has a different buff than that of either crop.

So, if players use the QualityUp and WeedBlock Fertilizers on the Apple Tree, the buffs will be stacked and consumed by the Apple Tree, depending on which fertilizer was used first. By that same tone, players will want to have weeds growing on their crops as it too can be sold through the Shipping Bin, at Zeki’s General Store, or with the Guild Master, and it also contributes to one Gardening Weekly Challenge, so WeedBlock Fertilizer wouldn’t be advised using.

We advise that players won’t need to place fertilizer on Star-Quality seeds as players are guaranteed Star-Quality crops at harvest. Likewise, we suggest stacking fertilizers equivalent to the amount of days required for the crop to grow, so if a crop takes two days to grow, then two batches of fertilizers would be needed.

Palia is currently available via the Epic Games Store and in Open Beta for PC, as players can install the game launcher detailed in this guide. The game is now available to download for Nintendo Switch as of 14th December 2023.