Zombie gardening and seed supply

Equip each gardener with a shovel, provide its gardener station and assign the crops or working area through the garden’s build interface. Carrying a zombie near an empty bed does not establish that assignment.

Check the assigned beds

The German firsthand walkthrough places gardeners at their own stands and configures what they grow through the build board. Inspect the selected crop and working area before replacing a worker that appears idle.

Then check the seed stock and that the desired beds are usable. A garden with vegetables waiting to harvest and another with no replacement seeds can look like the same staffing failure while needing different actions.

For standard four-seed plantings, four beds require 16 seeds. If the last harvest returned 12, another four seeds are still needed to replant the whole area. That is a stock calculation, not a promise that every crop returns 12 or that the next harvest will have the same yield.

Equipment and planting conditions

A missing shovel can stop the gardener. The 1.011 notes also fix a shovel-less farmer blocking other workers, seed items appearing in farmer organ slots and failures to plant or swap fertilizer on an empty bed. Update an affected save before treating those launch-era bugs as intended staffing limits.

Green Thumb and Farmer affect the Keeper’s effective Farming and returns when applicable; a zombie uses its own equipment and training. Do not assume a personal perk has raised the gardener’s mastery just because it helped the Keeper’s last harvest.

Keep a seed reserve

Track returned seeds separately from harvested crops. Selling the whole seed surplus after a strong harvest leaves the garden exposed to a later shortfall. Farming seeds and Peat explains replanting budgets and the sequel’s persistent bed improvement.

For the Compost Pile, assistants gained timed autocraft support in 1.011. If Peat production waits after one batch, inspect the supplier, mastery and collected output through the supplier cycle.