Growing zone
Growing zone
A zone where your colonists will try to grow a certain kind of plant.
Base Stats
- Type
- Zones
Building
- Size
- 1 × 1 +
- Placeable
- True
A growing zone designates where growers will sow and/or harvest plants, including trees. Growing zones are only allowed in soil, rich soil, or gravel, each with an effect on growth rate. They can't be placed on sand, mud, natural stone, water, or constructed floors.
When the mouse is over a tile, the fertility rate is shown at the bottom left of the screen (with some other related info). The fertility rate determines speed of growth, so essentially is a multiplier vs. crops grown in "normal" soil, which has a baseline fertility of "100%".
When a growing zone is selected, buttons appear to allow the player to change the plant to be grown or to allow the zone to be renamed, deleted, hidden, or to allow/disallow sowing. Only one type of plant can be selected for each individual zone. When sowing is disabled or the type of crop has been changed, colonists will still harvest crops currently growing in the zone when they mature.
Trees planted in zones need a 1 tile radius in all directions free of other crops or trees, even if planted in other zones. Planters will remove wild trees next to growing zones to accommodate this radius.
Tips and tricks
Guesstimating a correct size of a growing zone is not easy with so many factors affecting potential harvest. A quick rule of thumb is to grow 10+ tiles of food crops per colonist in a biome with year-round growing. If the colony hunts as well, it will accumulate some, though not excessive, food reserves, which can be saved for winter, fed to prisoners, or sold. More should be planted if other factors reduce yields, such as in biomes and latitudes with shorter growable periods.
Put 4-tile-wide gaps in between your crop fields to prevent the spread of fire or blight. If you use roofed walkways for this purpose, they can also come in handy during winter or toxic fallout.
You can double-click an empty tile inside a growing zone to highlight all growing zones on the visible portion of the map. This can be handy in a biome with winter to forbid sowing as winter approaches - but be sure to turn sowing back on before spring!
You can also place growing zones over wild plants and forbid sowing. Your growers will not plant any new crops, but will instead harvest the wild plants when they are fully grown. This can be used for such plants as trees, berries, healroot or ambrosia.