Getting Wheat in New Horizons: Full Guide & Gameplay Tips

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Learn how to plant, grow, and cook with wheat

Co-authored by Hannah Dillon

Last Updated: October 4, 2023 Fact Checked

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Getting Wheat Starts

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Growing Wheat

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Cooking with Wheat

Animal Crossing: New Horizons introduced crafting, a fun new mechanic that allows players to create and customize tons of things for their island. Most of these items are clothing and decor, but with the 2.0 Free Update, New Horizons introduced a new category of DIY: cooking. One of the major ingredients for New Horizons' cooking recipes is flour, which requires wheat. Figuring out how to get wheat is not super straightforward in the game, but thankfully it's not hard. In this article, we'll teach you where to get wheat, how to grow it, and how to cook with it.

Things You Should Know

You can buy wheat starts from Leif in his pop-up shop in front of Resident Services or his open-air market stall on Harv's Island.
Wheat should be planted in a grassy area and watered daily to ensure the biggest possible yield.
Use wheat with kitchenware to craft flour or whole-wheat flour, which are used in many New Horizons cooking recipes.

Section 1 of 3:

Getting Wheat Starts

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Buy wheat starts from Leif. Leif sells wheat starts for 280 Bells. ^{[1]
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Research source} You should get at least five wheat starts, as you'll need a decent amount of wheat to make flour. There are two ways you can get wheat starts from Leif:
- Buy them from Leif's pop-up store in front of Resident Services. Once every two weeks, Leif will visit your island . From his shop, you can buy wheat starts (as well as gardening tools, flowers, and other plant starts). ^{[2]
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- Buy them from Leif's store in the open-air market on Harv's Island. If you don't have Leif's store unlocked, you'll need to pay 100,000 to Lloid to fund it, and the store will open the next day. If Leif doesn't have wheat starts available, his store stock changes every Monday. Leif will also still show up in front of Resident Services, and on these days, his shop on Harv's Island will be closed. ^{[3]
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For 1,000 miles, Kapp'n will take you on a boat tour to a mystery island once per day. One of the islands you can get is a wheat island, where you can collect wheat. Note that you won't find wheat starts on the island, but you can dig up the wheat plant and replant it on your island, where it will continue growing and giving you wheat.

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If you cannot find wheat anywhere (or you don't want to wait for Leif to get wheat starts in stock), you can get wheat starts or wheat from another player by visiting their island . If a player has extra wheat starts in their inventory, they can drop them for you to pick up, and if they have grown wheat plants that they will let you take, you can dig them up and replant them on your island.

Section 2 of 3:

Growing Wheat

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Wheat grows best in grassy areas on your island. Some users like to plan out a whole farming area, but all you need is a space big enough to plant each of your wheat starts.
In your inventory, select the wheat start and select Plant One . Some users find it easier to dig holes before they plant their wheat to ensure the wheat start is planted in the correct spot.
Watering isn't completely necessary, but it does increase your yield of wheat. You can only get one wheat per plant without watering, but with watering, you can get up to three. ^{[4]
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It takes four days for your wheat start to grow into a ripe wheat plant. Keep watering the wheat once a day to make sure you get the maximum wheat possible.
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Harvest your wheat once it's ripe by interacting with it. Ripe wheat will be yellow. If you didn't water your wheat, it will only have one stalk, but if you watered it, it can have up to three stalks.
- After you harvest your wheat, the wheat plant will start growing again after about two days.

Section 3 of 3:

Cooking with Wheat

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Cooking with wheat requires some preparation. You must do the following before you can start cooking with wheat:
- Get the "Be a Chef! DIY Recipes+" book from the Nook Stop. It costs 3,000 miles and unlocks several cooking recipes, as well as allows you to use kitchenware to make food. You can also buy the "Basic Cooking Recipes" item from Nook's Cranny for 4,980 Bells for even more recipes that use whole-wheat flour instead of basic flour.
- Get some kitchenware. To make food, you need one kitchenware item. "Be a Chef! DIY Recipes+" will give you the recipe for the stonework kitchen, which requires 30 stone, 15 clay, and 10 iron nuggets. However, you can buy other kitchens from Nook's Cranny or the Paradise Planning office. ^{[5]
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If you already have a kitchen, once you get "Be a Chef! DIY Recipes+" you can interact with your kitchenware. Otherwise, place the kitchenware in your home.
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Interact with the kitchenware. Your kitchen item functions similarly to the DIY workbench. Simply interact with the kitchen and select Let's cook! to pull up a list of cooking recipes that you know.
- Besides "Be a Chef! DIY Recipes+" and "Basic Cooking Recipes," you can also get recipes from villagers, fishing , or NPCs like Brewster and Daisy Mae. You can also get recipes from the restaurant in Happy Home Paradise. ^{[6]
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You can craft flour if you have "Be a Chef! DIY Recipes+" and whole-wheat flour if you have "Basic Cooking Recipes." Each type of flour takes five wheat.
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Craft the flour by selecting Let's prep! . After a few moments, you will have crafted the flour, and you can now use it in other recipes.
- Regular flour is used in many recipes in New Horizons, so it's a good idea to stock up on it. ^{[7]
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  Research source} In contrast, whole-wheat flour is only used for a handful of items. ^{[8]
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