Orchard

Orchard

Category	Food Production
First Appearance	1.0.0

Main article: Farming

A young plum orchard.

A small orchard with walnut, chestnut and apple trees.

An orchard is used for the planting of seeds which can be purchased from a merchant. Orchards comprise fruit or nut-producing trees which are grown for the sustainable production of food.

Trees which have been planted in an orchard will not yield crops in the first year as they require roughly 4 years to mature before they are able to provide the villagers with either fruit or nuts. It is worth noting that as trees in an orchard grow older they do produce more goods.

Orchards can vary in shapes and sizes with a maximum of up to 15x15 tiles. The biggest orchard plot that would only require one worker is an 8x9 or 9X8 plot.

The following fruit and nuts can be planted in an orchard:

• Apple
• Cherry
• Chestnut
• Pear
• Pecan
• Peach
• Plum
• Walnut

Orchard Variety

After a set period of time the trees in an orchard will die – usually one at a time – and the farmer(s) will plant new ones. A player can take advantage of this by changing the seed type in an orchard's dialogue pop-up which means your farmer(s) will plant the newly selected produce type come planting time. Doing this every couple of in-game years will ensure that the orchard will be producing a larger variety of foods without having to commit land and farmers to the equivalent amount of individual orchard fields.

With that being said, however, it is not known the effect – positive or otherwise – that this form of tree rotation has on the frequency of infestations or if trees are harvested a few in-game years earlier than if they were left unmanaged.

Efficiency

An orchard of 15x15 will give the best area efficiency per worker. Each farmer will manage 75 square which gives a bit more ratio than the other possibilities. An orchard 15x4 ^{(not 4x15)} gives the best tree efficiency per tile for 1 farmer at 16 trees per 60 tiles at 3.75 tiles per tree. These 15x4 orchards also can be tiled next to each other without issue. A 4x4 field is the worst orchard you can have because 1 farmer will manage 16 blocks with only 4 trees. The table below shows the best and worst possible grids per farmer composition.

Squares	Grid	Farmers	Square per farmer
16	4x4/2x8	1	16
72	6x12/8x9	1	72
75	5x15	2	37.5
144	12x12	2	72
150	10x15	3	50
225	15x15	3	75

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I've left the previous section untouched and added this as an addendum

Trees are planted with 2 tiles between each tree north-to-south, 1 tile between each tree west-to-east. This affects the most efficient arrangement of an orchard. An orchard 4 tiles west-to-east (52 tiles) x 13 units north-to-south generates 2 columns x 5 rows = 10 trees. An orchard 13 units west-to-east x 4 tiles north-to-south (52 tiles) however generates 7 columns x 2 rows = 14 trees.

i.e. West-to-East, orchards will have 3 trees at 5 tiles wide, and another tree at 7 (4), 9 (5), 11 (6), 13 (7), 15 (8) North-to-south, orchards will have 2 trees at 4 tiles tall, and another tree at 7 (3), 10 (4), 13 (5)

It is never worth setting an orchard 15 tiles north to south as a result.

To minimize the number of tiles needed per tree, a smaller orchard works better. (West-to-east x North-South)

Tile Grid	Tree Grid	Tiles per tree
5 x 4	3 x 2	3.333
7 x 4	4 x 2	3.5
9 x 4	5 x 2	3.6
11 x 4	6 x 2	3.666
13 x 4	7 x 2	3.71428
15 x 4	8 x 2	3.75

Tile Grid	Tree Grid	Tiles per tree
5 x 7	3 x 3	3.8888
5 x 10	3 x 4	4.1666
5 x 13	3 x 5	4.3333

Tile Grid	Tree Grid	Tiles per tree
15 x 4	9 x 2	3.75
15 x 7	9 x 3	3.8888
15 x 10	9 x 4	4.1666
15 x 13	9 x 5	4.3333

Tile Grid	Orchard Grid	Total Grid	Number of Orchards	Tree Total
15 x 13	1 x 1	15 x 13	1	45
5 x 4	3 x 3	15 x 12	9	54

Trivia

• If the orchard is within the ring of influence of a Foresters Lodge, the trees will be cut down.