Farming is relatively straightforward in Going Medieval: you designate an area for crops using the Zone menu [F7] , they grow, and your settlers will automatically harvest them (assuming someone has been assigned to do so). That being said, you can easily end up having your settlers waste days of labor planting crops you’ll never need. In this guide, we’ll take a look at what crops to plant when, and also figure out exactly how much food you need to plant for your settlers.
Your settlers deserve better
Crop Types
Depending on your need, you’ll need to plant different things! In most cases, you’ll want to plant most or all of the different crops available.
Food
Description
Days to Full Yield
Harvest Quantity
Total Harvests (before replanting is required)
Cabbage
The humble cabbage is ready to harvest quicker than any other crop, and has as good a yield to time ratio as any. This should be your first crop to plant for food, though later it can be replaced by the other food crops if you have something against cabbage
5
6
1
Flax
Flax is the only way to get Linen if you don’t want to deconstruct other pieces of clothing. From the tooltip, it seems it will also be used in cooking eventually, but that feature is not currently implemented
8
11
1
Carrot
Carrots keep very well, and so are useful in your preparations for winter, which mostly involve storing food
7
9
1
Beet
Like cabbage, these currently are only good for food
9
10
1
Barley
Your settlers love to drink, and barley will allow you to create Ale and Beer
14
5
1
Herbs
Herbs are used in everything from cooking to medicine, and are always useful to have
8
6
1
Redcurrant
Redcurrant is a flexible crop that can be used to create wine or meals, and also yields sticks when harvested
15
7 (both berries and sticks)
5
Tall Grass
Currently only used for bedding and roofs, but should eventually be used for animal fodder as well
4
30
1
Birch Trees
Used for dye and medicine according to the tooltip, but currently only good for wood and sticks
54
55 (sticks and wood)
1
Food Math: How Much Cabbage to Plant
For these calculations we’ll assume every settler you have needs to eat one meal per day, which as far as we know is the standard rate of consumption on normal difficulty.
A meal requires 12 units of raw food; we’ll plant cabbage because is the quickest crop to reach maximum yield. Cabbage takes 5 days to yield 6 raw food. Therefore, each settler requires the yield of 2 cabbage patches a day (6×2=12) to eat a meal each day.
He doesn’t do the math, he just hoes the rows
Knowing this, we can plant 10 cabbage patches per settlerand be guaranteed to have exactly enough raw food to craft a meal, per day, per person. 10 patches means at the end of the 5 days, you’ll have 60 raw food; 60 raw food divided by 12 raw food per meal = 5 meals per settler, every 5 days. Of course, you can plant any food you like, so long as your total raw food output is 12 raw food a day, per settler.
That about covers all the basics of farming in Going Medieval! We hope this guide was helpful, and let us know in the comments if you have any questions or suggestions.
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DanielD
Unabashed FromSoftware fanboy still learning to take his time with games (and everything else, really). The time he doesn't spend on games is spent on music, books, or occasionally going outside.
Are you able to collect the seeds for your last harvest before winter? I let the settlers auto harvest but I never seem to have any seed left come spring
I haven’t had a chance to test the new farming systems yet, but my understanding is that every crop is different — some seeds can only be harvested in the wild, while others can come from your crops. To get seeds from your crops, you’ll need to let them go past the “Mature” phase of growth.
What i typically do is have 2 plots and i let them go to max. For cabbage i believe you get 10 seeds and you can run that twice per year. which will give you 40 seeds “extra” per year just incase you lose your seeds due to a cold snap in late winter after it slightly warmed up and your farmers planted early. I also let them auto farm and without constantly telling them not to sow this is the best method i’ve found. Just put a handful of shelves underground dedicated to seeds and set the priority to very high and you should be fine. When you run into too many seeds which you will just don’t sow the extra plots.
DatBoi
1 year ago
Thank you for the thorough guide, very helpful
Nicholas Yanez
3 months ago
I am confused on one thing, which is how to plant different types of crops. I understand that I must have the seeds (I do), and to hit F7 and plant respected crop type (I have a cabbage plot). However, where I am confused and think I am doing something wrong is ONLY cabbage is available?
You can collect different seed types in the wild, or purchase them from traders. It’s possible you don’t currently have access to any seeds besides cabbage.
, they grow, and your settlers will automatically harvest them (assuming someone has 
Are you able to collect the seeds for your last harvest before winter? I let the settlers auto harvest but I never seem to have any seed left come spring
I haven’t had a chance to test the new farming systems yet, but my understanding is that every crop is different — some seeds can only be harvested in the wild, while others can come from your crops. To get seeds from your crops, you’ll need to let them go past the “Mature” phase of growth.
What i typically do is have 2 plots and i let them go to max. For cabbage i believe you get 10 seeds and you can run that twice per year. which will give you 40 seeds “extra” per year just incase you lose your seeds due to a cold snap in late winter after it slightly warmed up and your farmers planted early. I also let them auto farm and without constantly telling them not to sow this is the best method i’ve found. Just put a handful of shelves underground dedicated to seeds and set the priority to very high and you should be fine. When you run into too many seeds which you will just don’t sow the extra plots.
Thank you for the thorough guide, very helpful
I am confused on one thing, which is how to plant different types of crops. I understand that I must have the seeds (I do), and to hit F7 and plant respected crop type (I have a cabbage plot). However, where I am confused and think I am doing something wrong is ONLY cabbage is available?
You can collect different seed types in the wild, or purchase them from traders. It’s possible you don’t currently have access to any seeds besides cabbage.
Stupid walktrough!!!
Thanks for the feedback, could you be more specific?
He doesn’t know how to read. Illiterate people tend to get frustrated with these things.