I tend to put my Earthblood in grass.
1: Grass has a very quick maturation speed (this cannot be edited in the trait modifier, unlike Production speed)
2: because it can then serve additional functions:
1: use grass in hand while standing on a harvested pile of it. Produces astroturf.
1A: use astroturf on floor tiles with a crowbar in the other hand to replace the floor with grass tiles. Tell the fascist dictator HoS to touch grass. get harmbatoned
1B: This also works with fairy grass to make glowing floors in your choice of color.
Blue: Default fairygrass (mutate grass)
Red: Glowcaps (mutate glowshrooms)
Yellow: Holymelons (mutate watermelons)
Green: Omegaweed (mutate Cannabis)
Purple: Moonflowers (mutate sunflowers)
Pink: Glowcherries (mutate cherries)
White: Glowberries (mutate berries)
Fugly yellow/green: Glowshrooms. Only use this color if you’re pathetic. Darkness: Shadowshrooms (mutate glowshrooms)
2: Use spade on astroturf tile stack to produce sand.
2A: shove these into a lathe when all the miners are dead and the Engineers need a ton of glass for their plan to irradiate all life on the station.
2B: Make volcanic decorative flooring to bring the Lavaland aesthetic to the Captain’s office
3: Use Sand in hand to produce sandstone
4: Use sandstone in hand to make sand piles (3 bricks per pile)
5: Sand piles are the equivalent of botany trays but without the lights and can be walked over.
6: Use earthblood grass on the sand piles to make them self-sustaining too.
6A: Let the chaplain have a plant that produces kickass batteries or maxed out towercaps for his weird rituals.
6B: Give the chemist a plant that produces omnizine
6C: Have your secret combustible lemon tree in maints away from casual eyes
6D: Congrats, you can now turn the entire station into a pot farm.
adding to this that you could theoretically need the torch if you wanna replace your walls (I once tried to turn the dorms area into an art room, which required taking the outer iron of the walls and putting wood.) You can put wood right on girders to make a wooden wall.
edit: Also I didn’t know the biogen was nutrient based tbh i thought it depended more heavily on like potency (bigger plant, more biogen)
Mutate oranges into Extradimensional Oranges
The trait ‘Richer Juice’ from Extradimensional Oranges doubles the amount of reagent you get.
100 Potency and the 5% Earthblood trait from Gaia means it takes 4 produce to turn a tray Gold.
Add Richer Juice, then it only takes 2.
It also doubles your biomass gain. Bury the cook in flour sacks with less effort.
Also, another fun party trick is mass production of gold bars. Bribe antags to fuck off.
Mutate Apples into Golden Apples, take the “Gold 20%” trait
Mutate Tower caps into steelcaps, take the “Iron 20%” trait
Mutate chili peppers into ice peppers (it might mutate into ghost peppers instead, so I like to have a chilli plant growing on backup), take the “Frost Oil 25%” trait.
Add them to a plant without any other reagentsin that order. At 100 potency, you’ll get a gold bar for each yield. With Richer Juice, you get 2. At lower potency levels, you can get some gold by grinding the plants in your blender.
I specifically didn’t include any particular gene combinations besides the gaia (it’s so essential to botany, so it made for a good example to show off the mechanics).
A lot of the fun of botany for me was trying new things and experimenting, instead of robotically following a list of recipes.
also richer juice was added over a year after I left so I have no idea how it works
i’ve been here and mained botany and i can tell you I also didn’t know how richer juice worked, I thought it just applied to like fruit juices, so I always saw it as a sort of “barkeep’s friend”, whenever they ask for stuff like that