Orchard

Orchard

Category	Food Production
First Appearance	1.0.0

Main article: Farming

A young plum orchard.

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 8x8 plot.

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

• Apple
• Cherry
• Chestnuts
• 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. You can take advantage of this by changing the seed type in the Orchard's dialogue pop-up which means your farmer(s) will plant the newly selected produce type. Doing this every couple of in-game years will ensure that your orchard(s) will be producing a large variety of food without having to commit land and farmers to the equivalent amount of individual orchards fields.

It is not known the effect, positive or otherwise, that this form of tree rotation has on the frequency of infestations.

Efficiency

A orchard of 15x15 will give the best Efficiency. Each farmer will manage 75 square which gives a bit more ratio than the other possibilities. A 4x4 field is the worst orchard you can have because 1 farmer will manage 16 blocks. 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