Tuberous Plants Farming Simulator 17 Guide

This chapter contains a detailed description of beetroots and potatoes - two tuberous plants available in the game. They are the most advanced crops, bringing serious profits.

You can store these plants anywhere - use the belt system to quickly load the lying harvest

Tuberous plants aren't stored in a silo. You can leave them in any place and gather them on a different occasion. For maintaining aesthetics, you should build a storage shelter (9 000$), where your harvest can be stored under a roof. To pick them up later, you need to use a belt system (a detailed description can be found in the Warehousing and Transport chapter), use a universal shovel (unpractical solution) or pack the plants to boxes on pallets(2000l each), which can be placed on a semi-trailer.

This machine allows you to store the harvest in form of boxes

For loading, you only need Gimmme RH 24-60 (19 000$) from the Belt System category. After loading the machine with vegetables, they will be automatically distributed to appearing boxes, and you only need to move the machine or boxes to make place for new ones.

Tuberous plants always yield very big harvest (in ten thousands liters), so they are not recommended for novice farmers. Additionally, both plants have their pluses and minuses, especially when beginning your adventure - you can find them below.

• Beetroot
• Potatoes

Beetroot

Beetroots that are ready for harvest have green leaves, and you can see the vegetables on the ground

The beetroot is a plant that requires an advanced player. Harvest from 1ha is around 120 000 units. As a result, a very large trailer is needed (you cannot use Auger wagons). Additionally, if you invest in a simplest equipment for cutting stalks and a harvester connected to a tractor (joint cost of 105 000$) you'll have to follow your harvester with a semi-trailer - its maximum capacity is only 6 000 units, which is a funny amount, considering that a professional beetroot harvester has a capacity of 45 000 units.

Holmer Terra Felis 2 eco (320 000$) is only used for gathering lying, already digged out beetroots. It can be useful if you don't have many trailers, and you don't want to slow down the work - you can dig out the beetroots and throw them on the field, and then gather them using this machine - however, it is not an optimal solution, considering the money you need to spend.

The train is the fastest way of transporting huge amounts of vegetables - its max speed is around 80km/h

You should consider using a train (Goldcrest Valley) and sow lots that are close to it (for example, nr 11). The train can accommodate a perfect harvest from 1ha - its capacity is around 120 000 units (tuberous plants).

Advantages in relation to potato field are as follows:

• Low price of seeds (~800$ for a hectar);
• Using the same sower that is used for corn and sunflowers;
• The ability to simultaneously cut stalks and gather beetroots using a cheaper combo attached to a tractor (however, a tractor for potato field can be cheaper, to ensure 100% effectiveness)
• Large payouts (from a hectar [120 000 units] you'll make around 30 000$ while transporting the whole.

Disadvantages:

Only a professional harvester has sensible cargo capacities - 45 000

• A much higher cost of a professional harvester - you need to buy an additional reaper - total of 573 000$.
• Serious cargo capacity is a must (You should use linked Agroliners HKD 302 - 25 000$ for one),
• Difficulties in storing and transporting (120 000 beetroots per hectar).

Potatoes

You'll need a special seeder to plant potatoes.

In contrast to beetroot, potatoes need a special seeder. Take notice that especially at the beginning, the cost of seeds per hectar (4 000 seeds) add up to 8 000$. As luck would have it, another seeding can be made using a part of potatoes gathered earlier (just load them into the seeder, preferably using a shovel - you can encounter some problems during further loading, so you should choose one of the bigger shovels, e.g. from the wheel loader

Potatoes yield less harvest than beetroots, so the entry costs are not so high. However, harvesting potatoes is much slower - it consists of more actions - until you buy a professional combine Grimme Tectron 415 (429 000$). The cheapest option costs 142 000$ , and the set contains: a seeder (Grimme GL 420 (21 000$), a device for trimming stalks (Grimme KS-75-4 (9 000$) and a combine Grimme SE 260 (112 000$) - these devices (aside from the seeder) can be found in the Potato Harvesting category. You can rent a combine, which enables husbandry in the early stages of the game. Fortunately, the transport costs will be reduced, as the harvest from 1 hectare comes to about 60.000 units.

A professional harvester will enable you to mow down stalks and gather potatoes with decent speed and with a lot of cargo capability (20,000l) gathering four rows of potatoes in one sweep. The cheapest option has to be discouraging - every action: sowing, cutting stalks and gathering potatoes has to be done separately (if you delegate this job to a helper). This is a result of the fact that the harvester gathers only two rows of potatoes ( with 4 rows of cut stalks) - if you do this job on your own, you can connect this two tools, but a helper will leave out every second lane while gathering potatoes. A cheapest tractor will suffice for the maintenance of the whole plantation.

Advantages of a potato field are as follows:

• Less harvest, that is easy to transport and warehouse;
• A cheapest tractor will suffice to haul the machines (small required power and small maximal speed);
• Nice earnings, (ok. 22 000$), with less problems while transporting the cargo, and frequent emptying of the harvester - a professional machine will make the harvesting process much faster;

Disadvantages:

• Requires a special seeder which is used only for planting potatoes;
• In the basic version, you have to cut stalks separately, and only then gather the potatoes.
• Potato yields a bit smaller earnings than the beetroot - however the small fluctuations of the selling price shouldn't be so drastic as they seem.
• High price of seeds (~8 000$ per hectar) - you can lower it by sending a part of your harvest to fill up the seeder.