Watermelon

Watermelon is a crop that can be grown from Watermelon Seeds and harvested for a yield of 1 to 4 Watermelons. Like other spreading crops, it can extend into adjacent squares during growth, so a single planting can produce a patch rather than remaining confined to one tile.

It takes 1 minute to grow. When harvested, the crop outputs 1, 2, 3, or 4 Watermelons, with the documented input-to-output table indicating that 1 seed can produce each of those results. Because the crop can spread, the actual farming setup matters more than with single-tile plants: placing it where it has room to expand improves the chance of getting multiple fruit from the same planting cycle.

A practical detail is that the Plant Book should be used on the spreading vines themselves, not on the square where the seed was originally planted. This is especially important for Watermelons, since the fruit-bearing part of the plant can extend away from the initial seed tile. The same spreading behavior also applies to Pumpkins, and the same layout considerations are used for both crops.

• Watermelon is best treated as a spreading crop rather than a fixed single-tile plant.
• Give it open space if you want to take advantage of its tendency to expand into other squares.
• Use the Plant Book on the vine sections, not just the original planting spot.
• The crop’s short growth time makes it useful for repeated harvesting, especially when planted in an optimized layout.

Because crops that sprout into other squares are more likely to do so multiple times, Watermelon benefits from being arranged in a way that lets the vines keep branching. In practice, that means the crop can be more productive than its seed count alone suggests, especially when planted with space for spreading and checked frequently after the one-minute growth period.