Farming Simulator 22 dropped this week after a long wait for fans. The latest version of the cult series brings a host of new features and content, including new crops to grow. One such new crop are grapes, which can be used for both food and juice, amongst other products.
How do you get grapes on your farm though? And what's the most efficient way to harvest them? We've got everything you need to know right here!
Preparation and planting
This guide is for the base vanilla version of Farming Simulator 22, so there are no mods being used. The first thing you need to do is ensure that you're planting the grapes at the correct time of year. For grapes, somewhere between March and May is ideal to be planted. This should set you up for a harvest between September and October.
If you're unsure about any plant's time of year to plant and harvest, consult your Crop Calendar. You can choose to have seasonal growth off, and if you do, that means you can plant and harvest whenever you want to, even if that means you'll be picking grapes in a blizzard.
You can't just stick grape seeds in the ground and let them grow, there's much more to this process than that. You'll need to make sure you have some freed up space in your land. You have to go to the Store, then Others and Construction before going to Production, Orchards, then Grapes.
All you have to do is then drag and drop where your line of grapes begins and ends. You'll then have to wait a few days for the grass to grow a little higher before mulching.
Mulching, Cultivating & Fertilising
You may already have the equipment you need for mulching the grapes, but just in case you don't, head over to the Store. The first thing you need to do is mulch the grass that's grown. Attach a mulcher to the back of any tractor and you'll be good to go. Ensure that you go up both sides of your orchard.
Next up is cultivating, and it's a very similar process to mulching. Attach a cultivator to your tractor and run up the vineyard. The ground should go from green to a dark brown colour.
Fertilising is the next step in this process, and we've found that the orchard sprayer is the best piece of kit for the job. Again, go up the orchard making sure to spray all of the crop. Do this, wait a few days and fertilise a second time.
Harvesting, processing & selling
Your grapes are fully grown, and this is where the money's made. It's now September or October and the grapes have grown to the ideal size. You're best off getting a proper harvester to do this job. Despite being pricey, this will pay for itself very fast.
Just a bit of aftercare for your vineyard as well, you can use a pruner to get your vines ready for growing and next year's harvest.
Once the grapes have been collected (into a trailer or other storage), it's time to sell them.
Keep in mind that if you own a grape processing unit, you can transform your grapes into grape juice or raisins and make significantly more profit. You can buy a grape processing unit by going to the production shop menu, then factories and scrolling to find the unit.
The grape processing unit converts 90 litres of grapes to 90L of raisins three times per hour. For grape juice, it's 72L three times per hour from 90L of grapes.
You also need to decide what you want to do with your raisins or grape juice. Storage sets them to be stored, selling automatically sells them to the highest bidder, but it will charge you a 40% delivery fee. Distributing sends the produce to the next link in the production chain. For example, raisins go off to the cereal factory to help make cereal.
Video tutorial
If you prefer to learn using a video as your guide, YouTube user Farmer Cop has you covered with this tutorial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHuuEfchgvQ