Overview
Lavender wants lean, fast-draining ground. The game tracks three soil facts for your farm: texture (sand, sandy loam, loam or clay), pH and drainage (a percentage). They come from your mapped soil, from Pick for me, or from the Farm Map tiles you own (your farm's pH and drainage are the average of your owned tiles).
These are measured or modeled conditions, not free settings. You can't just type new values; you change them with a soil test and paid amendments, or drainage work on the Farm Map.
Soil score
The Lavender Field's Soil tab shows a Recorded field baseline score from 0 to 100%. It is the average of three parts:
| Part | How it scores |
|---|---|
| pH | 100 at pH 7.2, minus 35 points for each 1.0 away from 7.2 |
| Texture | Sandy loam 100 · Sand 88 · Loam 78 · Clay 45 |
| Drainage | Your drainage %, plus 10 for each Raised Rows level, up to 100 |
Score labels
| Score | Label |
|---|---|
| 85% and up | Excellent |
| 66–84% | Workable |
| 65% and under | Needs improvement |
What the score does
- A new plant starts with health equal to your soil score, but never less than 60%.
- Weekly growth is multiplied by the soil score (a 50% score grows plants at half speed).
- Farm Conditions' soil and drainage reading, and its critical soil alerts, use your pH and drainage too.
Good ranges for lavender
- pH: about 6.5 to 7.5. Below 6.5 is under the usual lavender range; above 8 is over it.
- Drainage: 70% or more is fast (good root-zone oxygen); 50–69% is moderate (check after heavy rain, consider a raised row); under 50% is slow (fix water movement before planting).
- A Lavender Row can only be placed on a Farm Map tile with at least 70% drainage.
Real-world note
The game teaches “drainage before fertilizer”: wet crowns and winter saturation hurt lavender more than low fertility, and a soil test beats guessing about pH.
See also
Written from the game itself. Spot something out of date? and our farm team will check it.
