You will face many challenges in medieval colony sim Going Medieval. From raiders to the elements, it may seem like everything is against you. One of the silent killers is food. Being one of the most important resources to keep you will need food from the very beginning to the end. One of the best ways to get a sustainable source of food in Going Medieval is by growing food. This guide will show you how!
How To Grow Food in Going Medieval
You will not be able to grow food from the very beginning of the game. Before you can grow food in Going Medieval you will have to research the topic first. This is called Agriculture. If you don’t know how the research system works in the game, you can check out this guide. (Just scroll down to the next section). You will just need settlers to plant and harvest the fields when the food is ripe. To start a new farm open up the Zone menu from the bottom left. You can also just press F7 to open it quickly. In the Zone menu you should see a zone on the right-hand side with some type of food. By default this is cabbage. First, select the cabbage zone. You can then choose from many different other types of foods to plant in the sub-menu that will appear.
Each type of plant will have different growth times and harvest amounts. Some plants will be able to be cooked or eaten directly. Some will be used as ingredients in creating some type of beverage. Make sure you read the description of each plant, or just scroll down to the section where I will cover each crop. Once you have chosen which plant you would like to start growing, click and drag the area you’d like to grow it in.
Keep in mind that you can only grow plants on certain terrain. Plants will grow in soil and grass areas. You are going to have a hard time finding places to farm on a mountain map. Now, one of your settlers that is assigned to grow will come and plant here. Nothing else is required by you.
How to Unlock Growing Plant Zones
Before you are able to start growing fields of vegetables, you will have to research and unlock this first. Luckily the agriculture research is pretty early on in the research menu. You will not have to wait long to start farming. In fact, you will only need a total of 30 chronicles in your colony. This makes farming the first research topic you can complete after the mandatory architecture. First, build a research table and set up the job to start creating chronicles. A settler will come to research this when they have time.
Once they have completed enough chronicles you can open up the research menu from the top of the UI. Now, unlock both architecture and agriculture. Congratulations! You are now able to start farming!
Harvesting Crops Early
When you check on the plants you can get a little information about the stage of their growth. Be selecting one single plants you can see how long it will take in order to be fully ripe. That being said, you can also harvest the crop early. This will mean you get a lower yield from each plant but if your colony is starving and you have no other choice, you will need to do it.
To mark a set of plants to be harvested early, you can select the Harvest action button from the main screen. This is the icon that looks like a little basket. Alternatively, you can press the B hotkey with nothing selected. Now, mark the plants that you’d like to be harvested. If you want them to be immediately harvested, you can select a settler and right-click on the plant. This will present you with an option to prioritize harvesting the plant immediately.
List of Plants in Going Medieval
This list will contain every plant that can be grown in Going Medieval. It will show their growth times and expected yield.
| PLANT | Maximum Yield (Days) | Yield | Number of harvests | Type |
| Cabbage | 5 | 6 cabbages | 1 | Food |
| Carrot | 7 | 9 carrots | 1 | Food |
| Beet | 9 | 10 beets | 1 | Food |
| Barley | 14 | 5 barley | 1 | Food |
| Redcurrant | 15 | 7 redcurrants (+7 sticks) | 5 | Food/Material |
| Flax | 8 | 11 flax | 1 | Material |
| Tall Grass | 4 | 30 Hay | 1 | Material |
| Birch Tree | 54 | 55 wood + 55 Sticks | 1 | Material |
| Herbs | 8 | 6 herbs | 1 | Medicine |
Could you give also the numbers of how many tiles of certain plant must you farm to feed one person year round?
Hi Jake, thanks for the response.
Your comment encouraged me to jump back in and test out the metrics here. I’ll update the guide with what I found out about hunger levels and farming the particular crop i researched. (Redcurrant)
I’ve used the information I found to create a new page based on my findings.
Check out this article to see how I found it out: https://www.setreadygame.com/blog/food-and-nutrition-guide-in-going-medieval/
To save you a click, you’ll need 8 tiles of cabbages to keep one settler fed for a year.