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Deciding What to Grow - A Matter of Playing Style Herb Patch Locations

Now that we’ve looked at the basics of farming and how to figure out what to grow, let’s start to get a bit more practical. You’re going to need equipment and supplies to begin your journey towards herb farming mastery; I’ll tell you what to get and how to get it. And of course, you’re also going to need seeds, and so I’ll discuss the various methods of getting them as well.

There are three key pieces of farming equipment that are essential for growing, harvesting and replanting herbs:

• Rake: Used to clear weeds from your patches. You’ll need this mostly before you plant the first time, but on occasion, weeds will also creep into your patches in the moments between when you harvest herbs and plant a new seed.
  
  
• Spade: Normally just sits in your inventory; it is required in order to harvest crops. If an herb plant dies due to disease, you need to use the spade on the patch to clear the dead plant for replanting.
  
  
• Seed Dibber: Must be in your inventory when planting seeds.

In addition to these, there are three other optional items. First, if you have gotten to the point in A Fairy Tale Part I where you make magic secateurs, wield them as a weapon to increase crop yield. (If you only have normal secateurs then you don’t need them for herb farming.) Second, if you are also growing flowers, you need a watering can (herbs don’t need to be, and can’t be, watered.) Third, you may wish to obtain an amulet of nature, which will alert you when one of your patches becomes diseased.

Each of the regular equipment items costs only a few coins, and you can get all of them at farming shops, which are found near each of the four main herb patches:

• Catherby: Just to the east of the patch (Figure 185).
  
  
• Ardougne: North of the northern bank, just past the wheat field.
  
  
• Port Phasmatys: In a little house east of the patch, where the (undead) chickens are.
  
  
• Draynor Village: In the farm house located on the road that connects Draynor and Port Sarim; southeast of the patch.
  

  Figure 185: Vanessa Has it All

  Well, almost. Her Farming store in Catherby is the most convenient one to quickly access, and carries nearly everything you need to be a successful herb gardener.

  
  

Once you have all your tools, you can store them with the tool leprechaun for convenience and to save bank space. There’s one at every farming patch.

Before you plant your herbs, you have the option of fertilizing the patch with either compost or supercompost. Fertilizing increases yield and reduces the chance of disease, so while it’s not mandatory, it is highly recommended.

Supercompost, as the name implies, is superior to regular compost; when planting herbs, using supercompost guarantees a minimum of 5 herbs picked from a successful crop, whereas you only get a minimum of 3 with regular compost. Accordingly, you should always use supercompost! Even though it is more expensive to buy or make, it’s worth it—you get more herbs, which means more income and more XP. I also recommend using it on flower patches; it doesn’t affect yield there but reduces the chance of disease.

To make supercompost, you use a compost bin; there’s one near each of the four main herb patches. Whether you get regular compost or supercompost from a bin depends on the organic material you put into it: supercompost requires more exotic or expensive items. The most cost effective way to make it is to buy watermelons, which are currently under 100 gp each; you can also buy pineapples from Arhein on the Catherby docks (up to 40 per day at just 2 gp each!)

Coconut shells are a nearly ideal item for supercompost, as they are a waste product from making coconut milk, have no other use anyway, and they’re easy to put into the bin because you can left click them to select them (Figure 186).

Other items that make supercompost include: tree roots; papayas; bittercap mushrooms; poison ivy berries, jangerberries and whiteberries; and the herbs avantoe, kwuarm, snapdragon, cadantine, lantadyme, dwarf weed, torstol and toadflax. Of course, you’d be foolish to use any of these for this purpose, since they are valuable and better used in other ways.

Use 15 watermelons (or other supercompostable items) on the bin and then close the lid to start the process. After around an hour (real time) you can open the bin and it will be full of supercompost. Get 15 buckets and use one of them on the bin; the game will automatically fill all 15 with supercompost; you also get 8.5 Farming XP per bucket, or a total of 127.5 XP. You can store up to 255 supercompost buckets with the tool leprechaun.

An alternative way of getting supercompost is to use the special move of the compost mound familiar on a bin, which usually fills it with regular compost, but sometimes with supercompost. If you get regular compost, you can use a compost potion on it to change it to supercompost; you get one of these from the Garden of Tranquility quest, and can earn more at the Vinesweeper minigame. Alternately, empty the compost from the bin and try again; you can sell the compost on the Grand Exchange, or use it to make more compost mound pouches.

To buy supercompost, go to the GE; you can expect to pay around 500 to 600 gp per bucket. Even if you plan to mostly make your own, you should get a few to use on your first farming run.

In addition to supercompost, you’ll need some other supplies, both for growing your herbs and to enable you to do farming runs:

• Plant Cures: These are used to cure plants when they become diseased. You can buy them from farming shops for 40 gp each, or keep some in your bank to use if needed.
  
  
• Runes: You need law, air and water runes to get to each of the regular herb patches. If also going to the special herb patch in the Troll Stronghold, you’ll need fire runes as well.
  
  
• Energy Restoration items: Farming runs involve a lot of running around, so you need energy or super energy potions. Alternately, if using an energy-restoring familiar like a bull ant or spirit terrorbird, you need their appropriate scrolls.
  
  
• Amulets of Farming: These are cheaper versions of the amulet of nature that you can have multiples of. They only have 8 charges, though, and then they disappear.

There are three major sources for herb seeds: buying from other players, monster drops, or Thieving. Buying seeds is the only way to ensure that you get exactly the seeds you want—the others have an element of randomness. Getting low-level seeds from combat or Thieving is pretty easy, but if you want higher-level seeds it can literally take hours, so you’re much better off just buying them on the Grand Exchange. (Note that you can also buy marigold seeds for a low price from Olivia in the Draynor Village market.)

There are dozens of monsters that provide herb seeds; some of the more renowned general herb seed droppers are ogres, moss giants and dagannoths. There are also several monsters that provide only higher-level herb seeds—toadflax and above. Most of these are Slayer monsters, and the best ones include cave horrors, nechryaels and aberrant spectres.

Finally, you can get herb seeds—along with a lot of other types, though not tree seeds—by thieving from master farmers (level 38 Thieving required). There are two master farmers in Draynor Village, one near the farming shop north of Ardougne, and a third on the road between Varrock and Lumbridge. This is a nice way to tie in Thieving XP into the process, but be warned that it’s a very slow process, and you’ll get a lot more junk seeds than ones you really want.

Deciding What to Grow - A Matter of Playing Style Herb Patch Locations