Black Berry

Grow it for teas. Black berries are one of the coloured crops that go into the Mixing Table, and that is why groups give them planter space at all. You can eat one in a pinch, but a berry that could have been a tea makes a poor meal.

Do not mix it up with black raspberries. Those are the wild snack: you eat them, and no recipe asks for them. Black Berry is the farm version, with a whole ladder behind it.

The ladder goes like this. A black berry seed starts the first plant. Once one plant comes up with good genes, you take a clone of it and plant copies instead of rolling the dice on new seeds. The berries those copies give are what ends up in the table.

Picture a duo with one large planter box beside the tea room. Nine plants from the same clone ripen together, so a single harvest covers a round of brewing before a long farming day, and the spare berries go to the composter.