Fertilizer

Feeding a crop plot

Fertilizer is the farming supply that keeps crops growing in ARK: Survival Evolved and ARK: Survival Ascended. It is rich in nitrogen and goes into a Crop Plot, where one fresh unit provides 54,000 points of fertilizer. The ARK Wiki calls it the most efficient way to fertilize, and crops grow faster and yield far more with it than with Feces put in directly.

Making fertilizer

• Compost Bin: 50 Thatch and 3 Feces of any kind make one Fertilizer after 50 minutes (3000 seconds).
• Dung Beetle: a beetle set to wander converts Feces in its inventory into 1-16 Fertilizer plus 2-14 Oil, depending on the size of each dropping. Each conversion takes 15 minutes, and different sizes are processed at the same time.
• Toilet: the ARK Wiki describes a quicker but fiddly method using a single Toilet and flushing after each first use, because that first use gives a buff that allows another.

For a steady supply of Feces, the wiki suggests feeding stim berries to a Phiomia.

Putting it to work

Open the Crop Plot's inventory and place the Fertilizer inside; as long as the plot also has seeds and water, growth continues. Leave the stack size alone on servers: a plot consumes a whole stack at once, so with a stack size of 10 all 10 would go at the same time.

Storing it

Each unit weighs only 0.1, but Fertilizer does not stack (stack size 1), so it fills container slots fast. A tame makes a good store: every creature can hold 300 item stacks, so even a Dodo or a Kairuku can carry 300 Fertilizer with weight to spare. Its only recipe use on our records is Re-Fertilizer, which takes 1. It also appears in loot, with 44 crate types that can contain it, such as the Genesis Blue and Genesis Red crates on Genesis Part 2. Two oddities: survivors can eat it, to no effect, and its tooltip claims it can be repaired at a Compost Bin, which it cannot.