In this Farming Simulator 19 Farming Guide we will guide you on how you can perform some basic field activities to get your land ready for different types of crops in Farming Simulator 19. There are specific activities that you will be required before planting the crops to get the ground ready, then comes the process of planting and then maintaining them with techniques like Weeding and how to handle situations like Withering and Harvesting in the final stages.

We have curated this Farming Simulator 19 Farming Guide in which we will guide you on all these basic steps of Farming Simulator 19 so that you can easily plant different crops and get the best yield possible by keeping them in good shape until they are ready to be harvested. We will be guiding you on eight basic type of field work required in Farming Simulator below.

Farming Guide – Farming Simulator 19

Our Farming Simulator 19 Farming Guide details everything that you need to know about farming crops in Farming Simulator 19.

Plowing

Your very step in getting ready to plant your crops is to plow the land and get it ready for cultivation. To plow the land, you will need a plow and a tractor. In Farming Simulator 19, you can also opt for a subsoiler which is a much cheaper solution for your plowing needs. If you want to create a new field or combine two fields together, you will need a plow and a tractor. Subsoiler will not help you in this situation.

Depending on the type of land and the crop you want to plant, you might need to plow the land at all. Check the details of the crop and the land condition before you start plowing the field to see if it is really necessary. Certain plants like potatoes, reeds and beets will require the ground to be plowed prior so you have no other options for these crops.

Once you have harvested certain crops like maize, beet, reed and potatoes, you must plow the field otherwise the land’s yield will be reduced. Check the condition of the land after each harvest. This also depends on the game difficulty you are playing on. Certain difficulties such as balanced will give you three harvests before the soil fertility starts to lower.

If you need to plow the land, use a decent plow and a powerful tractor so that you can plow the land easily and in the least time possible. Once the land has been plowed, you do not need to cultivate it afterwards, you can directly jump to sowing.

Cultivation

Cultivation is another method to get the land ready for sowing if you do not want to plow the land. You will need to check the condition of the land and the type of crop you want to plant whether they can be planted without plowing or not. Crops such as grains, sunflower and corn can be planted with simple cultivation rather than plowing.

For cultivation, you will need cheaper and less powerful vehicles. Most of the cultivators in the game also come with built-in seeder and fertilizer spreaders so they are very bang-for-the-buck options. Although you can plant certain crops without plowing but most of them will yield less crop if the land is not up to the mark. You can plant wheat, barley, corn, sunflower and oats without plowing but their yield will be less if the land has already been used many times before.

There is a new category in the shop Disc/Power harrows. They are cultivators but with a different name and design. You can use them for cultivation in the game. They are cheaper and less power hungry alternatives of the regular cultivators. If you opting for them, you will need to purchase separate seeders and planters. All planters and seeders in the game also cultivate at the same time.

Sowing and Planting

Each type of crop in the game requires a specific type of machine to sow and plant them. Sowing hardly takes much of your time if you are using a decent machine. Seeders and Planters are two separate machines. Seeders will help you in sowing of rapeseed, oats, soybean, oilseed radish, wheat and rye.

On the other hand, planters will help you plant soybean, sugar beet, cotton, and corn. You will need to purchase them from the shop and use them to plant or sow once the land has been prepared for them. Some of the cultivators also come with built-in seeders and planters which can cultivate and sow/plow in the same run saving you valuable time.

Coming to potatoes and sugar cane, both of them have separate categories and you can choose machines for both of them. Same thing applies for poplars and trees. You will need a special planter from the Forestry Equipment in order to plant trees and poplars. Before you start sowing or planting, you will need to fill them with palettes of the seeds of the crops you are going to plant/sow in the field.

Fertilization

If the land where you want to plant your crops is not in good fertile position, you can use different fertilizers to restore its fertility. If you open the map, you can check the fertilization status of the field from there easily. Keep monitoring and ensure that the land is in good shape. After each harvest, the ground fertility will decrease and if it drops down a certain level, your yield will start to decrease.

If the land’s condition is good at the start, do not fertilize before planting your crops. Instead, you can fertilize at a later stage when the plants have reached a certain stage of development. The best option is to fertilize the ground twice while your crops are growing in the field. Once during the process of planting or sowing and the second one when the crops have made good development progress.

The game different types of fertilizers that you can use according to the plant and the amount of fertilization you want in the field.

Slurry and Manure

These are obtained by cows and pigs as a by-product. You can find their distribution machines in the shop.

Artificial Fertilizers/Loose Fertilizers

You can buy them from the shops and load them up in your seeders or planters to apply them in your fields. This is the easiest and cheapest way to fertilize your land.

Liquid Fertilizers

These can be bought from the shops as well but they are expensive and not very cost effective. However, they offer the best bonuses in terms of area of effect and speed of action.

Digestate

This is obtained from grass. If you happen to collect a lot of grass, whisk it and leave it be for fermentation and then wrap bales of grass of hay. This will give you silage. Take it to the Biomass plant to get some money and digestate to use it in the slurry tanks as fertilizer.

Oilseed Radish

This is the most cost effective and simple method of fertilization. You will need a seeder and some land to plant some radish. Once the radish is all grown, use a cultivator and destroy the whole field. This in turn enriches the soil and becomes a natural fertilizer. You only have to pay for the seed for this method and then wait a little time for the radish to grow and you will have a perfectly fertilized land.

Weeding

Weeds appear in your farms overtime and you will need a weeder to keep your farms clean and your crop healthy. They can be harmful for your crops and if not taken care of, your yield can be reduced by a massive 20%. You can also get rid of the weeds by chemical spraying. Use artificial fertilizers or herbicides and load them in your spraying machines to keep the weeds at bay. If the field is yet to be cultivated or plowed, weeds will be destroyed automatically.

It is very important that you remove the weeds during the early phases of crop growth. If you do not remove them during the early phase, removing them once the crops are ready for harvesting will not increase your yield. You will also end up damaging your crops in the process. Using vehicles with narrow tires will keep your crops safe to some point but we recommend that you remove weeds as early as possible.

Lime Fertilization

Lime is an additional feature introduced in Farming Simulator 19. With this mechanic, after every third harvest, you must use enrich your fields will lime. For this purpose, two special machines have been added to the game. You can choose from the cheaper and lighter model Bredal K105 or use its more expensive but heavier model K165. Both serve the same purpose.

Using lime for soil fertilization is similar to how you use other types of fertilizers on your fields. Only you will need special vehicles for it. If you have any field marked in blue on your map, you will need to fertilize them with lime. When you create a new field or joining two fields together, you will need to fertilize them with lime. Field expansion will also require lime. Leaving fields without lime will result in 15% reduction in your yield.

Harvesting

Once your crops are ready, it is time to harvest your hard work. You can tell your crops are ready when they reach a special yellow color. You will need a harvester with special modules for harvesting different crop types. Each crop in the game requires a special module for harvesting. We have detailed them below.

• Sunflower – Can be harvest with maize module. There’s a special module for harvesting sunflower in bulk. It is 50% faster than the normal maize module.
• Maize – Maize Module
• Grains – Crops such as wheat, barley, rapeseed, soybeen and oats can be harvested with the grain module.
• Cotton, Sugar beet, Cane and Potatoes – These crops require a special harvest for harvesting. Each of the harvester comes in a cheaper and an expensive variant. The cheaper variant is attached to a tractor while the expensive variant is self-propelled.

After you have decided the correct harvester, you will also need something to hold all the yield while the harvester works. For this purpose, you will need a semi-trailer vehicle to empty them out once they are full. Some of the crops can be collected later such as potatoes and beets are poured to the ground. Cotton bales are dropped on the field as well which can be collected later easily. Some of the harvesters can be connected with trailers as well.

Withering

If for some reason you do not harvest your crops for a long time, they will wither and they will go to waste. If your harvest has withered, you will need to plow or cultivate the land to make it useable again. As the ready to harvest crops age, their color will get darker and darker and eventually they will turn grey which shows that crops have withered.

You can open your map and see the condition of all fields to see how much time you have left to harvest them before they wither. Make sure that you do not leave the crops in the field for two long or else they will wither. Sugarcane is the only crop that will not wither.

If you are new to Farming Simulator 19, check out our Beginner’s Guide for tips and tricks on how to play the game.

This concludes our Farming Simulator 19 Farming Guide. If you want to add anything to this guide, feel free to use the comments section below.