[Magic] How much food can the Blossom spell produce?

[mr beer]

Originally Posted by Inky

I dunno, if they knew they were cheating they wouldn't have signed up to demonstrate it under observation.

I apologise for de-railing, but numerous mystical fraudsters have been uncovered when they go under lab conditions, either because they have a tendency to believe their own hype or because they believe themselves to be smarter than they are, or both.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Rupert

As it causes the plants affected to enter their autumn phase, and thus implies that all you're doing is getting the crop early, not more often, and it costs 2 energy per yard radius, it's considerably worse than Bless Plants, which costs half as much (thus allowing the caster(s) to affect four times the area per casting) and doubles yield.

Therefore, I think Blossom will have little effect on yields in general. What it might do is let armies loot crops to feed themselves at any time, by force-ripening them.

On reflection, I think you're probably about the intent of the spell. Not at all clear from the text though, IMHO!

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Blind Mapmaker

Not to mention malus-nourished, too.

Cute.

Of course, you're only malnourished if nobody knows the Essential Food spell.

Cast Blossom to force-ripen the apples. Cast Harvest to pick them. Cast Preserve Food to keep the material wholesome and fresh or cast Cook to turn it all into dried apples or dried apple leather. Cast Essential Food at reduced cost since you've got wholesome food as the base material.

Alternately, cast Cook instead of Preserve Food to press the apples. Cast Mature on the juice. This gives you (hard) cider. Then cast Essential Food on the pomace (solids left over after the juice is pressed) to turn it into something you'd actually want to eat.

Realistically, assuming that Blossom just makes plants enter autumn phase and doesn't supply the nutrients and moisture needed by crops at maturity, possibly throw in a few Bless Plant and Purify Earth spells to reduce the stresses on the plants and replenish soil nutrients. Cast a rather large Create Water or Rain spell to replenish the soil moisture that got sucked out of the ground when the fruit matured.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Cast Blossom to force-ripen the apples. Cast Harvest to pick them. Cast Preserve Food to keep the material wholesome and fresh or cast Cook to turn it all into dried apples or dried apple leather. Cast Essential Food at reduced cost since you've got wholesome food as the base material.

Apples actually keep quite well is stored in a cool dry place and assuming they've never been chilled. As in, quite a reasonable proportion will survive a winter like this. Thus all this extra processing is only necessary if you're producing massive quantities for transport elsewhere (which you might well be).

Using nut trees this is even more the case (not for all nuts, but for many), though a magical production line to remove the shells and pack the unshelled nuts would be handy.