Just The Pepper

Disappointed to discover that bell peppers are in the game but can't be planted or grown? Do you use Expanded Food and have always wanted to make stuffed peppers?

Sure there are other mods out there that add their own bell pepper crop in but they come with other crops or mechanics that you don't want. But that all changes with this mod because it does what it says on the tin: adds Just The Pepper!

How to get seeds

Bell pepper plants spawn in the world like regular crops but they don't drop seeds when broken. Instead you need to break them when they are matured (stage 15) or immature (stage 14) to get the bell pepper fruit. Then you can extract a seed by putting the bell pepper in your crafting grid. Plants that died from the heat/cold will still drop a seed though.

If Expanded Foods is installed, seeds are instead a byproduct of the chopped bell pepper recipe. Because you're cutting the bell pepper up, of course you'd get the seeds.

Alternatively, bell pepper seeds can be found in cracked seed vessels, bought from agriculture traders, or looted from ruins.

Crop Info

<table style="border-collapse: collapse; width: 100%;" border="1"> <tbody> <tr> <td style="width: 4.78054%;">Nutrient
</td> <td style="width: 6.38991%;">Growth Stages</td> <td style="width: 9.19527%;">Growing Temperature</td> <td style="width: 11.0242%;">Growing Time</td> <td style="width: 8.53701%;">Harvest Drops</td> <td style="width: 10.0732%;">World Generation</td> </tr> <tr> <td style="width: 4.78054%;">P</td> <td style="width: 6.38991%;">15</td> <td style="width: 9.19527%;">8-34</td> <td style="width: 11.0242%;">1.65 months (15 days on 9-day months)</td> <td style="width: 8.53701%;">

Stage 14: 1-2
Stage 15: 6-10

</td> <td style="width: 10.0732%;">

Min Temp: 8
Max Temp: 34
Min Rain: 0.5
Max Rain: 1.0
Max Forest: 0.7

</td> </tr> </tbody> </table>

Why use P instead of N for the nutrient?

I know that the wiki lists N as the nutrient for bell peppers but hear me out. I took to Google to find out what nutrients bell peppers need (because I have zero gardening skill IRL) and most sources say that they need a balance of N, P, and K. But in VS, you can only have one nutrient at the moment. I did discover that too much N leads to the plant growing less fruit and more leaves and P is important to growing the reproductive parts like fruits and seeds, which is what we want to harvest anyways. Besides, N has the most types of crops while P has the lowest. So that's my reasoning behind the decision.

TL;DR - IRL Bell peppers need a balance of nutrients but too much N is bad for more fruit on the plant and P is better. Also, P has the smallest amount of crops and N has the largest.

Compatibility

The crops drop vanilla bell peppers when broken so those should be compatible with any mod that uses them. But I also added compatibility patches for:

• CAN Crops - Bell peppers can be grown on CAN Crops farmland. I'm not very familiar with the mod so some values (such as related to clipping) may be off.
• Expanded Foods (and the unofficial 1.21 patch) - This already uses vanilla bell peppers but I added the ability to press the seeds into seed oil. Also, seeds now are a byproduct of the chopped bell pepper recipe instead of a recipe on their own.
• Food Shelves - Seeds use the proper icons inside seed bins.
• Primitive Survival - Seeds can be found in tree hollows.
• Wild Farming Revival - The seeds can be panned from muddy gravel if that config option is enabled.
• Xskills (and the unofficial 1.21 patch)- Harvesting fully grown bell pepper crops gives you Farming XP.

What about Art of Growing?

In my opinion, Art of Growing is going for realism which I feel like this mod already does. Seeds are found in the bell pepper fruit so you have to decide if you want more seeds or more fruit. So I feel like it should already fit alongside Art of Growing but I'm open to other opinions.

Known Issues

• Wildcraft: Tule and Sedge FIX messes with vanilla bell peppers and causes some strange results. I reported the issue to the mod dev in their comments.
• Wildcraft: Fruits and Nuts (specifically version 1.4.3 for VS 1.21) removes vanilla bell peppers and implements its own version. I don't agree with the removal of vanilla assets but it is what it is.
• On the full-colour map, bell pepper plants show up as white or white-ish (especially when they're younger). I don't know why this is so if anyone has any ideas as to the cause, please let me know.

Possible future plans (maybe)

• Zippy's Crop Tweaks - <span style="text-decoration: line-through;">This is partially done, I just need to figure out how to make the model for the loose seeds.</span> Zippy reached out to me and said he could easily add support to his mod so just waiting for him to do that!