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Allotments and the grow lamp

You do not need a Home to farm. In Aldhearth's Fields, south-west of the Grand Plaza, the west field is the Allotments: every character can rent a plot of its own there, from 2 beds to 8. And when you do have land of your own, a grow lamp over your soil makes your crops grow faster and grows three crops that grow nowhere else.

The Allotments in Aldhearth's Fields: eight beds of wheat, pumpkins and sunberries, and the plot's window with its tier, its beds and what each holds

Your plot

Gudrun the farmer keeps the Allotments. Her menu has Your allotment and Seeds; pressing F inside the west field opens the same window. The plot is your character's own: you see your beds and your crops, nobody else sees them, and nobody can take from them.

Tier	Beds	Cost	What it adds
1	2	500 gold
2	4	1,000 gold and 20 Planks
3	6	3,000 gold and 10 Iron bars	a water butt: crops grow 25% faster
4	8	8,000 gold and 4 Mythril bars	a cold frame: every harvest gives one more

You rent tier 1 and raise it in the window. There is no rent to keep paying, and nothing is paid back.

Growing

Wheat, pumpkins and sunberries grow in a bed. A lamp crop, a glowcap or anything else is refused, and the window says why.
A bed grows on the clock, like any field: wheat in 1½ minutes, a pumpkin in 2½, a sunberry in 3. Rain in Aldhearth makes the beds grow twice as fast, as it does every field under the sky, and a tier-3 plot's 25% comes on top.
Harvesting a ripe bed gives 2 to 4 of the crop (5 at tier 4), 1 or 2 seeds back and a little experience, for 2 labor. Harvest everything ripe takes the lot, and Plant every empty bed sows the seed you pick from your bag in every free bed.
An unripe bed can be pulled up, and gives its seed back.

Seeds

Gudrun sells seeds for every crop she knows: wheat (3 for 4 gold), pumpkin (2 for 10), sunberry (2 for 12), and the lamp crops' seeds: Sunpetal (2 for 40), Sunmelon (2 for 50) and Fire pepper (2 for 60). Every harvest gives seeds back, so after the first you rarely need to buy more.

The grow lamp

A Home's farm under the ground: tilled soil under a row of grow lamps, Sunmelons and Fire peppers ripening in their light

Make a grow lamp at a Workbench: 2 Glass, a Crystal, an Iron bar and a Torch. Hang it 1 to 3 tiles above tilled soil. It lights its own column and two either side, three tiles down, and in its light:

every crop grows half again as fast. Homes lie under the ground and never see rain: the lamp is their weather;
the lamp crops grow at all. Without a lamp, a Sunpetal, a Sunmelon or a Fire pepper stops just short of ripe; hang a lamp over it and it ripens.

Lamp crop	Grows in	What it is for
Sunpetal	3 minutes 20	the flower of every healing potion (see [[potions	potions and buffs]])
Sunmelon	4 minutes	food that heals a fifth of your life, and sells well
Fire pepper	3 minutes 40	Ember stew at a cauldron (2 Fire peppers and a fish): blows 8% harder for ten minutes

Why your own farm stays better

An allotment is eight beds at most and grows only the three plain crops. A Home's land holds dozens of tiles of soil, grow lamps and their crops, and farm animals: a strip of 16 tiles under four lamps makes about four times what a full tier-4 allotment does in an hour. The allotment is for the time before you have land, and for the plain crops close to the Trade Post.