Revision - farming and plants - Solarpunk Wiki

Overview

Farming is a core system in Solarpunk, providing raw materials for crafting, cooking, and trade. Players till soil with a Hoe, plant seeds, water crops, and harvest them when mature.

A grid of nine raised garden beds on bare Solarpunk soil, four planted with young bushes and five freshly turned, with a pump unit and a solar panel behind

Confirmed Crops

The following crops have been confirmed through the demo, Kickstarter updates, and development previews:

Crop	Primary use	Notes
Cotton	Cloth (crafting material)	Demo growth was about 10 minutes; a post-launch update made cotton grow 25% faster
Berries / Raspberry	Food, cooking	One of the earlier available food sources
Wheat	Cooking ingredient	Staple crop for recipes
Tomatoes	Cooking ingredient	Added as part of the cooking system expansion
Carrots	Cooking ingredient	Added as part of the cooking system expansion
Paprika	Cooking ingredient	Added as part of the cooking system expansion
Watermelon	Cooking ingredient	Added as part of the cooking system expansion

Additional plant types were unlocked as a Kickstarter stretch goal, and the shipped game includes more varieties beyond those listed above. One achievement asks players to discover all plants, which confirms the roster is finite and completable.

Growth and Watering

Crops require regular watering to grow. In the demo build, cotton took roughly 10 minutes to reach harvest maturity, which testers widely considered too slow. The developers acted on that feedback: a post-launch update sped cotton growth up by 25%, and the first melon and wheat plants now drop 2 seeds each to keep early players from running short. See Updates and Patches for the full list of balancing changes.

A large irrigated Solarpunk farm of sunflowers, corn, wheat, watermelons and berries under sprinkler spray, with power poles and a windpump crossing the plots

Watering can be done manually with a watering can or automated through farming robots and drones. These automated watering systems use power from the Energy System and can cover designated crop areas without player input, freeing up time for other activities.

Greenhouses

Greenhouses are enclosed structures built using the building system with glass walls. They serve a critical function: protecting crops from storm damage. Storms in Solarpunk can destroy unprotected crops, potentially wiping out an entire harvest. Planting inside greenhouses prevents this, making them a high priority for any serious farming operation.

Getting Seeds

Seeds come from three places, and the supply becomes self-sustaining quickly:

Collecting plants growing wild on the islands, which is how each crop is first obtained.
Harvesting a plant you grew yourself, which returns one seed for every plant harvested. A crop therefore replaces itself one for one and never runs out once established.
Researching a recipe later in the game that produces more seeds than the one-for-one return, which is what allows a farm to actually expand.

Because the one-for-one return only maintains a farm rather than growing it, the seed recipe is the real unlock for large-scale planting. Cotton is the exception worth planning around: if you lose your supply it can be recovered by fishing the pond on the main island for cotton seeds, though that can take a while.

Where Crops Grow

The world is fixed rather than randomly generated, so crop locations are the same in every save. Wheat does not grow on the starting island and has to be found by exploring further out, which makes it an early reason to invest in the airship. If a crop cannot be found nearby, exploring is the answer rather than restarting the world.

Farming Tools

Tool	Function
Hoe	Tills soil to create plantable patches
Watering Can	Manually waters crops
Farming Robot / Drone	Automatically waters designated crop areas

Raised planter beds of watermelons, corn and wheat under sprinkler irrigation on a Solarpunk terrace, with floating islands on the horizon

Connection to Other Systems

Crafting: Cotton produces Cloth, which is needed for the Research Table and other crafted items.
Cooking: Tomatoes, Carrots, Paprika, Watermelon, Wheat, and Berries are all ingredients in cooking recipes.
Animals: Animal care and farming share space on islands; plan layouts to accommodate both.
Automation: Farming drones reduce manual labor, connecting the farm to the automation pipeline.

Cotton Recovery and New Plants

Version 1.3.0 increases the chance of fishing up cotton on the Starter Island. This helps the recovery route when a player needs to regrow cotton to replace an Airship Dock. The update does not state a drop percentage. See Death and Respawn for the recovery steps.

Decorative additions include flower patches, vines, ivy, glowing plants, Sakura trees and Jacaranda trees.

Version 1.3.0-304818 reached Steam on September 30, 2026. The announcement placed the console rollout after platform approval; a matching live version has not been confirmed for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S or Nintendo Switch 2 as of October 8. Check the installed version before relying on these changes on another platform.

Revision 13