Vintage Story: Advanced Agriculture & Soil Science
Checked on 13 October 2026 against the Vintage Story 1.22.7 game files and its in-game handbook. Days assume the default 9 day months.
In Vintage Story, farming is a simulation of soil health, seasonal timing and nutrient balance. Every block of farmland tracks three nutrients, nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K), plus its moisture, and each crop draws on exactly one of the three. Look at a farmland block and its tooltip shows all of them, for example Nutrient Levels: 50% N, 50% P, 50% K.
1. Soil Fertility
Not all dirt is equal. Tilled soil starts with all three nutrients at its fertility: Barren (5%), Low (25%), Medium (50%), High (65%) and Terra Preta (80%). Terra preta grows crops 10% faster than high fertility soil and about 20% faster than fresh medium soil, not twice as fast.
2. The N-P-K Nutrient Cycle
Each crop uses one nutrient: grains such as spelt, rye and amaranth use nitrogen, as do cabbage and turnips; onions, parsnips and peanuts use phosphorus; carrots, flax, rice and soybeans use potassium. A nutrient at 0% does not stop a crop, it slows it to a tenth of its speed.
3. Crop Rotation
To keep soil healthy without fertilizers, rotate so each planting uses a different nutrient than the one before, for example spelt (N), then onions (P), then carrots (K). While a crop grows, the nutrient it uses recovers at a third of the normal speed and the other two recover at the normal speed.
Soil Fertility Levels and Where to Find Them
| In-game name | Starting N, P and K | Crop speed at that level | Where to find it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Barren soil | 5% | 10% | Natural top soil where the land is least fertile, or too cold or dry for better soil |
| Low fertility soil | 25% | 60% | Natural top soil where the world's fertility is moderate |
| Medium fertility soil | 50% | 90% | Natural top soil where the world's fertility is high enough |
| High fertility soil | 65% | 100% | Patches about 5 blocks in radius inside low and medium soil, only in warm, wet regions (50% to 90% rainfall, 5 to 37 °C) and not at high elevations; also in some ruined farm beds |
| Terra preta | 80% | 110% | Crafted (see below), or found in a few ruins such as raised farm beds and the Resonance Archives |
Crop speed counts only the nutrient level; moisture changes it again. The speed steps are: above 75% a crop grows at 110%, above 50% at 100%, above 35% at 90%, above 20% at 60%, above 5% at 30%, and at 5% or less at 10%. High fertility soil patches are rare, about one try per 40 chunks, so the reliable route to the best soil is to craft terra preta:
- 1 terra preta: 16 compost, 8 bone meal and 8 charcoal powder on the crafting grid.
- 2 terra preta: 16 compost, 8 bone meal, 8 charcoal powder and one block of high fertility soil.
Crop Rotation Chart
How much of its nutrient a crop takes out over a full growth, and how long it takes to ripen at full speed:
| Nutrient | Crop (nutrient used, days to ripen) |
|---|---|
| Nitrogen (N) | Turnip (24, 7 days), Cabbage (37, 12), Sunflower (36, 15), Amaranth (13, 16), Rye (35, 16), Spelt (35, 16), Fennel (35, 24), Pineapple (14, 50) |
| Phosphorus (P) | Onion (30, 14 days), Parsnip (18, 16), Peanut (40, 20), Licorice (35, 24) |
| Potassium (K) | Carrot (34, 9 days), Soybean (32, 10), Flax (44, 16), Rice (45, 18), Cassava (22, 40) |
Growth time is set in months, so it scales with the world's days per month. A field left fallow, or growing a crop that uses another nutrient, recovers each nutrient by about 1.7 points a day back up to its starting fertility; the nutrient a growing crop uses recovers at about 0.6 a day; nothing recovers while a ripe crop sits unharvested or while it is too cold for crops to grow. One spelt crop on fresh medium soil takes N from 50 to about 24, which drops the next nitrogen crop to 60% speed, so follow it with a phosphorus or potassium crop.
Essential Fertilizers & Soil Recovery
If you have a small plot and cannot wait for natural recovery, fertilizers add nutrients. Right click the farmland with one: its nutrients go into a slow release pool that feeds the soil about 1.7 points a day per nutrient, up to 100%, and the tooltip shows it as Slow release Fertilizer. The pool holds at most 150 points of each nutrient.
| Fertilizer | N | P | K | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Compost | 40 | 8 | 8 | 64 rot sealed in a barrel for 20 days makes 16 compost |
| Bone meal | 3 | 30 | 0 | Grind bones in a quern (an antler gives up to 4) |
| Potash | 0 | 0 | 60 | Cook ground sylvite with water in a pot, or buy it from the commodities trader. Each block's first potash also raises its base K by 15 for good |
| Saltpeter | 13 | 0 | 44 | The saltpeter crust that forms in caves around sea level; about one in two blocks drops one |
So compost is the nitrogen fertilizer, bone meal the phosphorus one, and potash and saltpeter cover potassium. Saltpeter is mostly potassium, not nitrogen.
Winter Survival: Building a Greenhouse
Below 10 °C crops grow more slowly, and at 0 °C or below they stop growing altogether. Crops do not die from that alone: each one takes damage only below its own cold limit, which is -12 °C for hardy rye but 10 °C for peanuts, and it dies after 48 hours of such damage. A frost or heat damaged crop gives half its yield. A greenhouse adds 5 °C to the crops inside, which lets you harvest later into autumn and start earlier in spring.
| Requirement | Description |
|---|---|
| Roofing | More than half of the room must get sky light through the roof, so most of the roof has to be glass or another transparent block. |
| Enclosure | Must be fully enclosed, with no openings. No gaps or fences! |
| Size | The game only treats a space as a room up to 14 blocks in each direction. |
| Validation | Look at the farmland inside: its tooltip shows +5°C from greenhouse. |
Light matters too: growth slows by 10% for every sunlight level below 19, so a crop needs sky above it. Unless the world allows underground farming, every block below sea level counts as one less light level.
Warning: Rabbits! Hares eat crops, and the in-game handbook recommends a rough-hewn fence or another obstacle around the field. Hares step up 1 block, so a fence or a 2 block wall keeps them out.
Irrigation & Moisture
Tilled soil needs water. Water within 3 blocks of the farmland, on the same level, keeps it at least 75% moist when it is 1 block away, 50% at 2 blocks and 25% at 3. Rain adds moisture to farmland open to the sky, a watering can adds it by hand, and without either the soil dries out over about 4 days. Moisture changes speed as well: about 109% at full moisture, 95% at 70%, 82% at 50% and 58% at 25%. Below 10% a crop does not grow at all, and that is also where the soil stops looking moist. Salt water nearby damages crops instead.
Vanilla has no irrigation channels. The Primitive Survival mod adds two: furrows that carry water from a pond along a field, and a buried irrigation vessel that keeps a 3x3 bed fully moist. Our Primitive Survival guide has the numbers.
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