Animal Crossing: New Horizons‘ 2.0 update has dropped a full 2 days early, as Nintendo let Christmas come early. There are a ton of new features being added in this update. There’s the new resort island content, where you can bring new visitors to a special vacation spot. There’s so much more than lounging on the beach though it’s tons of fun. The addition of the 2.0.0 Update for Animal Crossing New Horizons has given you the ability to cook meals like carrot cake, curry and more. There’s a bunch of new cooking recipes added to the game. It’s a lot to parse, so we’re making guides to make it all easier for you. This guide will explain all the basics of cooking, and how to grow crops in Animal Crossing New Horizons.
How to get crops in Animal Crossing New Horizons
Leif at Harv’s Island is the best place to get many crops. You can also get many other items from the various NPCs around the Co-op. Remember, you need to pay them each 100,000 Bells to get their shops built first. Once that’s done, their stock changes each day. Most of the plant starts in Animal Crossing New Horizons 2.0.0 can be bought for 280 Bells each. You can check back in the shops on the island each Monday to see what’s in stock that week.
Here are the types of crops you can grow in the game:
- Carrot start
- Seed potato
- Sugarcane start
- Tomato start
- Wheat start
Each of these can then be turned into a specific cooking ingredient with a DIY Recipe.
How to properly raise and water crops
The crops have a basic four-day live cycle for all varieties. Each one grows at basically the same rate. You could harvest them early if you want to, but it’s sub-optimal in terms of yield. Here’s the process for each growth stage.
- Day 1 – Small sprout
- Day 2 – Medium sprout
- Day 3 – Large Sprout
- Day 4 – Ripe plant
The core thing that drives plant growth, and thus yield, of crops in Animal Crossing New Horizons is watering. Much like with the pumpkins from the Halloween event, you can influence how much yield you get by using a certain amount of water per day. Whereas with flowers, one watering a day is best, these plants need a bit more.
You get the following yields from a certain amount of daily watering:
- One Unit of the crop – No watering
- Two Units of the crop – Water once per day
- Three Units of the crop – Water twice per day
So just plop the starts down and water them properly to maximize crop yields. After you have grown some crops, take them in bunches of five to make the required cooking ingredient.
The first thing you need to do is buy the main DIY upgrade from the Nook Stop. Get the DIY upgrade for 1,800 Nook Miles to enable the fully unlocked DIY system. It’s called the Be a Chef! DIY Recipes+ upgrade. You then need to purchase the Basic Recipes upgrade from Nook’s Cranny for 4,980 Bells. Once you have those unlocked, the DIY recipes should be available to you.
Crops also do not rot, which means you don’t have to worry about planting them in a particular season. And they should stay around all year, just like Pumpkins. So feel free to use the crops layouts in your island themes and decorations. That wraps up this gaming guide.
