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# Food Cultivation
Crops go through three different life stages: planting, growing, and harvesting. To successfully cultivate their plants colonists must participate in every stage of the process. Each stage of a crop’s cultivation will require some planning to ensure that the right conditions are provided. The use of the various devices below will assist colonists in securing the richest harvests for themselves.
### **Heating Systems**
With an average temperature of around -63C (or -81F) across the surface of the red planet the conditions for plant growth are broadly speaking non-existent. Colonists will need to ensure that they can provide the right temperatures for their crops.
* Heaters are necessary to keep the temperature of the plants within a stable, suitable range for continued growth.
### Lighting Systems
The amount of sunlight that plants receive on Mars is significantly lower than that on Earth. To help plants grow, colonists have to use multi-wavelength LEDs. Additional lights will be added with different wavelength bands that target specific crop types. It will fall to the players to discover the best way to optimise their crops.
### Agricultural Machines & Objects
There are a wide range of machines and objects that are designed to work with the cultivation system and include everything from artificial soil beds to composting devices. These machines and objects are the basis point behind successful crop cultivation on Mars.
Soil-based plant growing plots - Used for growing plants, these plots come in different sizes and shapes:
* Line (Small) = 1 x 3 (3 plants maximum)
* Rectangular (Small) = 2 x 3 ( 6 plants maximum)
* Line (Large) = 1 x 6 ( 6 plants maximum)
* Rectangular (Large) = 2 x 6 ( 12 plants maximum)
* Fertiliser production machine - This machine creates artificial fertilisers by purifying regolith from perchlorates and mixing it with compost.
* Freezer / Cryo chamber - This machine keeps food supplies and seeds cold to keep them fresh longer.
* Watering pot - An everyday item of Earth that is used to water the soil.
* Composting toilet - Work in progress.
* Composting machine - Work in progress.
* Hydroponics - This is a method of growing plants without soil. You can grow plants hydroponically all year long. Hydroponics uses water filled with nutrients to support plant cultivation.
* Aeroponics - Another method of growing plants without soil, aeroponics keep plant roots suspended in the air and irrigated with a nutrient-dense mist.
* Automated self-sufficient food growing machine (Cornucopia) - A machine that take cares of all of the food growing processes ( Fertilising, watering, temperature regulation)
* This machine has 1 plot so it can only grow one plant at a time
* This machine uses a lot of water and energy.
* It is an early game machine that provides food, but it is not as efficient as a colonist. While it is not labour-intensive, the machine is inefficient for the purposes of cultivating large harvests.
* Seed printing machine - This will print selected seeds and will be used to create new vegetables to grow.
* Kitchen - A machine that the colonists can use to combine different ingredients to prepare and cook food.
\*All of the machinery above is in development. More information will be provided as the development of these machines continues.
### **Plant Cultivation Workflow**
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