Animal Crossing New Horizons Turnips Guide: How to turn a profit and help a good cause!

Animal Crossing Turnips are a strange plant. Despite what their name might imply, they're as far from being a simple produce item as it gets in New Horizons. In fact, there's a whole bunch of mechanics related to Turnips that makes micromanaging them a minigame in-and-of-itself. If you don't know what you're getting into, your turnips could easily spoil, making them effectively useless in most cases.

However. Just this next week, you're not only going to have an opportunity to make good use of your batch of spoiled turnips, but you'll also be fueling a good cause by donating them! Sounds a bit trippy, we know, but we'll get to it in due time.

The first order of business is to teach you everything there is to know about Animal Crossing Turnips, from planting them all the way to selling high and turning a profit! We didn't think the process was this involved, either, but what can you do...

The significance of Turnips in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

In Animal Crossing, turnips are just like religion: whether you like them or not, you'll have to interact with them sooner or later. There's a very specific weekly schedule on when you can buy, sell, and make a profit on Animal Crossing turnips, and it's in your best interest to get to grips with it as soon as possible. They are, after all, one of the best ways to earn Bells in the game, and that's got to count for something!

It's not a meager amount of Bells, either. When you get to the point where flipping turnips is a viable option, you'll see prices ranging from 15 to a whopping 650 Bells. Yes, the price can actually inflate to over 43 times the low-ball offer. It's ridiculous at times, but a phenomenal way of earning Bells, if you're smart with turnips. And honestly, if that's not a skill you can apply to the real world, we don't know what is.

Jokes aside, the first step is obviously buying the turnips.

How to make a profit off Turnips in Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Buying turnips isn't quite as simple or straightforward as buying most other vegetables in New Horizons usually is. Notably, you can only buy turnips on Sunday, and you have to wait a week before you can actually turn a profit on them in the first place.

To buy turnips, you need to search for Daisy Mae: a special NPC that will visit your Island every Sunday morning, from 5 AM to 12 PM. Basically, she runs the Stalk Market (good one), which is almost ridiculously volatile when it comes to selling turnips. In fact, it's this Stalk Market that dictates what the going rate for turnips is, and how big of a profit - if any - you'll make on selling your turnips.

Back to the matter of buying, though: turnips go in stacks of 10, and you're definitely going to want to keep potential storage constraints in mind if you're going ham with investing in turnips. You see, turnips cannot be stored like ordinary items in Animal Crossing. Instead, you need to put each stack down on the floor of your house, shed, or whatever else you might have available. This means that, for each stack of 10 turnips, you're going to need one free tile to put it down on.

Further, that tile will be taken up by these stacks of turnips until the next Sunday, because that's how the Stalk Market works! You can't make a profit unless you keep your turnips for a week. The kicker is that, if you don't sell them the next Sunday, they're going to go bad.

When should I sell turnips in Animal Crossing: New Horizons?

That's the million Bell question. When do you reinvest in the Stalk Market? When should you hold off and let your turnips spoil? If you're trying to earn a buck, try to never get to a point where a whole batch of turnips turns into spoiled turnips. That way, you're losing the entirety of your investment! You are, however, going to attract ants and assorted insects with spoiled turnips, so if that's what you're trying to do, it's an option. There's another reason you might want to stock up on spoiled turnips we'll mention a bit later on, too.

Otherwise, you've got one full week to think about your investment. Thankfully, there are also incredibly useful tools you can use to help out with that. Turnip Prophet is our favorite turnip-related website of all time, and it's a phenomenal predictor of when, exactly, should you be making a trip to Nook's Cranny to sell your turnips.

Turnip prices change twice a day: once before 12 PM, and once after 12 PM. These will, as we mentioned, vary wildly. You'll see turnip prices go as low as 15 Bells and as high as 650 Bells. Ideally, you'll buy at 15 and sell at 650, but there's a layer of randomization that's difficult to predict here. Use Turnip Prophet to get ahead of the system!

What if my turnip selling prices never go above the buying prices?

That can happen! Chances are that, if you really engage with the Stalk Market, you'll lose out on your investment sooner or later. Thankfully, prices are Island-dependant. If your Island is having a rough week in regard to turnips, try to find another player whose Island has a high sell price available! Just head on over to their Island and make a mad profit at no cost to your host. 

If you're just not a particularly sociable person - we feel you - don't fret! There's another awesome turnip-related website you can make good use of. The Turnip Exchange lets users post their own turnip prices on a daily basis, as well as giving them an option to host Islands for other players to join and make a profit on. Community goals, right?

Should I ever let my investment turn into Spoiled Turnips?

If you're only really looking to make a profit, don't let your turnips turn into spoiled turnips! If you don't sell your turnips within one week, this is what will inevitably happen, and you're basically just wasting Bells at that point.

Unless, of course, you're in need of bugs and ants! As we mentioned before, you can attract all sorts of insects by leaving spoiled turnips around, and if you don't mind wasting a few Bells here and there, this is definitely a viable gameplay option!

However, there may be one more reason why you might want to let your turnips spoil. A good cause, even! Exclusively next week, there's going to be a unique Hellmann's Island available for visitations in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. It's going to be up-and-running from 3:00 p.m. EST on Monday, August 17, to 12.15 a.m. EST on Saturday, August 22, and visitors will have an opportunity to drop off as many spoiled turnips as possible in 15-minute windows each.

Depending on how many spoiled turnips are dropped off, Hellman's Canada will donate an equivalent number of meals to Second Harvest, until the maximum number of 25,000 donated meals is reached! Here's how the whole process will work:

• send a direct message to the official Hellmann's Canada Twitter account (potential visitors will be provided with Island access codes one a first-come, first-served basis)
• visit the Hellmann's Island with a 15-minute window to drop off your spoiled turnips: one turnip, one donated meal
• stroll through the unique Island and see all sorts of unique design choices and services: who knows if you'll ever have a chance to do so!

Simple as pie, really, and all for a good cause. We recommend you engage with the process if you have the time and opportunity to do so. Chances are that more high-profile companies and celebrities might choose to interact with users via New Horizons in the future, and hopefully, this will lead to more events like these!

Don't forget about the rest of our content!

Like always, there's plenty more where this guide came from. It goes without saying that our collection of Animal Crossing streetwear and high fashion is still growing on a daily and weekly basis. We spoke about this earlier this week, with the long-awaited release of an improved in-game search function for New Horizon. A big boon, for sure, but it's still pretty limited in scope and QoL usability compared to an actual website. Especially one that's as polished and brimming with content as ACR is!

In fact, if you'd like to scroll through a whole bunch of cool articles on Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the latest developments in the fashion industry, and the crossover between these two niches: we're your people. Stay tuned for more cool stuff in the coming days, including but not limited to news, leaks, updates, and guides for Animal Crossing: New Horizons!