Tray

Trays are machines like Growing Tray that automatically grow, harvest and replant crops (such as Wheat, Algae, Blue Flower, Meatvine, etc.).

Tray has slots for seeds and water. Its speed and yield can be greatly improved by adding fertilizer (such as Mulch or Algae). Some trays can be powered to grow plants 3-6 times faster.

Trays are machinery, so they only work in loaded areas of the map. Place them on your main base.

• Tray needs to eat 3 seeds to start working.

  This is reduced if the fertilizer has a note like "-1 seed use" in its description.

• Tray grows 2 plants at the same time (every harvest gives 2 times more produce than 1 soil-grown plant).

  This is increased if the fertilizer has a note like "+1 produce" in its description. In case of +1, it will grow 2+1=3 plants at the same time.

• Without fertilizer, tray grows plants at the same speed as if they were growing on soil.

  This is increased if the fertilizer has a note like "Growth Rate x1.5" in its description. This is drastically increased if the tray is powered.

• Tray consumes 1 fertilizer per harvest (consumed upfront, when the tray starts working) and 3 Water per stage of plant growth.

  Consumption of liquid can be reduced by replacing Water with more potent liquids. For example, you need 6 times less Healing Water than Water.

• Plants that are perennial (wouldn't require replanting after harvest if you planted them on soil) only consume seeds once (when you first place them into the tray). For a perennial plant, "-1 seed use" on the fertilizer is mostly irrelevant (but other fertilizer bonuses are still very useful).

  In this wiki, you can see that a plant is perennial if the page about its seed (e.g. Corn Seed) mentions "(first harvest)", "(regrowth)" or "(every harvest)" after the growth time.

• Non-perennial plants consume 3 seeds every time, so they heavily benefit from fertilizer. Without any fertilizer, plants will usually yield less than 3 seeds that you spent, so you'll lose seeds over time. Fertilizers with "-1 seed use" or "+1 produce" negate this problem. Using Superior Fertilizer (which has "-2 seed use") results in obtaining a massive surplus of seeds.

Under optimal conditions (a powered Hydro Tray with Organic Soup and Superior Fertilizer), the tray is 17 times faster than soil-grown plants, and every harvest yields as much as 5 soil-grown plants, while only using 1 seed on replanting if the plant is non-perennial.

The only situation when soil-grown plants outperform a tray is if they are on some planet that you almost never visit. Soil-grown plants keep growing when you are away, trays don't.

• Water, Swamp Water - normal consumption
• Blood, Pus - 2 times lower consumption
• Plasmic Fluid - 3 times lower consumption
• Organic Soup - 4 times lower consumption, growth rate is multiplied by 1.375
• Aether - 5 times lower consumption
• Healing Water - 6 times lower consumption, growth rate is multiplied by 1.225

Note: Organic Soup is both a liquid and a fertilizer. It only gets fertilizer bonuses when in fertilizer slot.

• Growing Tray - basic speed.
• Heatlamp Tray - 3 times faster if powered (1W), but uses 4 Water instead of 3.
• Hydro Tray - 6 times faster if powered (4W), uses 2 Water instead of 3.
• Community Garden - basic speed, but yield is increased by the number of nearby tenants who pay rent to Colony Core.

• When you start using the tray, add the fertilizer before the seeds, so that the tray wouldn't eat 3 seeds.
• If you have many trays, you can use an Item Transference Device (ITD) to automatically move liquid and fertilizer from 1 chest into all trays. You can use another ITD to move produce from all trays into the fridge.
• Trays are convenient for growing buff-granting plants (such as Miracle Grass and Blizzberry) that don't spoil (you can leave produce in the tray until you need it).
• Some liquids (such as Healing Water and Organic Soup) can be produced by infinite mixing.
• Organic Soup is usable as both liquid and fertilizer, so sometimes it's used as both for simplicity, but its fertilizer bonuses are inferior to Advanced Fertilizer and Liquified Crystal, which are not difficult to hand-craft.
• High-end fertilizers (especially Superior Fertilizer) can be used to mass-produce seeds of non-perennial plants (for extracting or selling them). Perennial plants don't have this option. Some vanilla perennial plants (such as Corn) almost never produce new seeds.
• For powered trays (Heatlamp Tray, Hydro Tray), you can simplify wiring by connecting nearby trays together. They'll pass power to each other. Direction doesn't matter.
• When using ITD on dozens of trays, you can make the wiring cleaner by placing a Repeater on the same horizontal level as the trays.
• To replace currently growing seeds with others, you can break the tray and place it again. Alternatively, if you place new seeds into the tray, the tray will start growing the new plant after the next harvest of the plant that is growing there right now.