Barley
Barley is one of the staple crops of Egypt. Harvested raw, it can be cooked in a grain oven to make roasted barley (light, medium, dark or burnt). It can be malted, and the malt can itself be cooked similarly. Malted barley is a primary ingredient in Beer.
It is grown from barley (raw) using water and grain fertiliser, and (optionally) weed killer, yielding more barley (raw).
Uses:
- cooking ingredient
- placed in a malting tray to make malt (raw).
- feed for chickens
- fulfilling various research needs
Once you have grown and harvested 1000 barley, you become eligible to grow barley as an offline chore.
Cultivation Overview
Barley is grown using barley (raw), water, grain fertiliser and weed killer, and requires you to know the Barley Cultivation technology. (NOTE: Weed killer is not strictly necessary for growing barley, and some cultivation strategies ignore it.) New citizens may obtain a starter packet of 4 raw barley from any University of Worship where Barley Cultivation has been unlocked.
- Grain fertilizer is made in a kettle. Each batch of 50 fertilizer requires 1 carp, 5 water in jugs, and 5 wood.
- Weed killer is also made in a kettle. Each batch of 50 weed killer requires 1 Toad Skin mushroom, 5 water in jugs, and 5 wood.
Plant a barley patch on grassy terrain. Barley patches have controls to add water, fertilizer, and weed killer, and meters indicating the current level of each. When water and fertilizer are high, the barley will grow rapidly. When water and fertlizer are low, the barley will die back. Weed killer has no effect on the pace of growth. Water, fertilizer, and weed killer levels will all drop as time passes.
Barley may be harvested at any time. If the patch does not display as "Ready to Harvest", it will yield between 0 and 4 barley, depending on the presence of weeds and how much the barley has been allowed to grow. "Ready to Harvest" patches will yield 10 barley. A barley patch which is Ready for Harvest will die 20 TeppyMinutes later if left unharvested.
In tale 2:
There was one additional way to increase the yield of a "Ready to Harvest" barley patch:
You would gain an additional 10 barley for each rank of worship you had.
The above bonus only apply to patches which are Ready to Harvest; there is no gain in
patches harvested early. All bonuses are calculated based on who harvests the barley,
not who grows it.
In order for a barley patch to achieve "Ready to Harvest" status, it must have reached a certain level of growth and be entirely free of weeds.
Weeds
As barley grows, one or more weeds may appear in the patch. Weeds will retard the growth of the barley, and will prevent a patch from becoming Ready to Harvest. There are three kinds of weeds, each one requiring a different technique to fight:
| Yellow, leafy weed "Green leafy" might be better, but "yellow" is tradtional | Green, spiky weed | Brown, leafy weed "Brown spiky" might be better, but "leafy" is traditional |
 |  |  |
| −Water +Fertilizer +Weedkiller | +Water −Fertilizer +Weedkiller | +Water −Fertilizer −Weedkiller |
| Let the amount of water drop while adding weed killer. You must do both. | Let the amount of fertilizer drop while adding weed killer. You must do both. | Let the amount of fertilizer drop. This weed is not affected by weedkiller. |
You must eliminate a weed completely before allowing the water or fertilizer level rise again; otherwise, it will simply return.
Multiple Weeds
Often you will have more than one type of weed at the same time. Here are the various combinations of weeds, and the best way to treat that combination. Keep up this treatment until only one type of weed is left and then go back to the above single weed methods.
- Yellow + Green
- (−Water −Fertilizer +Weedkiller)
- Yellow + Brown
- (+Water −Fertilizer +Weedkiller)
- Green + Brown
- (+Water −Fertilizer +Weedkiller)
- All Three
- (+Water −Fertilizer +Weedkiller)
Techniques
Growing Barley With Weedkiller
Fill water and fertilizer to the maximum immediately after planting the barley. Every tick, add more water and fertilizer to keep the bars maximized. Keep a sharp eye out for weeds.
If yellow weeds appear, stop adding water until the weed is gone. When water reaches 50%, add weed killer and keep weed killer above 50%. (Weed killer will not eliminate the weed until water has dropped below 50%, so there is no reason to add it before then.) Keep fertilizer at 50-75%; there is a good chance that one of the other weeds will appear before you have killed this one, forcing you to drop fertlizer.
If green or brown weeds appear, stop adding fertilizer until the weed is gone. For green weeds, add weed killer when fertilizer has dropped to 50%. Keep water at 75-100%; yellow weeds is the only ones vulnerable to water, so there is less chance that you will need to decrease water before killing the current weed.
Be very careful when adding water or fertilizer back in after killing off a weed. Weeds can be hard to spot, and if even one remains, you will have to start the process all over again.
Harvest patches only when they are ready to harvest.
When growing multiple patches of barley using this method, it is useful to plant them in a circle and stand in the middle. Rotate the camera to examine each patch in turn, maintain it, and move on to the next.
Crib sheet
| Yellow | −Water | +Fertilizer | +Weedkiller |
| Green | +Water | −Fertilizer | +Weedkiller |
| Brown | +Water | −Fertilizer | −Weedkiller |
| Yellow + Green | −Water | −Fertilizer | +Weedkiller |
| Yellow + Brown | +Water | −Fertilizer | +Weedkiller |
| Green + Brown | +Water | −Fertilizer | +Weedkiller |
| All Three | +Water | −Fertilizer | +Weedkiller |
Growing Barley Without Weedkiller
Plant as many patches as you can monitor at once. Maximize water and fertilizer in each patch. If a weed appears in a patch, harvest it immediately and plant a new one.
This strategy is very simple. Because there's a chance that weeds will grow at every tick, if you immediately maximize water and grain fertilizer (2 hits), and keep them maximized (4 more hits at the 20 second tick interval), the barley will grow as rapidly as possible. You'll have fewer ticks and therefore fewer weeds. Harvest the barley after the sixth hit. You'll beat the weed odds often enough to harvest a full yield barley bed about 10% of the time. Anything that lets the bars drop for two ticks will cripple the strategy. One straight-forward approach, that lends itself to macroing, is to create the barley bed and hit it twice, then pour on the water and grain fertilizer for four cycles, then harvest it. Water is freely available if you're standing in the right location and grain fertilizer is very cheap, so your time is the only real investment.
There is some debate over whether this techique is more or less efficient than the one using weedkiller described above.
Comment: You can also continue with brown weeds by simply dropping the fertiliser until they disappear. (Gabbo) But the odds are that one of the other two types of weeds will take advantage of the extra ticks.
it appears this method will not reduce the barley needed for useing the offline chore, my counter for the offline chore only decreases if I reach the "ready to harvest" state ~Ender
if its true, its a bug... its suppose to count what you've grown no matter the method used This bug is corrected. You can grow without weedkiller again - Taemon
Theory: The barley needs time to grow.
About 3 ticks after planting the number of barley plants in the plot will increase. This seems to be when the planting grows from 1 barley to 2. Harvesting before that growth results in a return of 1 barley and does not appear to decrease the number needed for the offline chore. If you wait and harvest after the growth you yield more than 1 barley and therefor decrease the offline chore quantity. If you still have weeds in your plot when you harvest your yield most likely will not exceed 4 barley. So this is a slow way to get to the offline chore, but it does work. ~AmisiBastet
A variant on this approach is to only plant 3 or so beds, and zoom the screens so that you can see the beds very easily. When you harvest a bed, immediately plant and pin another, and just let the pinned menus accumulate. You can clear them later, when you're not as busy. - MarvL
Growing Barley Without Thinking
This technique is provided thanks to idnic
Plant as many patches as you can easily reach, tack up all boxes (usually between 10-20). Maximize water and weedkiller in each patch.
On every tick, add (maximize) water. Every other tick, add (maximize) weedkiller. Add a single fertilizer when the fertilizer levels are extremely low. Repeat until the barley is Ready to Harvest. This technique uses an average of 20 weedkiller and 3 fertilizer per patch, and takes an average of 10 minutes to come to full harvest.
While roughly as time-efficient as the normal weedkiller strategy, it is very weedkiller-inefficient. With 3x or 5x Barley harvest, it is more efficient than non-weedkiller methods.
There are spots in which barley will grow ready to harvest within the minute, without the use of weedkiller. It will not do so every time you plant on that spot but, I think, more often than on other spots. Please confirm. -Taemon
Barley Traders
