Guide:Gardening

Gardening is the practice of intentionally spawning resources in a convenient area for harvest. There are several Plants that can be successfully grown in gardens in Terraria.

To grow many items, you'll first need to collect seeds. Chlorophyte ore can also be "gardened" after a fashion, as can Crystal Shards.

Grass fields
The main use of artificial grass fields is to create small, contained biomes to grow certain resources, such as the different types of Mushrooms or certain Trees.

All types of Grass will spread to other suitable soil blocks, which must be within 2 blocks and exposed on at least one side or corner. When growing large grass fields with limited seeds, it is better to plant them spread throughout the farm, as then the grass will spread over it faster.

The collection of Jungle Grass Seeds can be sped up through the use of Flower Boots, while a Queen Statue can easily teleport the Dryad to an underground Mushroom Biome for Mushroom Grass Seeds.

Contain Corruption, Crimson and Hallowed grass safely, as they will spread their respective biome if left unprotected (by converting grass in pre-Hardmode, and any corruptible block in Hardmode).

An Acorn planted on plain Grass, Corruption grass, Hallowed grass, Jungle grass, and Crimson grass will respectively grow plain Wood, Ebonwood, Pearlwood, Rich Mahogany, and Shadewood trees. They cannot be planted on Mushroom grass, and there is currently no way to plant Giant Glowing Mushrooms. They will, however, grow naturally if given enough space.

Pumpkin Seeds can only be planted on regular and hallowed Grass.

Herb
A well planned herb garden will provide most of the materials needed to create almost every buff Potion.

Herbs can be planted in soil, Pots or Planter Boxes. Pots and Planter Boxes do not have terrain limitations and allow every herb to grow on them, while also protecting them from being accidentally destroyed by a Player or enemy's attacks or projectiles. Herbs on soil however can be automatically harvested with Dart Traps or Actuator mechanisms.

The Staff of Regrowth will greatly increase the amount of herbs and seeds harvested. It will also work on fully grown but not yet bloomed plants at a lower efficiency, making it very useful when harvesting natural Deathweed or Waterleaf.

Trees


While Trees grown by a player are significantly shorter than those generated naturally, building a farm for them provides a very simple way to obtain all different Wood types in one place.

A typical Wood farm consists of a flat surface made with the block required to grow the respective tree. If building multiple layers, all layers will need to have the correct vertical spacing in order for the Trees to grow properly.

In order to grow into a Tree, Acorns require one tile of empty space on either side of it, as well as 16 tiles of free vertical space. Jungle and Palm trees will respectively require 24 and 30 free vertical tiles instead. Note that Trees will not grow Underground (below 0 depth) or in front of a Wall.

Cacti and Giant Glowing Mushrooms cannot be manually planted, but they will automatically grow on their respective surfaces if all conditions are met. Rich Mahogany Trees will grow automatically as well.

Mushrooms
All Mushroom types will grow naturally in their respective Grass surface. Usual Mushroom farms consist of several layers of dirt with 3 block tall gaps in between.

Note that vines will grow down from strips of grassy dirt, preventing the growth of other layers below them. A layer of Wooden platforms below the dirt layers will prevent their growth while allowing the player to walk through them, allowing layers to be packed more tightly.

Regular Mushrooms are used for Lesser Healing and Regeneration Potions, however their sell price is significantly higher than the other two, giving it the small use of a limited money farm as well.

Vile or Vicious Mushroom farms are used for Vile Powder, which is required to summon the Eater of Worlds or Brain of Cthulhu, depending on the natural evil biome. Make sure to contain the farm properly, otherwise the Corruption/Crimson may spread out of the farm.

Glowing Mushrooms are much more useful in comparison, being used for Furniture and Shroomite Bars in Hardmode. They also grow at a faster rate than usual, and Giant Glowing Mushrooms may grow if given enough space (See above).

Mushrooms can be automatically harvested with Dart Traps or Actuators. Glowing Mushrooms have the unique ability grow on actuated Mushroom Grass: they will be immediately harvested as soon as they spawn, having a chance to drop as an item and/or seeds. This can be taken advantage of by building a large mushroom farm in the surface layer and having it produce and harvest Glowing Mushrooms without player intervention.

Bait Farm
A bait farm is used to gather large amounts of bait before Fishing.

Fireflies are one of the most common forms of Bait. With a Water Candle and/or Battle Potion, large amounts of them may spawn at Night. Once in Hardmode, Lightning Bugs will appear in the Hallow, which are more effective as bait.

Worms and Grasshoppers are an alternative to them, having slightly higher Bait Power and being very common during a Rain when destroying stone or dirt piles or cutting grass.

Jungle grass is also excellent source of bait, as each Jungle plant has a very high chance of spawning a Grubby, Buggy, or Sluggy.

The Flower Boots obtained from Underground Jungle Cabin chests can be used to get a large amount of bait in little time. When a Flare is directly beneath the player's feet, the flowers spawned will be instantly destroyed, and swinging a Bug Net will catch any critters that spawn.

Chlorophyte ore


When Hardmode starts, mud (including jungle grass, as it will throughout this section) located in the Underground Jungle will begin to convert into Chlorophyte Ore. Thereafter, each tile of the ore can convert adjacent tiles of mud into more chlorophyte. Note that while mud can be crafted from dirt, it is still non-renewable, and therefore so is chlorophyte ore. In practice this makes chlorophyte "nearly unlimited", but it would be possible to deplete a world's mud/dirt.

Chlorophyte will only naturally appear in Hardmode Underground Jungles (either natural or artificial), but the ore can be seeded in any non-evil biome underground.
 * In practice, farming in the Cavern layer will be most productive; in the Underground layer its spread is much more limited. That said, the Undergound is more accessible, and small amounts can be grown with little difficulty.  In the Underworld there is no natural mud, and the local enemies are troublesome.
 * Do not have any Ebonstone or Crimstone blocks within three blocks of your farm. Both will convert mud into dirt, preventing Chlorophyte from growing.

Chlorophyte has a spreading limit, checking a square area roughly centered around the ore tile selected to update. The exact limits will depend on the platform:
 * On, the short-range maximum is 21 ore blocks in a 104 tile range and the long-range max is 66 ore blocks in a 127 tile range in Underground, while in the Cavern short-range maximum is 41 ore blocks in a 70 tile range and the long range max is 131 ore blocks in a 170 tile range.
 * On, the short-range maximum is 12 ore blocks in a 114 tile range and the long-range max is 56 ore blocks in a 284 tile range in Underground, while in the Cavern short-range maximum is 24 ore blocks in a 76 tile range and the max is approximately 111 ore blocks in a 190 tile range.

A simple method to farm Chlorophyte is to build a single square "farm" of mud with one Chlorophyte Ore block in the middle. One may also instead create a single long horizontal or vertical one block strip with a single Chlorophyte Ore block in it, as an alternative method. Either way, any ore mined should of course be replaced with fresh mud.
 * On, the squares can be as large as 6x6 or 6x7, and (in the Caverns) multiple farms should be separated by at least 38 tiles.
 * On, a minimum sized square of 3x3 or 3x4 blocks will do, and farms in the Caverns should be separated by at least 45 tiles.

Multiple farms built too close to each other will compete with each other (that is, they will share the limits above). Similarly, larger squares will produce no more chlorophyte than the minimum sizes, and may be more difficult to mine. However, a slightly larger square might spread faster once most of the square has been converted, as it will have more candidate tiles to convert. Note that any chlorophyte ore present within these ranges will count toward the spreading limit, and may similarly compete with the farms.

Using larger squares will not interfere with farming, but may be more difficult to mine, and in any case the amount of chlorophyte produced will not exceed the limits above.

Crystal Shards
Crystal Shards have an unusually high sell value for being so common, so farming them can be one of the most effective ways of making money throughout Hardmode. A full stack is worth. Crafting them into Greater Healing Potions requires pixie dust (and some effort), but yields even higher profits, especially with an Alchemy Table. (see Guide:Making money for details)

For farming, place single horizontal rows of Pearlstone, separated by three tile-wide gaps for walking and harvesting. The farm must be in the cavern layer or below. If the farm is not actually in the Hallow, it should be sealed in a frame of non-infectable blocks with a three-block gap outside that, to prevent spreading of the Hallow. Note that there are some limits to how densely crystals can spawn, so farms need to be fairly large to be worthwhile.

Actuators can be used to switch Pearlstone to an inactive state, causing all Crystal Shards to drop for easy harvesting. For even greater convenience, conveyor belts can then be used to gather them.