Best Sprinkler layouts in Stardew Valley for your Greenhouse & farm

Sprinklers can make your life so much easier in Stardew Valley, so ensuring that you've got the best layouts for both your farm and Greenhouse will save you so much time every single day.

It's always a pain starting a new save without sprinklers, as you'll spend half your day and expend most of your energy just to keep your plants watered. However, with these layouts you won't have to wait for a rainy day to get stuff done, letting you get on with everything else in-game like completing the Community Center.

Best farm sprinkler layout

The ideal sprinkler layout for your farm very much depends on how much space you have and the number of sprinklers you have at your disposal.

Most farms work best with multiple patches of crops dotted across the larger area, but following the layout below gives you a good idea of what to work with:

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You'll want to base your outside farm layouts around scarecrows, as they will prevent your crops from being eaten up. Each scarecrow covers 249 squares in a roughly 17x17 layout, stretching eight squares on either side of its placement.

Depending on your individual farm's layout there's a good chance that you won't have space for this complete area - as I found when testing this out above! You can use it for a rough maximum though and work down from that to ensure that you're fully covered.

Using 12 Iridium Sprinklers and cutting off the top edges with a fence will cover every spot in the radius, although you can also just path placements to better space things out, making things also look a bit neater.

Junimo Hut layout

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Image via Stardew Planner

If you've got the Junimo Hut and want everything to look neat and tidy while performing at full efficiency then this layout is definitely for you. This gives you 180 plantable spots that are fully watered, complete with clean and symmetrical paths and a double chest too for storage.

If you want to tweak this yourself, make sure to head over to this Stardew Planner map and play around with the placements - you could even recreate your entire farm!

Best Greenhouse sprinkler layouts

Optimising your greenhouse is one of the best things you can do in Stardew Valley, as it lets you grow any crop all year round - creating the perfect money maker with the right seeds.

Iridium Sprinkler layout

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You only need six Iridium Sprinklers to completely cover the Greenhouse plot - with only four taking up actual spots on the soil too. This leaves you with 116 free spots to plant crops in - making this ideal if you're farming for Ancient Fruit or Starfruit.

I've started working my way towards an Ancient Fruit-filled Greenhouse with a Seed Maker to the side, and the fact that I don't need to worry about watering this every day definitely helps a lot.

Quality Sprinkler layout

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You'll have quite a bit less space when using Quality Sprinklers, with 16 needed overall taking up 12 spots on the soil. However, that still leaves you 108 free spaces for crops, which is plenty if you can't quite afford the high crafting cost of an Iridium Sprinkler.

You can always switch things out after a while too - although you might need to get rid of three of your Ancient Fruit if you've opted for them as they'll get in the way otherwise.

Greenhouse fruit tree layout

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One of the other big benefits of the Greenhouse is that fruit trees not only grow at any time of year inside, but they will also produce fruit every single day.

What's more, they can also be placed around the outside of the soil, in spaces that would otherwise be left unoccupied - leaving you nothing to lose and everything to gain!

So long as you've got a couple in place it shouldn't be too hard to mess up either, as the game won't let you place any new trees in too close proximity to once you've already planted.

How do sprinklers work?

Sprinklers will water any tilled soil in a specific proximity around them at the same time every single morning, letting you avoid watering your plants manually.

There are three different types of sprinklers available to players, alongside nozzles and enrichers that you can attach to existing sprinklers to enhance their effects and range.

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The standard Sprinkler is the weakest of the trio, and only waters four spots above, below, and to the left and right. Quality Sprinklers bring an improvement to this, watering the entire square surrounding the item. Finally, Iridium Sprinklers are the best of the bunch, watering a 5x5 radius around the item, covering 24 squares total.

Laying sprinklers out in the lineups listed above can completely automate the daily watering process, letting you preserve your energy and get on with more pressing issues. This is an essential part of farming as you progress through the game, as you'll want to spend what little time you have each day tending your animals, fishing, building relationships, or heading down into the Mines or Skull Cavern.

How to get more sprinklers

Sprinklers can be crafted as you increase your Farming level, or some can be purchased and given as gifts too.

Battery packs can be a bit annoying to get in large quantities for crating Iridium Sprinklers, but thankfully Krobus sells one every single Friday for 10,000g so that's where I got a fair chunk of mine, especially outside of Summer.

Quality Sprinklers are also one of the rewards inside the Prize Ticket machine in Mayor Lewis' house, but you're probably better off grinding the Mines for the required ore as you'll need far more than you can get through any other method.

Check out our Stardew Valley homepage for more tips and tricks, where you'll be able to find out what green rain does, where to find Prismatic Jelly, and how to get the secret Meowmere weapon.