Chapter 46 – Basil-cally, I’m a Real Sage When It Comes to Potions

🙞❤︎🙜

Having earned the label “That Silly Girl Who Played with Lightning,” I kept my head down and stayed on the farm for the next few days. The crops were growing well, and it was time to deploy a certain technique that would increase the quality of the corn harvest.

“Today I will teach you an awesome technique!” I said to my apprentices. We were at the vegetable field where we had planted a few squares using the Three Sisters method.

[Companion Planting: The Three Sisters

The Iroquois and Cherokee tribes used this method of planting corn, beans, and squash together in the same mound. The corn grows tall and provides a support for the beans to climb. The squash spreads along the ground, providing ground cover and preventing weeds from growing. This method of planting results in a bountiful harvest of all three crops.]

I moved closer to one of the mounds. The corn had grown tall and strong, towering above its companions. The beans that were climbing up the stalks of the corn were vibrantly green, and the squash, sprawling across the ground, had thick, wide leaves. All three plants had flourished, and I could see that there was a slight haziness to the surrounding air, which I believed was a sign that they were rich in spiritual energy or qi.

“First of all, observe these plants. We were just at the cornfield. What is the difference between the corn here and the corn in the other field?” I asked them.

The three of them stepped closer to the plants and circled the mounds, looking closely at the corn and the other plants. Lari scratched his head, and they huddled together for a few minutes before coming back to me and giving me their answer.

“The corn seems to be taller compared to the corn in the other field,” said Kharli.

“Correct. What else?”

“The leaves are a little greener,” said Kharli.

“What can you conclude, then?”

“That the Three Sisters method works?” She sounded uncertain. “There doesn’t seem to be a lot of difference.”

Hmm. Could it be that the haze I saw around the plants wasn’t visible to other people? Interesting.

“Even a slight difference at this point in the growing season can make a big difference when it’s harvest time. We’ll know then whether the Three Sisters method is better. Also, I think the three of you have forgotten or haven’t noticed that there are almost no weeds here compared to the other field. We haven’t planted a lot of crops this season, but in the future we might find that it’s very useful to have crops that are low maintenance.”

Mo crouched down to look at the ground. “It’s true! We haven’t weeded today yet, but the ground is clear.”

The other two went to the other mounds to check, and confirmed that it was true of the other plantings, too.

I decided to move on to the main lesson for today. “One thing you have to keep in mind, though, is that if you use this method, you should hand pollinate the corn. If you grow a lot of corn together, the crop will pollinate itself whenever the wind blows, but if you only have a few of them, then they will need some help with pollination.”

The three of them looked at each other, then Kharli said, “Teacher, what is pollination?”

Now it was my turn to scratch my head. I shouldn’t have assumed that they already knew what pollination was since they grew up in an orphanage and didn’t go to school like I did.

“Okay, I’ll explain. This part here on the top of the corn plant is called the tassel. It’s full of something we call pollen. When the wind blows, it shakes the plants and the pollen naturally falls down to the corn silks. That is what we call pollination, and this process has to happen for the corn kernels to develop. Do you understand so far?”

They nodded.

“All right. Since there aren’t any corn plants here, it’s best to hand pollinate them. I’ll show you how it’s done.”

Taking a pair of scissors from my System toolbelt, I snipped off a tassel, then gently brushed it back and forth over the silks, ensuring that all the strands were fully coated.

“That’s it! It’s easy, right?” I said. “Let’s do it.”

We spent the better part of an hour carefully tending to the corn plants. Dusting the silks with pollen was pretty fun and relaxing. If only I hadn’t transmigrated into such a conservative culture, I would’ve made a few jokes about plant reproduction, but, alas, that would be considered in bad taste here.

“Shouldn’t we do this with the corn plants in the other field?” asked Lari. “What if they don’t pollinate themselves properly?”

“If you feel like it, you can hand pollinate some of the corn there. Make a note of which ones you helped, and we can compare the harvest between the naturally pollinated and hand pollinated plants,” I said. Lari was normally the lazy one, but he could be roused to action whenever he thought he could get something out of it. It seemed that he was afraid that we would get an inferior harvest if we didn’t hand pollinate all the plants.

“Thank you for teaching us,” said Kharli.

The others echoed her words, and they went off to the other field to practice their technique a little more.

As for me, I went to my room to do more herblaw.

It was hotter than ever this summer, and my room, with its central air conditioning, was like an oasis in the middle of a desert. I asked Fengying for a pitcher of apple juice with ice cubes from the refrigerator and a handful of nuts to snack on. Once she had delivered the items, I started making potions.

[Player Name: Violet

Farming Skills:

Farming Level 12, Fishing Level 8, Woodcutting Level 12, Cooking Level 1, Herblaw Level 10, Foraging Level 3, Hunting Level 1, Mining Level 1]

My herblaw was coming along nicely. Of course, it wasn’t a fast skill to train, but that was true of everything related to farming. I placed the spell stones and herbs on my worktable and used the Clean Herb spell. Then I swiftly combined the ingredients in a vial using the Create Potion spell. Again and again, I cast the spell as fast as I could, and delighted in the act of creation. Blight Magic, Dewy Glow, and Antipoison potions weren’t exactly the most useful items I could make right now, but it was necessary to gain more experience and level up my herblaw to be able to create better potions.

Though it wasn’t exactly a heart pounding adventure, it was still much better than what I would have been doing back on Earth, which was probably studying for college entrance exams, and stressing over money.

Here I had my own place, plenty of money, scrumptious food to eat every day, and magic.

Magic was even harder to train than Herblaw. I wasn’t particularly worried about it though since magic was used in pretty much all the crafting skills and should level up naturally as soon as I started working on my non-farming skills.

As I made potions, I hummed a little tune under my breath.

A pinch of this root, a drop of that berry
Mixed with a thunderclap, and a songbird’s melody
A tiny pinch of salt, and a spark from a lightning bolt,

That was the song from Adventure Incarnate’s trailer that featured herblaw.

I was making potions the way I normally did when the vials I was working on started glowing all the colors of the rainbow and a System message popped up.

[You have made a Perfect Potion.]

Woo-hoo! It was about time that I did. Though Perfect Potions only gave a twenty percent boost to their regular effects, they gave double experience. The more a player trained a particular skill or crafted a particular item, the more they “mastered” it. In herblaw, that meant that players would produce Perfect Potions now and then, with the frequency increasing as their mastery increased.

Cheered by the thought that I was going to get more experience than usual, I continued to train herblaw for the rest of the week without stopping except for sleep, meals, the usual daily farm chores, and a few breaks here and there whenever Prince Baiyu came for a visit.

LinMeili

• Hand pollinating corn is a real thing that people do.
• What sort of plant reproduction jokes would you make if you got the opportunity to do so?
• I'll start. "Let's hope this cross-pollination produces some ears-resistible corn."
• Thank you very much for reading my story.
• My Patreon is up to 20 chapters ahead if you like that sort of thing. :)