Guide to Botany

Your dream garden awaits!

Keeping it Green

When you click on a plant pot with an empty hand, you can check the plant to see how it is doing. Various indicators will appear when you do so, which describe the condition of the plant and soil - red indicators are bad, blue indicators are good:

Message	Meaning
The soil is completley dry.	The soil has ran out of water. This will quickly kill the plant.
The soil looks a little dry.	The water level is getting low, so top it up!
The soil is too soggy.	You've added too much water, which stunts growth. It isn't a threat to the plant's health, so wait it out.
The soil looks rich and fertile.	Indicates the presence of compost in the soil. Remember, this dries out the soil quicker.
The plant growing irregularly!	Indicates the presence of mutagen in the soil. This causes plant genes to mutate wildly.
The plant is withering!	Indicates the presence of poison in the soil. This kills plants very rapidly.
The plant is in a poor condition.	The plant's health is low, which negatively affects harvests. Use compost!
The plant glistens with good health!	Judicious compost and water use has resulted in a healthy plant!
The plant is flourishing!	The plant has extremely high health. Expect good harvests!
The plant looks strange...	You have managed to grow a rare mutant strain of plant. This could be good or bad!
Weeds have infested the soil.	This pot has been infested with a weed-type plant. You will have to take special measures to get rid of it.

If you click and drag a plant pot onto yourself, you will completely clear out the pot. This not only empties any plant out of it, but completely cleans out all soil water, nutrients, everything. You shouldn't need to do this generally, but it's there if you need it. However, this will not work on pots infested with weeds! You must find a way to kill the weeds before emptying the pot if you want to get rid of them. Weeds will occasionally appear in unoccupied plant pots and may have various effects or even produce items, but remember - these are weeds and thus are useless and annoying at best, and downright dangerous at worst! Get rid of them when you can.

1986 Blue Ribbon Winner: Biggest Weed Harvest

Plants carry genes which affect various things relating to their growth and crops. While plant seeds are easy enough to come by from the dispenser or ordering crates of them from the Cargo Bay, these seeds start out completely plain and devoid of any particular genetic fluctuations. Every time a seed is planted, it mutates a bit - any seeds harvested from this plant will carry those genes, which will mutate again when planted - this way, you can breed plants for particular qualities. Genes can degrade as well as improve, however - so be careful not to end up with completely useless seeds which produce no crops, or result in plants that die instantly.

To get even more in-depth with planting you have the plant analyzer, which can scan a plant, fruit or seed for genetic variables:

Species	Tells you what kind of plant it is.
Generation	How many times this breed of plant has gone through a full lifecycle. Incremented by 1 whenever a seed is planted.
Maturation Rate	How long the plant takes to grow from a sprout to a crop-producing plant. Lower is better! This is only marginally useful to single-harvest plants.
Production Rate	How long you have to wait between each harvest. Lower is better!
Lifespan	How many harvests the plant will produce before dying. Higher is better! This variable is irrelevant to plants with only one harvest.
Yield	How many crops the plant will produce besides its normal amount. Higher is better!
Potency	How powerful items produced by this plant are. This could be good or bad depending on what the crop is. Will change the quantity of chemical that can be extracted from each harvested item.
Endurance	How much the plant can resist dehydration, poison, and fire.

With these, you can tell how much of a certain plant you can harvest, or how long it will live, or what you need to do to keep it alive. Some plants aren't just one-off harvests, you can tend tomatoes for multiple harvests if you want! In fact, should you keep the plant happy (with blue indicators above - rich and fertile, and very healthy), you will likely have a chance at harvesting MORE than you would if you had just plain watered it. It pays to keep an eye on your plants! It's just a matter of knowing when to add water, or fertilizer, etc. Plants work the same way in real life - to an extent. Don't water your plants? They'll die. Overwater? Same deal. Be careful with your plants, they are fragile, little angels~

If you want to experiment, call in the Scientist and experiment with various different chemicals in the soil. Some types of chemical will add lots of nutrients to the soil, some chemicals have a mutagenic effect on the plant which causes the plant's genes to rapidly mutate, and some chemicals are toxic to plants and will kill them very quickly.

Adding compost to the soil will increase your harvest. You can make more harvest by stuffing stuff into the compost tank. Clicking and dragging will attempt to move everything in reach inside, so don't do it while you're standing next to your prize pile of primo! The soil will become rich and fertile, and the time it takes to grow may lessen, or your harvestable product may go up.

Botanist Machinery

The fancy stuff you use to enhance your plants and produce chemicals.

Icon	Machine Name	Description
	Plant Analyzer	Brings up a report of the plants genes, its current lifecycle, and the presence of any mutations. Its functionality is also built into your PDA.
	Seed Extractor	Extracts 1-4 seeds from a piece of fruit, preserving the genes.
	Gene Manipulator	Alters the genes of a seed. Each mutation has about a 10% chance of destroying the seed with radiation, but also a chance to turn the seed into one of its mutant varieties. You'll use this to enhance the stats of your plants or to produce the rare weird plants. It is also capable of splicing two seeds together, combining their traits, but putting two seeds into the manipulator can screw up the regular mutation interface.
	Reagent Extractor	Processes certain items into reagents and puts them in an inserted beaker. Higher potency products produce more of a given chemical.
	Food Processor	Processes certain items into a different (often more usable) form. Available in the Kitchen.
	Still	Turns certain items into booze. Available in the Kitchen and Bar.

Available Crops

Name	Icon	Type	Yield	Harvests	Time	Notes
Tomato		Food	3	3	Average	Makes Ketchup
Grape		Food	5	2	Slow
Orange		Food	2	3	Average
Melon		Food	2	5	Slow
Chili		Food	3	3	Average	Hot Sauce (breed for potency)
Lettuce		Food	6	Once	Fast	Starts at poor health
Carrot		Food
Lemon		Food
Carrot		Food
Apple		Food	3	10	Very Slow
Banana		Food	5	4	Slow
Corn		Food				Cornstarch or Popcorn
Potato		Food
Peanut		Food				Peanut Butter
Pumpkin		Ingredient			Average
Synthmeat		Ingredient	3	2	Average
Wheat		Ingredient	5	Once	Fast	Flour
Sugar		Ingredient	7	Once	Fast	Baker's Sugar
Contusine		Herb	5	Once	Average	Can extract Bicardine
Asomna		Herb	5	Once	Average	Can extract Inaprovaline
Nureous		Herb	5	Once	Average	Can extract Hyronalin
Commol		Herb	5	Once	Average	Can extract Kelotane
Venne		Herb	5	Once	Average	Can extract Dylovene
Cannabis		Herb	5	Once	Fast	Smokeable, combine leaf and paper
Space Fungus		Weed	3	Infinite	Slow	Grows mold mushrooms
Creeper		Weed	None	None	Fast	Attacks other plants and spreads into adjacent empty pots
Lasher		Weed	None	None	Fast	Will attack people standing next to it or trying to kill it
Radweed		Weed	None	None	Slow	Emits radiation affecting nearby plants and people
Slurrypod		Weed	1	Once	Average	Will explode if not quickly harvested, spreading toxic goop.
Man-Eater		Critter	1	Once	Variable	Becomes ambulatory and aggressive if grown enough

Crop Mutations

Whenever a plant's genes would normally mutate (when planted, exposure to mutagen, in the gene manipulator), there is a rare chance that the plant will become a mutant variant of its normal self. These have different effects depending on the species! This list is not complete, so feel free to experiment or pester more experienced botanists.

Mutant Plant	Icon	Species	Info
Green Grapes		Grape	Heals x2
Rainbow Weed		Cannabis	Gets you extremely high
Death Weed		Cannabis	Gets you extremely dead
White Weed		Cannabis	Contains Tricordrazine
Chilly Pepper		Chili	Cools you down
Ghost Chili		Chili	Extremely spicy
Psylocybin		Space Fungus	A potent hallucinogen
Amanita		Space Fungus	Very toxic
Omega Slurrypod		Slurrypod
Synthbrain		Synthmeat
Steel Wheat		Wheat	Makes metal fillings