Tales of the Shire Gardening guide

Tales of the Shire’s Gardening system is a pretty easy one to get your head around. Each season has its own seeds and plants that will grow well, and each type of seed also grows better with certain other types of foods. Pairing up seeds that grow well together gives you a greater chance to have higher-tier ingredients, which will, in turn, give your cooking a chance to be higher quality.

With time and patience, you can really get a lot out of the Gardening system in Tales of the Shire. You absolutely have to use it anyway, so you can easily cook, and Share Meals to build your relationships with other Hobbits. While you don’t have to pair crops, it will make the experience more enjoyable. Here’s how to garden in Take-Two Interactive’s cozy singleplayer title.

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How to use the Gardening system efficiently in Tales of the Shire

Tales of the Shire’s Gardening system doesn’t change with the seasons, per se. The system is always the same, all that changes is the types of fruits and vegetables that you can plant. Each plant has a certain amount of uses per seed, and has a particular amount of time that it takes to fully grow in its own season.

You'll get some gardening beds for free, but others, you'll buy from Tom Cotton (along with seeds) (Image via Take-Two Interactive)

You, of course, have to keep them watered, but rainy days make that easier. The amount of water also depends on the size of the bed of land you’ve put the seeds in. The larger beds can hold more water, and thus, you have to water them less frequently; those however, can cost a lot of coins, so keep that in mind.

The most important thing is to figure out what season you’re in, and what you can grow. You need seeds for that, and that can come from completing Club Quests, or simply by purchasing them from Farmer Cotton in the Village Square. They aren’t especially expensive, but I do recommend taking time to make money to buy as many seeds as possible.

You also want to keep in mind the size of the plant you’re growing. If it’s large, and you’re using say, a small, circular bed , you will need to very carefully adjust it to try and put a few things in that bed. Below is a list of the things you can plant in each season:

The more seed types you have in a gardening bed, the harder it is to juggle them and have seed types that all work well together (Image via Take-Two Interactive)

Spring

• Lettuce
• Peas
• Rhubarb
• Carrot
• Cabbage Crests
• Cabbage
• Cauliflower
• Leek
• Parsnip
• Ruby Tater
• Shallot
• Basil
• Strawberry

Summer

• Box Peppers
• Cucumber
• Lettuce
• Rhubarb
• Baby Marrow
• Beans
• Brown Tater
• Maize
• Ruby Tater
• Shallot
• Basil
• Garlic

Autumn

• Brown Onion
• Brown Tater
• Cabbage Sprouts
• Harvest Crown Pumpkin
• Eggplant
• Orange Pumpkin
• Squash
• Turnip
• Rosemary

Winter

• Radish
• Brown Onion
• Carrot
• Cabbage Sprouts
• Cabbage Crests
• Cabbage
• Cauliflower
• Leek
• Parsnip
• Turnip
• White Fluffy Tater
• Chives
• Garlic
• Rosemary

With this in mind, it becomes pretty easy to see what types of things you need to grow in each season of Tales of the Shire, via Gardening. At first you won’t have a lot of room with which to do this, but by improving your ranks with the Gardening Club, and buying gardening beds from Tom Cotton, you will have more and more space.

As far as watering your plants goes, what I’ve taken to doing is to check when I wake up, and when I return to my house at the end of the day. Just select the Watering Can from your tool inventory, and hold the interact button over the gardening bed until they’re fully watered. You’ve got lots of water near your house too if you need to refill the can.

Just interact with the water, and resume watering your plants. Focus on growing crops that work well in your season, and try to pair them with crops that grow well together; that way you have a higher chance to get better, higher-tier ingredients in Tales of the Shire’s gardening beds.

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Best Gardening combos: What vegetables grow best together

Note: We are in the process of unlocking all of these combos still. As we finish the last few up, we will update this accordingly.

The encyclopedia has tons of information, and it only increases as you experiment (Image via Take-Two Interactive)

If you open your encyclopedia in Tales of the Shire, you’ll see all the fruits, vegetables, hearty vegetables, and seasonings that you’ve used/encountered so far. As you fill this encyclopedia, you’ll see that the entries that can be grown will have some other plants that grow well together (yellow smiley face).

There will always be a bad one too (purple frowny face). We’ve found the vast majority of the positive combos, and so we’ll put them down below so you can plant accordingly.

Seed Type	Partner #1	Partner #2	Partner #3	Bad Partner
Strawberry	Lettuce	???	Shallot	Cabbage
Box Pepper	Shallot	Basil	Cucumber	???
Cucumber	Box Pepper	Lettuce	??? (Pumpkin)	Ruby Tater
Lettuce	Maize	Cucumber	Strawberry	Cauliflower
Peas	Ruby Tater	Parsnip	Cabbage	Leek
Radish	Parsnip	???	Brown Onion	Cabbage Crests
Rhubarb	Cauliflower	???	Garlic	Cucumber
Baby Marrow	Shallot	???	Beans	Brown Tater
Beans	Baby Marrow	Maize	Brown Tater	Shallot
Brown Onion	Eggplant	Radish	Cauliflower	Harvest Crown Pumpkin
Brown Tater	Eggplant	Beans	Maize	Baby Marrow
Cabbage	Peas	Turnip	Basil	Strawberry
Cabbage Crest	???	Turnip	???	Lettuce
Cabbage Sprout	Chives	Eggplant	Rosemary	Orange Pumpkin
Carrot	Leek	???	Cauliflower	Parsnip
Cauliflower	Carrot	Rhubarb	Brown Onion	White Fluffy Tater
Eggplant	Brown Tater	Cabbage Sprouts	Brown Onion	Squash
Harvest Crown Pumpkin	Brown Tater	Squash	Orange Pumpkin	Brown Onion
Leek	Carrot	Rosemary	White Fluffy Tater	Peas
Maize	Brown Tater	Beans	Lettuce	???
Orange Pumpkin	Brown Tater	Squash	Harvest Crown Pumpkin	Cabbage Sprouts
Parsnip	Peas	Radish	Chives	Carrot
Ruby Tater	Peas	???	???	???
Shallot	Box Peppers	Strawberry	Baby Marrow	Beans
Squash	Brown Tater	Harvest Crown Pumpkin	Orange Pumpkin	Eggplant
Turnip	Cabbage	Cabbage Crests	Rosemary	White Fluffy Tater
White Fluffy Tater	Leek	Chives	Garlic	Turnip
Basil	???	Box Peppers	Cabbage	???
Chives	White Fluffy Tater	Parsnip	Cabbage Sprouts	Garlic
Garlic	White Fluffy Tater	Rhubarb	???	Chives
Rosemary	Cabbage Sprouts	Turnip	Leek	???

The Good Partners aren’t in any particular order; they all work equally well. However, each seed also has a bad partner. That’s why I don’t recommend putting more than two or three things in a single garden bed; two is ideal, though. That way, you run the risk of having to juggle ridiculous seed requirements to get the most out of your plants in Tales of the Shire.

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Check out our other Tales of the Shire guides and features

• Tales of the Shire: The Water That Roars Riddle Solution
• Tales of the Shire: Eye of the Lake Riddle Solution
• Tales of the Shire review