When it comes to crops, Stardew Valley has you covered. From apple trees to wheat, you’ll have your hands – and dirt – full of high-yield items to keep your farm afloat. One of these items is Tea in Stardew Valley, a classic staple beverage in many real-world countries.
Among your many tree-like crops, you will want to spend a lot of time keeping this puppy around. And from sapling to profits, you’re in for a good, high-quality plant! So, take a break from learning how to remove bushes or rotate your furniture. This guide will explain where you can get a Tea Sapling, how to grow it into a crop, and how to make the most money from selling Tea-related goods.
How to Get a Tea Sapling
You can get a Tea Sapling in Stardew Valley from the Traveling Cart or by becoming friendly with Caroline. The sapling is quite expensive from the Cart, being sold for anywhere between 1,500 and 2,500g. By befriending Caroline, you can craft it using two Wild Seeds of any season, five Fiber, and five Wood. These items combined will make a single sapling.
Your initial ability to grow a Sapling comes from the Traveling Cart. This mysterious fortress appears in Cindersap Forest on Fridays and Sundays. It comes with completely random items from a very wide assortment, the likes of which are almost always priced like a scam. If you really need a Tea Sapling this instant, then you can drop the 2k gold on it. Otherwise, we recommend doing it the intended way: by getting friendly with Caroline.
Caroline adores tea, so befriending her is a very good way into her heart. She loves the standard items, as well as Fish Tacos, Green Tea, Summer Spangles, and Tropical Curry. She likes the typical items villagers like – except for Mayonnaise – and enjoys Daffodils and Tea Leaves. Once you reach up to her two heart event, she will mail you the recipe for a Tea Sapling.
There aren’t too many crops in the game that you have to actually build before planting, so the Tea Sapling is a delicacy! You can make it from any two sacks of Wild Seeds, five Fiber, and five Wood as soon as Caroline sends you the message.
How to Grow a Tea Bush
Tea Bushes are incredibly hardy plants that grow within 20 days of being planted. They will produce leaves every day of the final week of any season except for winter. Winter leaves can be harvested if the plant was grown fully indoors. Like many trees — Mango trees, for instance — the Tea Sapling does not need to be watered or cared for once planted to grow to full maturity.
Your harvest from these bushes will not come until the last week of the month, on days 22-28. However, during that time, each and every bush will provide a Tea Leaf on each of those days. That’s still a solid seven Tea leaves per bush each month, a relatively good harvest!
However, before they can be harvested, the Tea Bush must be grown to maturity. This is a 20-day process, so we recommend that you start it within the first two days of the season. This will let the bush grow to full and then immediately be ready for harvest.
While you can’t harvest leaves during the winter, the plant can still grow during the winter. So, you can plant it during the last week of the cold season to guarantee — guaran-tea? — harvest by the end of spring.
These can be planted in Garden Pots, too, if you want to move them to a location like Ginger Island. They still do not need to be watered if grown in this way.
How to Make Tea
As the primary product of the Tea Bush, Tea Leaves can be used to make either Green Tea or Pickled Tea Leaves. The drink is made by placing the Leaves into a Keg for three hours. The Pickled Leaves are made by placing the Leaves into a Preserves Jar for several days. The products sell for 100g and 150g, respectively.
Tea Leaves are not used as a recipe in anything through standard crafting. Instead, they need to be turned into Artisan Goods. That’s fine by us, since it simplifies the process and amplifies the product quite drastically, going from 50 gold to double or triple the price.
Kegs are made by leveling Farming to 8, or as a reward for completing the Artisan Bundle. You can craft it with 30 Wood, one Copper Bar, one Iron Bar, and one Oak Resin. By placing a Leaf inside of the keg, you’ll get Green Tea in three hours.
Green Tea is a fairly potent drink that improves your Max Energy for four minutes. It can also be sold for a tidy profit. All villagers except Jas and Vincent at least like Green Tea. And Caroline and Lewis adore it!
Pickled Tea Leaves are made by stuffing the Leaf into a Preserves Jar for a few days. You get this jar by getting Farming Level 4 and cobbling it together with 50 Wood, 40 Stone, and eight Coal. You can also get one through the Quality Crops bundle.
This recipe is a bit less popular, as Jas, Maru, Sam, Sebastian, Shane, and Vincent all hate pickles, and Leo dislikes them. Everyone else likes them, except Harvey, who will do anything for them.
Other Uses For Tea Saplings
Interestingly, Tea Saplings are some of the most durable home defense measures in the business. The Saplings cannot be passed by standard mobs, making them a good replacement for fences that bring in a harvest. They are significantly more expensive than fences, but these also never wear out, so they never need to be replaced. This is not a quality shared by other saplings.
Since Tea Bushes remain at a relatively stocky size, they are much more manageable than standard Trees for keeping in rowdy animals. Thus, while expensive, these little Tea Bushes can provide both home organization and a tidy profit if planted in a closely coordinated pattern.
The real use of these saplings as a fence is the sad fact that fences wear out over time. They need to be replaced eventually, similar to real life. But, nobody needs to replace tea! And the models are small enough that you can still see and interact with your animals over it, and place a gate between two. If you don’t mind your farm looking a bit overgrown, this is a tidy solution.
