Chapter 50 Spring again
Spring had begun, and with it, work began anew. Getting all the fields up at once was impossible, making it so I had to stagger my rollouts. I could plant about half a field a day, making it take about two weeks to get the six fields and communal field started. The lead-up started before then as I worked on several methods to enrich the soil.
Starting with till in fertilizer, I purchased from a farmer who had skills focused on making better soil and fertilizers. This cost two gold per field, which was a hefty fee, but something I deemed necessary. Refreshing the fertilizer on my golems also took a gold's worth of fertilizer. The next fertilizer was a mixture of blood and bone meal.
This was the easiest. Olivia and Sarah had been breaking down the excess I bought and prepared to sell the excess as their own business venture. Sarah was happy with the better food, but her class made it so she had to stay busy with other jobs to get the full benefit, making her a jack of all trades when it came to what she could do.
The next was a mixture of compost and manure. I had started before winter, shoveling shit and gathering vegetable castoffs to start this months ago, it was now finally revealing it’s results. I had done it more as an experiment than anything, but the higher quality crops and magified animal feces had done wonders for the quality of my homemade fertilizer. If I focused on perfecting the method for a few years, I could make fertilizer of a similar quality to that from the bunch I purchased.
The final was another experiment I started after winter. I had been told that worm poop(castings) made an amazing liquid fertilizer. I made a separate container which had large rocks at the bottom, followed by a layer of smaller rocks, then sand, and I added as many worms as I could to the top layer of dirt. The bottom was open, allowing me to add in an area to catch the runoff liquid, then I’d just add some vegetable scraps to the top and soak it in water; the runoff was the liquid I wanted from the process.
It would also allow me to produce more worms. Every month or so, I could take out three quarters of the dirt before filling it back in. The better dirt was possibly the best fertilizer out of all of them, but it was a very small batch. I could possibly fill a single field over the course of the entire growing year using this method, but it would take the entire year for that yield compared to the other methods, which yielded far, far more.
Right now, it just made more sense to use them on the herb greenhouses as they were the best pure fertilizer I could get my hands on. I still didn’t know why, but the three herbs I grew provided about the same amount of experience as half a field, and that was while I was still learning how to grow them. I planted far more in all three greenhouse sheds.
The rainbow grass liked to be grown as close as possible, it would give more yield on top of just more, because I planted over twice as much in the small space. I also added staggered beds, which made it possible to grow twice as much as I was previously, which meant that, in theory, they should give the same yield as a field of crops in experience now.
The wizardbeard was a runner plant, which meant I could get far more out of them by allowing them to grow down the sides of the garden bed. Light shade was the hardest to alter. I could grow them slightly closer, but they were also the most finicky out of the alchemy herbs. The growth medium was applied to the beds, but I wouldn’t see the changes until I got the first yield of each herb. Once everything got kicked off again, I was going to expand the number of greenhouse sheds to double, so I could start experimenting on easier ways to grow the herbs.
The magified strawberries still grew, but they were clearly out of season. The frost strawberries yielded far more during winter, which sucked, because the cooling effect of the plant would be far more useful in the summer. They were currently located in a field, on one of the golems, in the communal field, and grown separately by the mayor in case all of the rest were destroyed in a goblin attack, so we wouldn’t lose them. It was special enough that I could sell the runners to other farmers. They could get more yield from the special plant than I could, while I guaranteed the life of the special magified plant.
It was an evergreen perennial, which meant that it would not only grow all year round, but as long as a single portion of the plant survived, the runners could be removed and become another plant. I had created a different variant of strawberries that might outlast my legacy because the effect was so special, the cooling effect would help many specific high-heat dungeons, or even be sold as luxury items in the north.
I looked down at myself and noticed I was completely covered in mud. Instead of being upset, I was excited as I began chanting the cleaning spell. “Oh me oh my, of love and hate. Please clean my clothes, prestidigitate!” I watched in rapt fascination as my clothes slowly cleaned themselves. Wet mud began to dry and flake off as I used the cleaning variation of the prestidigitation spell.
It also had a mending function, an unlocking function, could create a brief sound or image, and chill or warm an… What if I used the warming function to heat up one of the greenhouse sheds? I could grow the peppers that required the warmer area, which would allow me to crossbreed a pepper that could survive in our climate.
I rushed over to the mayor's house as I was so focused on my idea, I hadn’t noticed it was dinner time. Knocking on the door, I waited until Berry answered. She looked at me, confused, as I asked outright. “Is there a way to continuously activate a prestidigitate spell? I want to grow a crop that requires high heat, and our region can’t support it, but if I heated up a greenhouse, it would be possible.”
While I was excited, she looked apathetic as she sighed. “Please, come in and eat since this seems to be important to you.” I sheepishly entered as I sat with my in-laws, as they were in the middle of their dinner. It hadn’t been lost on me that the pair started treating me better ever since I became the partner of their daughter. Which, thank god for that. If her dad was mad about the situation, there was nothing I could do except relocate, and that’s if he gave me the option to instead of just exploding my head with a punch.
We talked as she explained what I was looking for. Enchanted tools could continuously use the spell I was looking for… It would just cost magic cores to use, possibly multiple cores for a single year, making it an extremely risky decision. The way peppers are measured for their heat was named after the person who made the measurement.
The hottest pepper that could be grown in our country was about a hundred thousand on the Scoville scale. The highest number grown elsewhere was anywhere from five to twenty times hotter. Even if I made a pepper half as hot, it would still be ten times hotter than what was currently possible in this country, which would make it extremely popular for northerners, making them willing to pay a premium for them. It meant, in my opinion, it was worth the risk.