Crops

Crops are a very important part of Harvest Moon. They're easier to maintain than animals, don't need food, etc. But on the other hand, you need to water them daily, and they only give stuff you can sell after a certain amount of days, instead of daily as with animals. Also, crops are only useful in Spring and Summer. You can't harvest any crops that make any money in Fall, and you can't harvest anything in Winter. I usually start off with a few crops, then when I can get some animals, I slowly convert my farm to only produce grass, milk and eggs. Still, crops can be useful throughout the game. It all depends on how you want to play.

Seeds

Picture	Name	Produces	Price	Available in
	Turnip Seed	Turnips	200	Spring
	Potato Seed	Potatoes	200	Spring
	Tomato Seed	Tomatoes	300	Summer
	Corn Seed	Corn	300	Summer
	Grass Seed	Grass	500	Spring, Summer, Fall

Crops

Picture	Name	Selling price	Harvest time	Multiple harvests?	Description
	Turnip	60	4 days	No	As could be expected, Turnips are the cheapest crop, and also give the lowest amount of profit. They're handy if you NEED CROPS NOW, but otherwise I'd recommend against buying this. Potatoes give bigger profits. And come on, turnips don't taste good :P
	Potato	80	6 days	No	The best of the spring crops (all TWO of them :D), they're pretty useful in your first year. After that, you should have animals, and it would probably be a waste of time to even bother with crops in spring, since they gave pretty crappy profits when compared to the summer crops. Still, nice.
	Tomato	100	10 days	3 days	Woo, summer crops. These things are nice. You just have to buy one bag, and after your first harvest (which takes FOREVER), they'll regrow without you needing to buy new seeds very fast. That's mostly the reason why they give such nice profits. However, I again suggest you stick with corn, the profits are slightly higher.
	Corn	120	13 days	3 days	Well, everything I said for Tomatoes apply here as well. After the initial harvest they'll regrow very rapidly. Corn sells for a little bit more than Tomatoes too, so you end up making slightly more money from it. Slightly.
	Grass	---	10 days	7	While not technically a crop, since you can't sell it and thus not earn any money on it, it's still one of your most important, uh, crops. Namely, you need grass to feed your animals. Sure, you can buy animal fodder, but that's expensive and really only good as an emergency solution. Besides, you need a certain amount of grass before you can even buy animals. Grass is pretty neat, after you plant it, you have to pay no more attention to it until it's harvest time. It never needs to be watered, and you can just walk through it. However, you can only harvest it by slashing it with the scythe. That doesn't really matter much, but just be careful if you have normal crops nearby. This is also the only crop that can survive all seasons (although you can't harvest it in Winter), so you really only need to buy a few bags in the begining, since they'll last you all game. Definitely worth the money.