Short answer: about 9 kegs for every 10 Ancient Fruit plants, 1 keg for every 2 Starfruit, and 14 kegs for every 10 Hops. A full greenhouse of 116 Ancient Fruit needs 104 kegs to never fall behind. Blueberries and Cranberries make so much fruit that kegging all of it is rarely realistic.
The question is really: how many kegs does one plant keep busy? A keg takes a fixed time per item, and a plant gives fruit at a fixed pace. Divide one by the other and you get kegs per plant. Below that number, fruit piles up in a chest. Above it, kegs sit empty.
| Crop | Items a day per plant | Keg makes | Days per keg run | Kegs per plant | Kegs per 100 plants |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hops | 1 | Pale Ale | 1.41 | 1.41 | 141 |
| Ancient Fruit | 0.14 | Wine | 6.25 | 0.89 | 90 |
| Starfruit | 0.08 | Wine | 6.25 | 0.48 | 49 |
| Pineapple | 0.14 | Wine | 6.25 | 0.89 | 90 |
| Melon | 0.08 | Wine | 6.25 | 0.52 | 53 |
| Pumpkin | 0.08 | Juice | 3.75 | 0.29 | 29 |
| Wheat | 0.25 | Beer | 1.09 | 0.27 | 28 |
| Cranberries | 0.42 | Wine | 6.25 | 2.64 | 264 |
| Blueberry | 0.76 | Wine | 6.25 | 4.72 | 472 |
Items a day is the long-run pace once a plant is producing: one harvest every regrow cycle for regrowing crops, or one every growing cycle if you replant. Average extra items per harvest are included, at farming level 0. Keg times use the wiki's 1,600 game minutes per day.
How the numbers work
Take Ancient Fruit. It regrows every 7 days, so one plant gives 1 fruit a week. Wine takes 10,000 minutes in a keg, which is 6.25 days. One keg finishes a bit more than a week's fruit in a week, so each plant needs 0.89 of a keg. Round up per 10 plants and you get 9.
Hops go the other way. A Hops vine gives one cone every day, and Pale Ale takes 1.41 days. One vine keeps 1.41 kegs busy, so 100 vines need 141 kegs. That is why Hops look amazing on paper and disappoint on a farm with 30 kegs.
Berries: don't try to keg them all
A Blueberry plant averages about 0.76 berries a day once it is producing. Keeping up would take 4.72 kegs per plant, or 472 kegs for 100 plants. Cranberries need 2.64 per plant. Nobody has that many. Keg what you can, put the rest in Preserves Jars or sell it raw, and spend your kegs on fruit that is worth more per keg-day. The Keg vs Preserves Jar tool splits a harvest across the machines you own.
A full greenhouse
With 6 Iridium Sprinklers the greenhouse has 116 plantable tiles. Planted with one crop:
- Ancient Fruit: 104 kegs.
- Starfruit: 56 kegs.
- Hops: 164 kegs.
If you have fewer kegs than that, the best crop changes. Our greenhouse money guide shows which crop wins at 20, 50 and 100 kegs, and the Greenhouse Planner counts the machines for any mix of crops.
Kegs or Preserves Jars?
A jar is faster than a keg: 4,000 minutes (2.5 days) for any fruit or vegetable. So it takes fewer jars to keep up, for example 0.36 jars per Ancient Fruit plant against 0.89 kegs. Wine is worth much more than jelly for expensive fruit though, so for Ancient Fruit and Starfruit, more kegs are the better use of your materials. For cheap fruit the jar often wins. The Keg vs Preserves Jar tool shows the gold per machine for every crop.
Kegs for the plot you actually have
Few farms are 100 plants of one crop. This table turns the per-plant figure into kegs for plots of 10, 25 and 50 plants, rounded up, because you can't own a third of a keg.
| Crop | 10 plants | 25 plants | 50 plants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ancient Fruit | 9 | 23 | 45 |
| Starfruit | 5 | 12 | 24 |
| Pineapple | 9 | 23 | 45 |
| Melon | 6 | 13 | 26 |
| Pumpkin | 3 | 8 | 15 |
| Hops | 15 | 36 | 71 |
| Wheat | 3 | 7 | 14 |
Use it as a ceiling, not a target. Ancient Fruit and Pineapple both need 23 kegs for 25 plants, nearly one keg per plant, because each plant gives one fruit every 7 days and Wine takes 6.25 days. If you have 15 kegs, fifteen kegs are always busy and the other ten plants' fruit goes into a chest or a jar. That's not a problem. It means your next keg is worth building, which is the real use of this table.
What a keg is worth
More kegs only help if the extra output sells for enough. This is the gold a keg adds per day it runs, over the raw price of the item, at farming level 0 with the Artisan profession:
| Crop | Product | Gold per keg per day |
|---|---|---|
| Starfruit | Wine | 384g |
| Ancient Fruit | Wine | 282g |
| Hops | Pale Ale | 281g |
| Pineapple | Wine | 154g |
A Starfruit keg adds 384g a day, and Pineapple only 154g. So when kegs are scarce, fill them with Starfruit first, Ancient Fruit and Hops next, and leave Pineapple for jars or the shipping bin. A keg costs a fixed amount of materials whatever you put in it. The dearer the fruit, the faster it pays for itself.
What kegs cost to build
One Keg is 30 Wood, 5 Copper Ore, 5 Iron Ore, 2 Coal, 1 Oak Resin. It unlocks at Farming Level 8. The ore and coal include smelting the Copper Bar and Iron Bar the recipe asks for. Fifty kegs, which is a serious winery, comes to 1,500 Wood, 250 Copper Ore, 250 Iron Ore, 100 Coal, 50 Oak Resin.
Wood is the easy part. The limit is Oak Resin and the coal for smelting, so most players grow their keg count slowly across seasons, adding a few at a time as fruit starts to pile up. A Preserves Jar is 50 Wood, 40 Stone, 8 Coal and has no ore at all, which is why jars are the cheaper machine to scale. The Crafting Calculator adds up the materials for any number of either.
A sensible build order
- Start with one keg per five plants of your best fruit. That keeps pace with about a fifth of the harvest and costs a handful of materials. See how fast fruit piles up before you build more.
- Add kegs whenever you carry more than a few unprocessed fruit around. Fruit in a chest is money you haven't collected yet.
- Use jars as overflow. They finish in 2.5 days, so a small number of jars absorbs a lot of surplus fruit.
- Don't build past the table. Once your kegs equal the figure for your plot, extra kegs sit empty.
Why the plan changes with luck and levels
The figures use average yields at farming level 0. Higher levels raise the average number of items per harvest for crops that can drop extra, like Blueberries and Cranberries, so those two need more machines than shown once your level is up. Single-item crops such as Ancient Fruit and Starfruit don't change, so their numbers hold at any level. If a table figure and your own chest disagree, trust the chest and adjust.
One-harvest crops arrive in a burst
Everything above is a steady pace. A crop that gives one harvest and is then replanted, like Pumpkin, doesn't work that way: all of its fruit shows up on the same day. Fifty Pumpkin plants give fifty pumpkins at once. Juice takes 3.75 days in a keg, so with 10 kegs the last pumpkin is in a keg after five rounds, about 18.75 days later. With 50 kegs it all starts the same day. Neither is wrong. Fewer kegs just stretch the work over more days, and the products come out the same.
Mistakes that waste kegs
- Sizing for the whole farm. Work out kegs crop by crop and add them up. A mixed plot needs less than the biggest single-crop figure.
- Keeping kegs full of cheap fruit. A keg busy with a low-value fruit is a keg that can't take Starfruit. Check the gold-per-keg table before you fill them.
- Leaving a finished keg alone. Wine only counts when you collect it. A full keg is an idle keg.
- Treating the table as a promise. Real harvests vary. Use the figures to decide how many kegs to build next, not to decide you are finished.
Work it out for your farm
More guides
All tools and guides on this topic: Artisan Goods.