You'll start Grow a Garden with 20 Sheckles to your name, and an empty plot of land. To go from newbie gardener to a pro making stacks of cash with all sorts of mutated fruit, here's some tips for beginners to help you get started.To go from beginner gardener to a pro making stacks of cash with huge fruits, here are some tips to help you out.
1. Buy Carrots to Get You Started
You'll have no choice but to spend your first 20 Sheckles on Carrots. A Carrot Seed will set you back 10 Sheckles per seed, and it's single crop, meaning it can only be harvested once.
Start by getting yourself 2 Carrot Seeds and placing them down in your garden. Within a few seconds, they'll be ready to be picked. Get yourself over to Steven at the Sell Stuff stand and you can have your harvest valued.
If you're incredibly lucky, you might end up with mutated carrots, which will sell for a higher value. But the chances are you'll just end up with regular-sized Carrots. That being said, a carrot around 0.34kg can fetch you about 30 Sheckles, so it's worth sticking with Carrots to quickly save up some money.
2. Go for Multi-Harvest Seeds
Once you've got yourself a couple of hundred Sheckles, drop the Carrots and move on to multi-harvest crops. This includes the Strawberry Seed, which is the next crop after Carrot and cost 50 Sheckles. Depending on how well your first round of harvesting went, you might be able to afford the pricier Blueberry Seed at 400 Sheckles, but I'd recommend getting a few Strawberries at first.
You'll need to wait for about a minute before a Strawberry bush is fully grown, but multi-harvest plants will stay until you destroy them with a shovel, and they bear more fruit.
3. Check the Shop Daily
I don't mean the Seed Stall or any of the other stands, but the in-game shop. You can find the icon on the left side of the screen. Click on this, and you'll see the Forever Pack tab.
This changes daily, but you'll always get the first item free each day. We've seen this change from Sheckles to gear and Seed Packs, so it's worth doing it as soon as you log in.
4. Check Daily Quests
Opposite the Seed Stall and Sell Stuff stand, you'll find the Egg Stall and the Gear Shop. At the Gear Shop (the one with the green stripes), you can also ask Eloise about Daily Quests.
There are 3 quests to complete each day, and if you manage to do them all, you'll be rewarded with Seed Packs. There are some crops, for example, Pineapple, that can only be obtained this way, so it's worth always checking in and trying to get these out of the way.
5. Buy Sprinklers As Soon As You Can
Gear is costly in grow a garden, and the lowest price you'll pay for something is 25,000 Sheckles for a Basic Sprinkler. That being said, the Basic Sprinkler increases growth speed and fruit size, so you can get bigger crops that will give you more money.
Wait until you've got a steady supply of crops, and you're regularly getting thousands when you sell them, before you worry about purchasing Sprinklers. Once you hit that 25,000 Sheckles, then get to purchasing a Basic Sprinkler when it comes in stock, and see what you fruit size you get!
6. Get Some Pets!
What do pets do in Grow a Garden? They give you passive abilities including digging up seeds, Sheckles, and gear, applying mutations to crops, and advancing plant growth. You'll start by being able to hatch 3x Pet Eggs at a time, and having 3x Pets roaming around your garden.
The cheapest and most common egg you'll see in the Pet Egg shop is the Common Egg, costing 50,000 Sheckles. But, in this, you have a 33.33% chance of getting a Golden Lab or a Dog. Both of these will dig up random seeds for you, and they don't have to be ones you've already purchased, so they're handy for beginners looking to get all the crops!
7. Feed Your Pets
Each pet's ability improves as it ages up, and they can only age up by earning XP, which comes from keeping them well fed. This includes when you're offline! So, be sure to feed your pets and have their hunger meters fall before you logoff, so they can keep growing, and the next time you log on, their abilities will have improved!
8. Participate In In-Game Events
Grow a Garden has consistently put out new content and had events taking place. All of them so far, have had special rewards, which you can either purchase or earn through having the right crops.
While these do often require having crops with Mutations, it's often just down to patience. The Lunar Glow event, for example, asks players to hand over Moonlit Mutations to the Wise Old Owl. All that requires is being logged in during Nightfall and hoping that the mutation happens!
But it doesn't cost Sheckles to do this, so even if you have little in-game currency, you just need to have some basic crops to participate in the event.
9. Mutations Can Stack
If you have valuable crops, you're better off leaving these at times -- especially if they're already Big, Rainbow, or Gold. That's because you want mutations to stack for even more profit.
Let's say you finally get a Grape Seed, and the crops sell quite well just as they are, but a frozen Grape is going to sell for even more! Instead of instantly harvesting it, though, see how many mutations you can get to stack on a single crop.
Let some of your valuable crops experience as many weather events as possible, and you could be looking at a Wet, Shocked, Frozen Grape that sells for 1.5 million Sheckles by itself.
10. Don't Keep Everything You Plant
You have a limited amount of space to garden, and those Strawberry plants you bought at the start of your journey aren't going to be the ones you want to keep as you start to get bigger and better crops.
When you unlock rarer seeds, and start to plant crops like Mango, Coconut, and Dragon Fruit, you need to start being picky about space. No more single-harvest low-cost crops like Carrots, unless they're for a daily challenge.
You can start to clear up your garden of any Common, Uncommon, and even Rare multi-harvest crops as you get more of the Mythical Seeds. If you've got a huge Blueberry bush taking up your garden, get the Shovel out and destroy that plant! You can always buy another one later on if you really need it for quests.
11. Create a Multi-Layered Garden
So you've planted a Coconut Seed and it's climbing its way up to the sky, but you can't reach those Coconuts? Create a multi-layered garden, and by that I mean, use other plants to help you reach the tallest ones.
You can jump on top of your crops, particularly tress like Apple, Peach, and Dragon Fruit. As these grow taller, you can use them to climb to the highest points in your garden. But even plants like Bamboo can be climbed by walking straight up to them. Try to consider your placements when you're putting down crops, to make sure nothing is out of reach.
