dangerousdare 0 Secrets of Gardening Revealed!

Firstly, many people have trouble placing objects in their mog house. As you 
need to place flowerpots to garden I will start will this. 

Buy/craft yourself some type of flowerpot. You can buy an earthen pot at 
Ensasa's Catalyst shop in Windhurst Waters for about 1000gil if you can't find 
any in AH. Don't worry about the price being to high as you will by far make it 
up with your first couple of harvests. Pots are reusable, you will never lose 
a pot once you buy one. 

In order to garden in your new pot you must: 
1) put the pot in your mog safe inside your mog house. 
2) choose the "Layout" option from the moogle menu. 
3) THEN use the arrow keys on the keyboard to move the pot around. This is 
   where everyone gets stuck, the mouse does not work for this. Once it is where
   you want it, press Enter. To leave the Layout screen push Escape until your 
   back to normal menu. 

Now you need some seeds. Seeds are very hard to find at low levels but can be 
stolen or dropped rarely by any sapling type creatures (strolling saplings in 
T.Canyon for people in Windhurst). The other place to get seeds is the AH, but 
they tend to be expensive. Sometimes even more expensive than your flowerpot! 
Of the different types of seeds, grain seeds are best to start with. They are 
more common, thus cheaper, and they grow the fastest of all the plants. 

Once you find/buy some seeds take them to your mog house and put them in the 
safe. You can now actually do something with the Gardening option!! Choose to 
plant seeds and then the pot you placed in your home. Your moogle will plant 
them for you. Caution- some people have reported that your moogle can fail at 
planting. I have never had this problem myself in many many plantings thus far 
though so don't be scared. 

Now you just have to wait. Your moogle is a master gardener and will watch after
up to ten plants for you while you're out hunting. Keep in mind that each pot 
placed will take up a slot in your safe so you won't be able to store as much 
if you're growing a lot of plants. 

After some time, which depends mostly on what kind of seed you're using, the 
plant will appear in the pot. I've had grain seeds sprout in as little as a few 
hours while I was hunting. It may also take up to a day or two before anything 
appears. Don't panic, its probably just what part of the growing season your 
currently in if it sprouts early or late. 

Be sure to Examine all of your plants at least once every real life day or they 
may and most likely will die! It never hurts to Examine excessively!!  In fact, 
it may even increase your yields. It is well known that examining the plant 
improves its health. Make sure you're listening to what your moogle tells you 
when you examine your plants. If he tells you it doesn't look so good then try 
checking it more often. 

Feeding your plant is an option that will only show up once the plant is mature 
enough to handle the fertilizing effects of crystals. Your moogle will not let 
you feed crystals whenever you want, if it would kill the plant you won't get 
the option to feed. 

When you do get the Feed option be sure to use it! Although you will still get 
something from the plant if you don't feed it, what you get will be very poor 
quality 9 times out of 10 if you didn't feed it. 

As for what to feed your plant. Well, there is a simple rule to follow. If your 
goal is to grow crystals then you should feed the plant a crystal of the 
elemental that is strong to the type of crystal you want to harvest. For 
example, if you want to grow Fire crystals you should feed the plant a Water 
crystal. 

Keep in mind that feeding the appropriate crystal only increases your chances of
harvesting the type of crystal you want. There are many many many variables 
involved that will each alter your results slightly, so expect some surprises at
times! This is what makes gardening fun!  Also you should be aware that some 
crystal+seed type combinations have very high probability of yielding a specific
 type of item. So it does take some experience to get crystals reliably. An 
example would be Herb seeds + Water in an earthen pot. Most often this 
combination will end up giving you bay leaves instead of fire crystals. But your 
never guaranteed to get any specific item. 

Never use the "dry flowers" option. This will kill your plant without gaining 
any of the useful items. 

You can learn to see what stage your plant is at without going into the examine 
panel by simply looking at it when you enter your house. There are 4 stages, 
empty pot/or/seed sown, young sprout, flowering, and ready to harvest. You can 
always spot the ready to be harvested ones because they will glow!  

Another useful tid bit I have picked up in my experiments is to harvest on the 
day of the crystal you used. So if you fed a water crystal to your plant, you 
tend to get more items if you harvest on Waterday. Your plants can stay alive at 
the harvest stage for a good while before going to their graves. So be aware of 
the day you harvest on and if the day of the crystal isn't far off you might 
want to wait a little while longer. 

Now, if your a bad person and let your plants die you may still get back 
something. Usually the best you can hope for though is a bag of seeds to start 
over with. So be sure not to let them die.

Grain and Herb seeds grow the fast while producing fewer crystals and items. 
Fruit and Vegetable seeds take longer to grow but usually give you more crystals 
and items. Items from fruit and vegetable seeds also sell for more to both AH 
and merchants. 

So depending on what your schedule is like in RL you should plant the right kind
 of seeds. If you are not going to home on a weekend then you should avoid 
planting fruit/veg. past mid-week etc... 

When you harvest and your moogle tells you that such and such items were 
harvested they will appear in your mog safe. NOT in your inventory! Be aware of 
how much space you have at all times and don't forget to sell off things you 
don't want/need quickly. You'd be surprised just how fast a couple of plants 
will choke your safe with items when you're not paying attention . 

For whoever asked the order of the days of the week are as follow. 

Fireday 
Earthday 
Waterday 
Windday 
Iceday 
Lightningday 
Lightday 
Darkday  

*If your going to use dark crystals be aware that dark crystals tend to cause 
 rot/decay so don't be surprised if the items you get are fungus. It's 
 relatively hard to grow light/dark crystals as they tend to produce more 
 specific items.