4Game

I thought about this mostly for raspberry bushes, blueberry bushes, and cloudberries. Being able to plant them once and harvest forever feels really OP compared to how they normally are and removes you from the cultivating process. What's the answer to this?

Fertilizer. Specifically, compost.

Add a compost bin, costing something like 10 Core Wood, 15 Ancient Bark and 20 Iron Nails. It needs to be fueled like a kiln, except you add up to five vegetables and/or inedible plants and wait for a while. Then you'll also need compost bucket to collect and use it, costing 5 wood and 2 iron. A full compost bucket can fertilize 5 plants before it needs to be refilled.

With this in mind, you can plant berries, costing 3 berries per bush to plant them. Planted berry bushes drop 2 berries each, but must be fertilized each crop rotation in order to grow. Couldberries can only grow in Plains, and blueberries can only grow in the black forest. Raspberries aren't limited by biome.

This effectively means that after the initial setup cost, each vegetable or plant junk put into a compost bin gets you 2 berries after processing. Unlike other plants, this isn't super effectively self-renewing and you may find yourself needing lots of compost bins, but it adds a new layer to the game that would otherwise be relegated to marking berries and going on berry runs now and then. Now you can do one, the other, or both!