Stardew Valley – Crop List Guide (For Seed Makers)

This guide lists crops that should and should not be used in the seed maker.

Foreward

All credit goes to Ryvaken Tadrya!

The following lists are simple: they are seeds that can be made by the seed maker, that are better off made with the seed maker than purchasing. Each seasonal segment ends with an analysis of that season’s wild seeds. The mathematics can be found at the end of the guide.

Spring

Use Any Quality

• Ancient Seeds
• Bean Starter
• Strawberry Seeds

Use Normal or Silver Quality, but not Gold

• Garlic Seeds
• Kale Seeds
• Tulip Bulb

Use Normal Quality Only

• Jazz Seeds
• Parsnip Seeds
• Potato Seeds (Note: silver star potatoes sell for exactly as much as buying two seeds)

Special: Rhubarb Seeds

Because of the need to buy a 500g bus ticket, it is cheaper to give up a rhubarb to the seed maker than purchase just a few seeds. You must buy 16 seeds to make a profit over sacrificing 8 normal rhubarb, 14 seeds to profit over sacrificing 7 silver rhubarb, or 8 to profit over sacrificing 4 gold rhubarb. If you need fewer seeds, it is better to use the seed maker. If you need more, buy the seeds.

Wild Seeds

It is much cheaper to craft Spring Seeds than to use the Seed Maker.

Summer

Use Any Quality

• Ancient Seeds
• Corn Seeds
• Hops Starter
• Pepper Seeds
• Sunflower Seeds
• Tomato Seeds

Use Normal or Silver Quality, but not Gold

• Poppy Seeds

Use Normal Quality Only

• Sprangle Seeds
• Starfruit Seeds*

Special: Starfruit Seeds. It is always more profitable to put regular quality starfruit into the seed maker. If one would instead use silver quality fruit, buying the seeds is more profitable if at least 8 seeds are purchased, otherwise the added cost of a bus ticket is too great. If using gold quality fruit, the minimum purchase is four seeds. However, given the extreme value of starfruit wine, a farmer with any kegs at all should never give up a starfruit to the seed maker.

Wild Seeds

It is much cheaper to craft Summer Seeds than to use the Seed Maker.

Fall

Use Any Quality

• Ancient Seeds
• Corn Seeds
• Cranberry Seeds
• Grape Starter (Note: Gold quality grapes sell for the same price as two grape starters. Do not use iridium quality grapes).
• Sunflower Seeds

Use Normal or Silver Quality, but not Gold

• Fairy Seeds

Use Normal Quality Only

• Bok Choy Seeds (Note: silver quality bok choy sells for the same price as buying two bok choy seeds)

Special: Artichoke Seeds. It is never profitable to use artichoke seeds in the seed maker. However, artichokes can be grown from mixed seeds in year one, and are not sold until year two. The seed maker offers a way to get an artichoke crop a year early.

Special: Beet Seeds. Again, the bus ticket. Buy 18 seeds or more at once to be cheaper than using normal beets, 12 to be cheaper than using silver, 10 to be cheaper than using gold.

Special Note: Rare seeds cost less than putting sweet gem berries in the seed maker. However, rare seeds are a limited commodity. In theory, one could use the seed maker to fill the greenhouse with sweet gem berries year-round and still maintain a profit.

Wild Seeds

It is much slightly to craft Fall Seeds than to use the Seed Maker. Players with the mushroom bins in the Farm Cave may choose to eat the loss simply for the relative abundance of low quality common mushrooms.

Winter

The only seeds for Winter are Winter Seeds. It is more profitable to use the Seed Maker than to craft them normally. Note especially, Winter Roots are drop items from Blue Slimes which can be used to stock up on these seeds out of season.

Mechanics of the Seed Maker

The seed maker is unlocked at Farming 9, with a free unit given by the Dye Bundle of the Bulletin Board of the Community Center. The Dye Bundle requires Red Cabbage and Duck Feathers, hard to come by in Year 1, and Farming 9 is likewise a high hurdle, so the Seed Maker will likely factor in only in Year 2 and later.

The seed maker consumes a crop, nearly any crop, and takes 20 game minutes to produce seeds from that crop. Daily luck and item quality have no effect on the process.

The seed maker has a 97.51% chance to produce the seeds of that crop. That means if you feed 40 seedmakers cranberries, usually 39 of them will spit out cranberry seeds. The odd man out will probably produce mixed seeds, but once every 200 runs the maker instead produces an ancient seed.

When the seed maker produces appropriate seeds, it produces between 1 and 3 seeds each time. This means the 40 crops of the previous example likely become 78 seeds, 1.95 seeds per crop lost.

The question “is the seed maker worth it” therefor becomes “can I buy two seeds for the sale price of one crop?”

Note that not all seeds are available for sale at all times. If you need certain out of season seeds for the greenhouse, the seed maker is the only reliable option.

Wild Seeds

The equation for wild seeds is a bit different. Wild seeds are always produced by sacrificing produce. The question then becomes which recipe is cheaper: one copy of each seasonal forage, or five copies of the specific seasonal forage needed.