Farming and Gardening

Overview

Farming in Pokemon Pokopia lets players grow crops for cooking ingredients, Pokemon food, and trading materials. The system uses Ditto's Rototiller move to prepare soil, Water Gun to irrigate, and the Grow specialty to accelerate plant growth. Farming connects directly to the cooking system, which powers up the player's moves and restores PP.

Crops are one of three main food sources alongside foraged items (leaves, seaweed, mushrooms, carrots) and berries that grow on trees. Farming is not required to progress the main story but significantly helps with cooking, which becomes essential in later areas where stronger move variants are needed to break tougher materials.

Rototiller

Rototiller is the core farming move that tills dirt or grass into crop fields, allowing the player to plant seeds. It consumes PP when used. Rototiller can also pick up wildflowers, crops, and plants without destroying them, allowing relocation of existing vegetation.

How to Learn Rototiller

1. Travel to the right side of the Pokemon Center in the Withered Wasteland.

2. Use Rock Smash to break through the stones blocking access to the area.

3. Find the small pond on the left side of the cleared area. Drilbur appears here.

4. Accept Drilbur's request. After completing it, Ditto learns Rototiller.

How to Use Rototiller

1. Equip Rototiller as your active move (visible in the bottom-right of the screen).

2. Aim at ground blocks. Eligible tiles become highlighted.

3. Press ZR to till the highlighted area into a crop field.

4. Hold ZR to continuously till and move around while doing so, covering larger areas quickly.

Important limitation: Rototiller does not work on dry dirt. You must water dried-out ground with Water Gun first to restore it before tilling. This is a common early-game confusion in the Withered Wasteland, where much of the ground starts dry.

Planting and Growing Crops

1. Select seeds from your inventory to hold them.

2. Aim at any tilled field and press A to plant the seeds.

3. Water the crops using Water Gun if required. Some crops can grow without irrigation, but watering speeds up the cycle for all crops.

4. Station a Pokemon with the Grow specialty nearby to accelerate growth. A Grow Pokemon is needed to trigger sprouting for some crops like beans.

5. Harvest mature crops by pressing A or using Cut.

Watering and Irrigation

Water Gun (learned from Squirtle, the first move in the game) sprays water in a cross/plus (+) pattern across 5 blocks. Some crops require watering to grow at all, while others develop independently. Watering always speeds up the growth cycle regardless.

For hands-free irrigation, two options exist:

Eating Soup temporarily powers up Water Gun. When powered up, hold ZR to cover a larger area, making manual watering more efficient.

Available Crops

Plantable Crops

The following crops can be grown from seeds planted in tilled soil:

Foraged Ingredients

These ingredients are gathered from the world rather than grown from seeds:

Berries

Leppa Berries are the most common berry. To harvest them, water withered trees with Water Gun to revive them, then press A near the tree to headbutt it and knock berries down. They restore PP when eaten directly and are used in Leppa Bread and Leppa Salad. Chesto Berries and Aspear Berries also exist and have dedicated seeds (Leppa Seeds, Chesto Seeds, Aspear Seeds are listed in the game's item database).

Decorative Seeds

Flower and hedge seeds are available for decorative planting rather than cooking:

• Wildflower Seeds

• Beautiful-Flower Seeds

• Cute-Flower Seeds

• Adorable-Hedge Seeds

• Healthy-Hedge Seeds

• Dandy Flower Seeds (event-only, from the More Spores for Hoppip event)

Obtaining Seeds

Grow Specialty Pokemon

Pokemon with the Grow specialty make plants grow faster when stationed near farm plots or when following the player near plant sites. VGC lists approximately 22 Pokemon with the Grow specialty, including evolutionary lines:

During the More Spores for Hoppip event, Hoppip, Skiploom, and Jumpluff also have the Grow specialty. Bulbasaur is available earliest and is the recommended farming companion for the first half of the game.

Cooking Integration

Farming feeds directly into the cooking system, which is unlocked in Rocky Ridges after freeing Chef Dente (a Greedent trapped in a barrel). All cooked food fully restores PP for the powered-up move and can be gifted to Pokemon to increase their happiness.

Recipe Variants

Adding different secondary ingredients creates recipe variants with distinct flavor profiles:

Farming Habitats

Several habitats are built using farming components:

Tips

• Learn Rototiller as early as possible in the Withered Wasteland. Water any dry ground with Water Gun before attempting to till it.

• Station Bulbasaur near your farm plots. It is available early and has the Grow specialty, which is essential for triggering sprouting and speeding up growth.

• Leaf farming loop: Use Leafage to plant grass, let it grow, cut with Scyther's Cut to get leaves, then replant. Eating Salad powers up Leafage to grow 4-5 patches at once, creating an unlimited leaf supply.

• Place a Water Basin near your fields and station a Water specialty Pokemon nearby. The Pokemon will automatically water your crops without manual effort.

• Prioritize growing Beans and Wheat. Hamburger Steaks (Rock Smash power-up) and Bread (Cut power-up) are the two most important recipes for story progression.

• Buy seeds daily from the PC Shop. Stock refreshes each day, and 50 Life Coins per 5 seeds is a reasonable price.

• Use Rototiller on wild crop blocks to collect the entire plant intact. Use Rock Smash on a planted block to get just the seed instead.

• Water withered trees with Water Gun, then press A to headbutt them for Leppa Berries. This is the primary PP restoration method before unlocking cooking.

• Having Pokemon with Chop, Crush, or Burn specialties nearby while cooking creates unique recipe variants with different flavor profiles and effects.

• Build the Fresh Veggie Field habitat (#015) with 8 Vegetable Fields to attract Drilbur and Rowlet, both useful farming companions.

• Save 50 vegetable seeds for the Leafeon habitat challenge in Palette Town, which requires planting all 50 seeds at once.