Beans are a great way to start your Stardew Valley adventure

Thinking about starting a new game of Stardew Valley? Or are you starting a game for the first time?

Here's a little tip for you: buy beans!

Buying Bean Starters

Pierre's, the shop in town, sells Bean Starters for 60 gold per piece. This is more expensive than a Parsnip or Potato seed, but cheaper than a Cauliflower or Kale.

The description of the Bean Starter reads:

Plant these in the spring. Takes 10 days to mature, but keeps producing after that. Grows on a trellis.

That trellis might put you off. There isn't a trellis crafting recipe available yet, right?

Well, don't worry. The trellis is built automatically as soon as you plant the seed.

With only 500g as starting cash, you can initially buy 8 Bean Starters at Day 1 of Spring of Year 1. 

Trellis for Beans

The notice of the required trellis is important though. Not as much for the buying and planting, but more for you thinking ahead.

The challenge with a trellis is that you can't walk over or through it, only around. 

This is important to keep in mind. It means that you can only plant beans in rows of 2, not three!

o o o o   o o o o
o x x o   o o o o
o o o o

In the left planting schema, the two beans planted (x) in the middle can't be watered. It is surrounded by other beans with trellises which can't be crossed to give water or to get to the ripe beans.

Your best bet is to place the Bean Starter in a long row of 2 seeds. This way, you can walk around it and both water and harvest all Beans.

Or, if you have access to sprinklers in Year 2, try this!

Harvesting and selling beans

After 10 days of watering, the first load of beans will be ready for harvest. For every Bean Starter you have planted, you will yield 1 bean. 

After your harvest the bean, a new one will start to grow. Every 3 days, a new bean will be ready to harvest. 

The harvesting schedule in Spring is:

• Day 1: planting
• Day 11: first harvest
• Day 14: second harvest
• Day 17: third harvest
• Day 20: fourth harvest
• Day 23: fifth harvest
• Day 26: sixth harvest

With six possible harvests in 28 days, for every Bean Starter you plant, 6 beans can be harvested in a single season. With 8 Bean Starters, you will harvest 48 Green Beans in total.

A single Green Bean of regular quality will sell for 40 gold. A quick calculation learns that with 48 Green Beans to harvest, you can sell all of these Green Beans for (at least) 1920g in total at the end of Spring. This means you will have made a profit of 1440g in one season on just 8 Green Beans!

Parsnip more profitable than Bean

1440g as profit in one season? Not too bad!

The only crop which can beat that, is the Parsnip. That might seem a little odd, as the selling price is only 35 and you can still have 6 Parsnip harvests in a single spring. 

But, you can buy more Parsnip seeds at the start of Spring than you can buy Bean Starters! And that's not even counting the 15 free Parsnip seeds you will receive from Mayor Lewis. 

Parsnip seeds only cost 20g to buy at Pierre's General Store. For your starting capital of 500g, you can buy 25 seeds. These seeds will grow to be 25 Parsnips in 4 days, which you can sell for 35g each or 875g for all 25. 

With a profit of 15g per Parsnip, this first harvest will bring in 375g profit in total. With 6 possible harvests in a season, you will bring in 2250g profit in total. That is a fair bit more than just the beans! It will cost a little more work, having to track back to Pierre's to buy seeds, harvest and replant them every time and such. But it does offer more money.

Even more Parsnip profit!?

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! Here's the fun thing: this is only true if you use the revenue of the Parsnips to buy 25 new seeds for 500g, keeping the profit for something else. If you reinvest all your money in Parsnip seeds, your profit can become much more.

For 875g you can buy 43 new Parsnip seeds, which will harvest 43 Parsnips in 4 days time, which will sell for 1505g bringing in another 645g in profit. 

You can invest those 1505g in new Parsnip seeds, buying 75 seeds this time... well, you get the general idea. 

IF you manage to keep investing this money in seeds, you will end up with a bucketload of money at the end of the season. The last time you go to Pierre to buy new seeds, you will buy 400 Parsnip seeds. These will sell for a whopping 14.000g! You will be well prepared for Summer to roll in.

The catch is this: you will not be able to do so. First, it means you will have to clear at least 400 tiles of farm space on the bewildered farm land. Chopping trees, mowing grass, cutting stone. 

Then you will have to till, plant and water 400 seeds. Tilling 400 tiles of soil costs 800 energy. Watering 400 seeds costs 800 energy. That means that for the last batch of 400 Parsnips, you will need 1600 energy in a single day... With only 270 Energy in your bar, you can imagine this will be an impossible challenge to beat.

Still, a boy can dream, right?

Combining Beans with other crops

Crops with a continued harvest, like the Green Beans, are best planted on the first day of the new season. This way, you can make the most of the continued harvesting schedule. 

Beans for instance you can plant on as late as day 3 of Spring. That way, the 6th harvest will be on day 28. You are required to water every day, because 1 day of missed watering will lead to a full harvest being missed. 

But once you have them planted and the first harvest has come in, you are free to invest your money elsewhere. With the first sale of beans, you could buy Parsnip seeds. That way, you can plant 12 Parsnip seeds on day 11, allowing for another 4 harvests of Parsnips before Spring is over.

This way, you have a better income during the later half of the Spring season. With these cash reserves, you can buy seeds on the first day of the next season.