Is fertilizing actually bad for the crops?

[Legion88]

Fertilizing reduces the needed time to grow by one hour per fertilizing, also the effect of fertilizing has a cooldown of one hour.
The amount of crops is decided by your Topsoil, Thanalan Topsoil grants a higher chance of harvesting intercrossed seeds, Shroud Topsoil grants a hihger amount of harvested crops (only if applicable) and La Noscean Topsoil grants a higher chance to harvest HQ.

[Angelhearth]

Fertilizing reduces the needed time to grow by one hour per fertilizing, also the effect of fertilizing has a cooldown of one hour.
The amount of crops is decided by your Topsoil, Thanalan Topsoil grants a higher chance of harvesting intercrossed seeds, Shroud Topsoil grants a hihger amount of harvested crops (only if applicable) and La Noscean Topsoil grants a higher chance to harvest HQ.

"We are currently working on a 100-fertilizer test to check this but most signs point to this not being true and there are diminishing returns when fertilizing."

https://www.ffxivgardening.com/fertilizer-analysis

The important word here is diminishing. This is the only place they seem to have tried to do some serious research into fertilizing, but the experiment seems to have stopped, for unknown reasons. Things aren't always straight forward in FFXIV, that I found out after just a few days of playing it.

[Espritduo]

"We are currently working on a 100-fertilizer test to check this but most signs point to this not being true and there are diminishing returns when fertilizing."

https://www.ffxivgardening.com/fertilizer-analysis

The important word here is diminishing. This is the only place they seem to have tried to do some serious research into fertilizing, but the experiment seems to have stopped, for unknown reasons. Things aren't always straight forward in FFXIV, that I found out after just a few days of playing it.

"Diminishing return" refers to the overall value of repeatedly fertilizing, not to the actual items you get when you harvest. Fertilizing has zero impact on anything but the speed at which your plants grow and certainly doesn't hurt anything.

[Angelhearth]

"Diminishing return" refers to the overall value of repeatedly fertilizing, not to the actual items you get when you harvest. Fertilizing has zero impact on anything but the speed at which your plants grow and certainly doesn't hurt anything.

And you are 100% certain of this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diminishing_returns

As I understand diminishing returns is as Wikipedia states, getting to a point where the more you put in the less you get in return. ie. Less items from the harvest.

[MistakeNot]

And you are 100% certain of this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diminishing_returns

As I understand diminishing returns is as Wikipedia states, getting to a point where the more you put in the less you get in return. ie. Less items from the harvest.

No, that is not what dimnishing returns means, nor what Wikipedia says. Dimnishing returns means that past some point, the more you put in the less extra you get in return until at some point the output does not increase at all no matter how much extra you put in. With dimnishing returns, the total you get in return never gets lower when you put in more.

The article about dimnishing returns with fertilizer you linked to does not talk at all about how many items you get from the harvest. What it talks about is that after some point adding more fertilizer does not seem to lower the time until you can harvest the plants.

[Jojoya]

Speaking for myself, fertilizing is fairly pointless.
Even if it works as intended, to speed up growth times, this is of minimal help.
Unless you fertilize every hour, on the hour, what tangible benefits are there really?
Thavnairian onions for example have a 10 day growth cycle.
You'd need to fertilize 24 times to cut that down to 9 days.
There are better uses of time

For someone who's online for hours daily, it will let them grow more over time.

I use fertilizer to stagger when my crops will be ready to be harvested since there are some additional crosses using shorter grow time seeds that I insert into my cycle on occasion.

It doesn't take that long to fertilize. It makes sense to do it if you're going to your house regardless. I wouldn't go out of my way to do it.

And you are 100% certain of this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diminishing_returns

As I understand diminishing returns is as Wikipedia states, getting to a point where the more you put in the less you get in return. ie. Less items from the harvest.

You're assuming that fertilizer affects what you harvest. It doesn't. It affects when you can harvest. The diminishing returns kick in after a certain number of fertilizer applications. Adding more fertilizer after that won't reduce grow time any farther than it already has been.

What you harvest is affected by the seeds and topsoil you use, and the order that you plant your seeds. Whether you'll get a new seed is determined the moment you plant. It's why you alternate what you plant instead of planting all of one type of seed then planting all of the other. If you did it that way, you'd only have a chance to get seeds from the second planting.

Thavnairian Onion RNG is crazy. Sometimes you'll get all Onion seeds, sometimes you'll get none. It's intentional to keep the quantities limited. You'll get used to it.