Are you a casual player? Is hitting 90 going to take you more than a couple days? Not quite sure what to do with your farm in the meantime?

Then read on, dear person who is reading, read on!

It occurred to me that the research I did might be useful to others, so here’s a quick guide on how to put your four measly little garden plots to good use.

Raw Materials

There are ten seeds you can buy at the market, only one of which isn’t needed in cooking receipes (Pink Turnip).

All of these can be planted pre-90 and you can use the resulting veggies to level cooking, do the repeatable turn-in quest, and make Auction House gold.

I’m covering each option below, although I went with cooking myself (at least to start with).

Growth Rate

The veggies you can plant at this point all take one day to grow and produce 5 veggies, unless you get lucky and hit a bonus day or an insta-grow. The good news is that they don’t go bad, so you don’t have to scurry back to farm them on your non-WoW days.

You will need veggies in the following amounts to level recipes or do the turn-in quest:

50 veggies will take you 10 plots, or 2.5 days to grow. (25 Level 1 recipes)
65 veggies will take you 13 plots, or 3.25 days to grow. (13 Level 2 recipes)
100 veggies will take you 20 plots, or 5 days to grow. (Quest Turn-in)
250 veggies will take you 50 plots, or 12.5 days to grow. (5 Level 3/Banquets)
400 veggies will take you 80 plots, or 20 days to grow. (4 Level 3/Great Banquets)

Auction House

If you just want to make gold, hit up The Undermine Journal and see what the pricing trends are on each of the veggies. Pick the one that’s highest for the day and plant that. You can always use that gold to buy your own veggies, so as long as the market supports it and you need the cash… sell away!

Making Baskets

The turn-in quest Replenishing the Pantry will let you trade in a basket of 100 veggies in exchange for an Ironpaw Token. You can use these tokens to buy baskets of other food (25 veggie or 5 meat), or other shiny things. *looks forward to flipping tables*

If you have already leveled cooking you can earn one token every five days from the results of your four plots (assuming you use all four plots to plant the same thing).

Personally I prefer standing in the ocean and fishing for half an hour to get 20 (or 60) fish, but that’s just me…

Leveling Cooking

Below is the veggie requirements to level each Way. You will obviously also need meat (and lots of it), but that’s for another day and another chart.

There are three ‘levels’ of recipes for each Way. The first level item you need to cook 25 times, the second level 13 times, and the third level 5 times (Banquet) or 3.125 times (Great Banquet).

There really isn’t a leveling reason to cook the Great Banquets, so only cook them if they’re actually useful to eat.

Cheatsheet
W = Witchberries
GC = Green Cabbage
SM = Striped Mellon
WT = White Turnip
MP = Mogu Pumpkin
JC = Juicycrunch Carrot
S = Scallions
JS = Jade Squash
RBL = Red Blossom Leek

Way of the	Recipe	W	GC	SM	WT	MP	JC	S	JS	RBL
Brew	Jade Witch Brew	65	–	–	–	–	–	–	65	–
Brew	Banquet of the Brew	250	250	–	–	–	–	–	–	–
Grill	Eternal Blossom Fish	–	–	65	–	–	–	–	–	–
Grill	Banquet of the Grill	–	–	–	250	–	–	–	–	–
Oven	Banquet of the Oven	–	–	–	–	250	–	–	–	–
Pot	Braised Turtle	–	–	–	–	–	65	–	–	–
Pot	Banquet of the Pot	–	–	–	–	–	250	–	–	–
Steamer	Fire Spirit Salmon	–	–	–	–	–	–	65	–	–
Steamer	Banquet of the Steamer	–	–	–	–	–	–	–	250	–
Wok	Sauteed Carrots	–	–	–	–	–	50	–	–	–
Wok	Banquet of the Wok	–	–	–	–	–	–	–	–	250
TOTALS	315	250	315	250	250	365	65	315	250

For a grand total of 2375 veggies = 475 plots = 118.75 days of planting.

That’s right, drag it out long enough and it will take you nearly FOUR MONTHS to get enough veggies to level all of the Ways.

Or, you know, just farm when you remember to and worry about learning to cook when you finally get more plots…