05 — Horticulture

Last updated: May 18, 2026

Farming in Rust is a deep system masquerading as "plant seed, water, eat." Every plant has six gene slots, every gene has a weight in the crossbreeding math, and the difference between a junk clone and a max-yield clone is the difference between feeding yourself and out-farming a clan. This file is how to win at plants.

The system rewards patience: it takes 6+ hours real-time to grow a plant to ripe, and good genetics take multiple generations of crossbreeding to lock in. But once you have a YYYYYY pumpkin clone line, you feed your base forever for the cost of fertilizer and water.

The gene system

Every seed has 6 gene slots. Each slot holds one of five gene types:

You read gene strings left to right: "GGYYHX" means slot 1 is G, slot 2 is G, etc.

Strong gene strings: - YYYYYY — six yield. Maximum output per plant. Slow grow, normal water. Endgame. - GGYYYY — fast grow with high yield. The "all-rounder" pumpkin string. - GGGYYY — fastest grow with decent yield. Good for hemp where you want cloth fast. - YYYYYG — five yield + one growth. Slightly faster than YYYYYY, ~95% the yield.

Bad gene strings: - WWWWWW — all water intake. Plant dies fast. - XXXXXX — all empty. Plant grows but produces nothing useful. - Any mix with 3+ red genes (H, W, X) is generally junk because of how crossbreeding weights work.

Crossbreeding — the actual math

Crossbreeding is how you turn random seeds into your target gene string. It works at one specific stage of plant growth (the Crossbreed stage), where adjacent plants in a planter exchange genes with each other.

The weight rule

When two plants are at the crossbreed stage and adjacent, each gene slot is rolled. Each plant contributes a vote on what gene should occupy that slot in the offspring. Red genes (W, X) have weight 1.0. Green genes (G, Y, H) have weight 0.6. Donor genes overwrite the center plant only if the combined weight strictly exceeds the center plant`s. (Note: H is green/good, not red — the old "red beats green 2-to-1" rule was a simplification.)

This sounds backwards — why do bad genes have higher weight? Because Facepunch wanted RNG protection. If you plant a YYYYYY (clone, all green) next to a junk WWWWWW (all red), the offspring biases toward red because each red gene out-votes each green gene 2-to-1.

The implication: you cross good plants with good plants, never good plants with junk plants. And the cleanest crosses are with target strings that are themselves clean.

How to actually cross

1. Find a seed with at least one Y or G gene. Plant it.
2. Plant another seed (or clone) with a different Y or G gene in a different slot. Adjacent in the same planter.
3. Wait for the crossbreed stage (around 50–60% growth).
4. The plants exchange. The offspring seed from the crossbreeding will likely have a mix of both parents' genes.
5. Take cuttings (clones) from the best offspring.

The cleanest way to lock in a YYYYYY string is: - Generation 1: cross Y???? with Y???? → offspring with YY???? (some) - Generation 2: cross YY???? with YY???? → offspring with YYY??? (some) - ... continue until you reach YYYYYY.

This takes 4–6 plant cycles, about 24–36 hours of real-time wipe. Worth every minute.

RustBreeder and other tools

RustBreeder.com is a free web tool that simulates the crossbreeding math. Plug in your current plants' genes and target string, and it tells you which combinations have the highest probability of advancing. Use it. The math is not intuitive enough to do in your head reliably.

Other tools: rustlabs.com has the gene reference and growth times. GeneRust is a Discord-based bot some servers use. Pick one and stay consistent.

Cloning

Once you have a great-genes plant, you take cuttings (G key on a ripe plant). A cutting plants a clone — same gene string, instant. Cuttings don't crossbreed (they're already locked-in). So your endgame is a planter of 9 identical YYYYYY clones, all cropping at the same rate, all delivering max yield.

Growth stages

Every plant goes through six stages:

The Crossbreed stage is the only window where adjacent-plant genetics transfer. After that stage, the plant's offspring genes are locked.

Growth times depend on the plant. Approximate times for a YYYYYY clone with good conditions:

• Hemp: 4–5 hours seed to ripe
• Pumpkin: 6–7 hours seed to ripe
• Corn: 6–8 hours seed to ripe
• Potato: 6 hours seed to ripe
• Berries (red/yellow/blue/white/green/black): 4–6 hours seed to ripe

G genes speed this up. A GGGGGG plant grows about 35% faster than an XXXXXX.

Planters

You can't plant in the ground. You need a planter.

Small planter

Cost: 100 wood + 5 frags. Workbench 1. Slots: 3 plants (corrected from older docs that said 4). Water capacity: 9,000 mL.

Wipe-day starter planter. Cheap, fits anywhere, but you can only fit 4 plants per planter so it's slow to scale.

Large planter

Cost: 200 wood + 25 frags. Workbench 1. Slots: 9 plants (3x3 grid inside the planter). Water capacity: 9,000 mL.

The standard. Buy from Bandit Camp for 30 scrap if you don't want to craft.

Pro tip: large planters in a 3x3 grid of large planters = 81 plants in a single greenhouse room. That's enough hemp for unlimited cloth, enough pumpkin to feed a clan.

Where to place planters

Indoors with a sealed roof prevents weather damage but eliminates rain water (you have to water manually or with sprinklers). Outdoors gets rain water automatically but plants take temperature damage in cold/hot biomes.

Best of both: indoor placement under a glass roof / triangle frame piece. Or a half-roof so half the planter catches rain and the other half is sheltered.

Water

Plants drink water from the planter. Water capacity is 9,000 mL for large planter, 4,000 mL for small. Plants consume water based on their W (water intake) genes — a plant with 0 W genes drinks at normal rate; a plant with 6 W genes drinks 7x faster.

Refilling water

Three ways:

Rain — automatic if planter is exposed to open sky. Fills slowly during rain. Not reliable.

Manual water jug refill — fill a water jug at a river, pour into planter. Annoying.

Sprinkler system — water source (pump/well) → pipe → sprinkler over planter. Automated.

Sprinklers

Cost: 75 frags + 5 metal blade. Workbench 2. Power: 5 rW per sprinkler. Water draw: 2 mL/sec while spraying.

A sprinkler placed over a planter waters all plants in the planter while powered. You connect it to a water source via fluid switch and pipe.

The whole system: 1. Pump jack or water pump pulls water from a river/lake into a pipe. 2. Pipes route water to your base. 3. Water purifier can convert salt water to fresh (large freshwater purifier needed for serious volume). 4. Liquid storage (water barrel, tank) buffers the water. 5. Fluid switch turns flow on/off via electrical signal. 6. Pipe to sprinkler over planter.

Common mistake: routing salt water (from ocean) directly to plants. Salt water resets a planter's moisture to zero and can kill plants. Always purify ocean water through a Large Water Purifier first. River water is fresh.

Indoor manual water cycle

Simpler setup if you don't want a full plumbing system: jug fills + manual pours. 1 jug = 5,000 mL = ~half a large planter. Time investment per day: ~2 minutes per planter. Fine for hobby farmers; insufficient for serious greenhouses.

Light

Plants need light. Outdoors, sunlight handles this. Indoors, you need ceiling lights aimed down at the planters.

Light requirements

A plant needs 100% light during fruiting stage to maximize yield. Less than 100% reduces yield. The game shows a percentage on the plant's info panel.

Indoor lighting: - 1 ceiling light per large planter for 100% coverage. Aim down from directly above. - Multiple lights add up if angled correctly. But adding 2 lights to a planter that already has 1 doesn't go past 100% — it's capped. - Lights use 1–5 rW each (default 1).

Pro tip: indoor greenhouses are how clan farmers operate at scale. The plants have stable light, stable temperature, no weather, no raid exposure (the greenhouse is inside the main base). The only downside is the rW cost — 9 planters × 1 ceiling light each × 1 rW = 9 rW per greenhouse.

Temperature

Plants have temperature tolerance. Hot or cold biome puts plants under temperature stress, reducing yield. Indoor placement near a heater (electrical heater, 2 rW) eliminates temperature stress in cold biomes. Hot biome plants don't need cooling.

H genes (hardiness) help — a high-H plant tolerates worse temperature, but H genes also use up gene slots that could be Y. The math usually favors Y-heavy strings + temperature management.

Fertilizer

Plants don't strictly need fertilizer to grow, but fertilized plants yield more (~30% bonus).

How fertilizer works

Each plant slot in a planter can hold fertilizer. A fertilized plant produces more fruit per harvest cycle. 1 fertilizer per plant per full grow cycle is the standard.

You feed fertilizer to plants via the planter UI (drag into the planter's fertilizer slot). Sprinklers don't apply fertilizer — that's manual.

How to get fertilizer

Horse dung composter route: feed horse dung into a composter (200 wood + 2 tarp). Ratio is 1:5 — 1 horse dung makes 5 fertilizer. This is by far the cheapest at-home source. Other materials (food, cloth, seeds) yield 0.2-0.3 fertilizer each.

Human poop composter route: yes, your character poops. Use the composter to convert human waste to fertilizer. Same ratio.

Bandit Camp / Outpost: buy fertilizer directly for scrap. Not the best deal but immediate.

Pro tip on horse dung

A single horse generates ~1 dung per ~15 minutes of standing in stable. A stable of 4 horses generates ~16 dung per hour. That's 80 fertilizer per hour passively (1:5 ratio). Stable + composter is a strong scrap-free farming setup for solos.

Scrap arbitrage

Horse dung composted into fertilizer can be sold at Bandit Camp. The exchange rate is roughly 2 fertilizer = 3 scrap. So 10 horse dung → 1 fertilizer → 1.5 scrap. A stable of 4 horses running 24 hours generates 16 dung/hr × 24 = 384 dung → 38 fertilizer → 57 scrap per day, passively.

More on this in 07_Scrap_Farming.md.

What to grow

Berries and tea

Berries are the highest-impact horticulture item because they craft into tea, which gives major buffs:

• Yellow + White berries → Scrap Tea: +50% scrap from containers for 10 minutes. The single best buff in the game for farming routes.
• Red berries → Health Tea: increases max health.
• Blue berries → Pure Tea: stamina/recovery buffs.
• Green / Black berries → various other tea types.

A scrap-tea brewer who farms tea at home and drinks one before every monument run is doubling their effective scrap-per-hour.

To unlock tea crafting: research the Mixing Table (Workbench 2). Then learn each tea recipe (each tea has a unique recipe).

Hemp economics

Hemp at scale is how clans never run out of cloth. A YYYYYY hemp plant yields ~12–15 cloth per harvest cycle. 9 plants per large planter × 4–5 planters × 4 cycles per day = 1,000+ cloth daily, passive. That's enough for unlimited bandages, sleeping bags, clothing, and even cloth-gated traps.

Indoor greenhouse setup recipe

The clan-tier farming room:

• 3x3 floor space inside main base
• 9 large planters (1 per floor tile)
• 9 ceiling lights aimed down (1 rW each = 9 rW)
• 1 heater if cold biome (2 rW)
• 9 sprinklers (5 rW each = 45 rW) on a switched circuit
• 1 water purifier connected to a water pump or rain collector
• Composters (2–3) for fertilizer
• Optional: 4 horses outside in a stable for dung supply

Power draw: 56 rW continuous (lights+heater) + 45 rW intermittent (sprinklers running) Water draw: 18 mL/sec when sprinklers run (9 sprinklers × 2 mL/sec) Output at YYYYYY hemp: ~1,500+ cloth/day. At YYYYYY pumpkin: ~250 pumpkins/day = 50,000+ calories.

Common mistakes

1. Crossing junk with target. Junk genes (red, weight 2) will dominate. Cross good with good.
2. Forgetting the crossbreed stage window. If you wait until plants are mature, you missed your chance.
3. Watering with ocean water. Resets moisture, can kill plants. Filter through purifier.
4. Skipping fertilizer. 30% yield bonus is too valuable to skip on a YYYYYY clone.
5. Cloning before locking the gene string. A clone of YYYYYG is permanently YYYYYG. Lock YYYYYY first, then clone.
6. Overlapping planters with light overlap > 100%. Doesn't help, wastes rW.
7. Indoor greenhouse with no temperature control in snow biome. Temperature stress kills yield.
8. Sprinkler running 24/7 without a switch. Wastes water — water has finite supply unless you have an active pump.

Pro tips

• Start your gene grind on hemp, not pumpkin. Hemp grows faster, so iterations are quicker. Once you have YYYYYY hemp, repeat the process for pumpkin using the technique you learned.
• Use RustBreeder before every cross. It tells you the probabilities. Free, browser-based, lightning fast.
• Always have 2 of each genome locked. If one dies (sprinkler malfunction, raider boot), you have a backup clone source.
• Place composters near the planter room. Reduces walk time when refilling fertilizer.
• The sprinkler switch should be on a timer, not always-on. Water runs every 10 minutes for 30 seconds. Set with a timer logic gate.
• Indoor greenhouse + auto-craft for tea (see 04_Industrial.md) = passive scrap-tea production while you play.
• The Bandit Camp shop sells Large Planters for 30 scrap. Faster than gathering 200 wood early game.
• Pumpkin is the calorie king. One pumpkin = 70+ calories. A small stack of pumpkins feeds you for days.