General Method Description

Farming herbs is the "classical" example of an intermittent moneymaking activity on RuneScape, because while you can't make a lot of money at it per hour of elapsed time, you can earn quite a bit for the amount of time it takes to actually work the skill, especially at higher levels. Many players hate Farming because they don’t understand that the idea is to harvest your last crop, then plant new seeds and come back again later. Herbs are the best way to make money with Farming, and it takes around 75 minutes, more or less, for a crop to mature. Since it's annoying to do a Farming run and find the herbs not grown yet, I round this to a more conservative 90 minutes.

The process of performing a Farming run is essentially the same for all herbs, so you can really choose to grow whichever ones you have the level for. The two main factors in deciding what to grow are how much XP you get (which generally increases with the Farming level requirement for the crop) and how much money you make (which is a function of how useful or rare the herbs are that you grow). In general, if it is XP you are after, you should grow the highest level herbs you can; if it's money you want, then the best choices are usually ranarr (level 38) or snapdragon (level 62), but this varies as prices fluctuate.

At low and mid levels you can plant four herb seeds per run, at the standard herb patches located at Port Phasmatys, Catherby, Ardougne and Falador. That's the order I usually do them in, though the exact order doesn't matter much. At higher levels you can add the disease-free herb patch at the Troll Stronghold, unlocked as part of the quest My Arm's Big Adventure. To access this patch conveniently, you must also finish Eadger's Ruse, to unlock the Trollheim Teleport spell, for which you need level 61 Magic.

At mid levels and above you should be able to complete the quest A Fairy Tale Part I, which gives you access to the magic secateurs that slightly increase herb yield. You also should have completed all of the Varrock Achievement Diary; the Explorers' ring 3 you get as a reward has a teleport that takes you right to the cabbage field near the Falador Farming patch, a nice convenience.

The exact relationship between Farming level and yield remains a mystery to me, but I generally assume a slightly higher yield and slightly lower chance of dead crops as Farming level increases. My yield (and profit) figures do take into account an estimate of the percentage of time herbs will die before they can be harvested. I always use supercompost for all crops, and so should you! Store some in both the bank and leprechaun for convenience.

The primary activity here is planting herbs, but while you are doing this you should also grow one of the valuable flower crops: marigolds or limpwurts. For a long time, limpwurts were the obvious choice, as the roots are used in Herblore; this changed when Summoning came out, marigolds became very valuable. But the recent expansion of the Herblore skill has caused the value of limpwurt roots to skyrocket, so as of early 2010 I have switched back to them. (They also give more XP.)

A farming run takes only about 5 to 7 minutes, and no familiars are needed -- even beasts of burden are redundant, because you can use the tool leprechauns to note your produce for you. As such, I don't describe the use of any familiar for my Farming methods. You can of course use one, like a forager, or just keep around whichever familiar you were using when you took a break to do some Farming.

The June 2009 run energy update has made energy potions or other energy restoration methods unnecessary for all but the lowest level players.

Finally, there is the Ardougne achievement diary. Completing all of its tasks -- including the special "Elite" ones -- gives you unlimited teleports to the Ardougne farming patch, saving 30 seconds and some runes on each run. This enhancement is shown in the Extremely High level version of the method. Note that completing the medium tasks lets you teleport to this patch also, but just once per day, so I have not reflected that here.