You’re staring at a Plot of Citronal that just won’t grow. It’s frustrating. You've got the seeds, you've got the water, but the efficiency is bottoming out because you’re relying on raw Feces. Let’s be honest: shoving raw poop into a crop plot is the rookie way to play ARK. If you want to actually sustain a base, especially on maps like Aberration or Scorched Earth where resources are a nightmare, you need the real stuff. Learning Ark Survival Evolved how to make fertilizer isn't just about gardening; it’s about industrializing your survival.
Most players think they just need a Compost Bin and some patience. They're half right, but they're also wasting hours of potential growth time. Fertilizer provides 54,000 nitrogen points. Compare that to a massive piece of Dinosaur Feces, which only gives you 15,000. It's not even a contest. If you're serious about Kibble production or Plant Species X defense, you need a streamlined pipeline.
The Low-Tech Start: The Compost Bin Method
If you're just starting out on a beach in The Island, the Compost Bin is your first stop. It’s cheap. You can craft it in your inventory with some wood, thatch, and fiber. But here is the catch that trips up everyone: the ratio.
To get one bag of Fertilizer, you need three pieces of Feces (any size) and 50 Thatch.
It takes roughly 50 minutes of in-game time to process. That is a long time. If you only have one bin, you’re never going to have enough to power a full greenhouse. You need banks of these things. I usually build at least four or five right behind the hut. Pro tip: don't bother waiting for "Large" poop specifically. The bin doesn't care if it's from a Dodo or a Rex; three pieces are three pieces. However, since the internal inventory of a Compost Bin is limited, using larger feces actually saves you slot space, which is a weird nuance most people ignore until they’re micromanaging 20 bins at once.
The Dung Beetle: Your New Best Friend
Forget the bins. Seriously. Once you can brave a cave—specifically the Lower South Cave on The Island—you need a Dung Beetle. This is the absolute peak of Ark Survival Evolved how to make fertilizer efficiency.
You tame them with Large Animal Feces or, ideally, Spoiled Meat. Once you have one, you put it on "Enable Wandering." Don't let it actually wander away, though; weigh it down with stones or put it in a wooden cage. When you put feces in a Beetle's inventory, it converts it into Fertilizer and Oil simultaneously.
The conversion rates are insane. One Large Feces becomes three bags of Fertilizer in about 15 minutes. A Medium Feces becomes two bags. Even Small Feces gets you one bag. It is faster, more efficient, and gives you a side product (Oil) that you’ll need for Gasoline anyway. If you aren't using a Beetle, you're playing the game on hard mode for no reason.
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The Phiomia Strategy
How do you get enough poop to keep a Beetle or ten Bins running? You tame a Phiomia. We call them the "poop pigs" for a reason.
Feed a Phiomia Stimberries. Lots of them.
Stimberries have a side effect of forcing the creature to defecate instantly. You can generate a literal mountain of Medium Animal Feces in about thirty seconds. It’s gross. It’s noisy. But it’s the only way to feed a large-scale industrial farm. Just make sure you have a dedicated chest nearby to store the haul, because feces decomposes fast in your inventory but lasts much longer inside the Beetle or the Bin.
Advanced Mechanics and The Toilet Trick
There is a "secret" method that higher-level players use to skip the wait entirely. The Toilet.
If you build a Toilet (connected to water) and use it when your character has the "poop" icon, you can flush. Flushing human feces in a Toilet instantly converts it into one bag of Fertilizer. You can actually "loop" this by sitting down, forcing the action, flushing, and repeating if you have enough food in your inventory to keep your character's stats moving. It’s a bit of an exploit-adjacent mechanic, but it’s 100% vanilla and incredibly fast for early-game Fertilizer needs.
Comparing the Methods
| Method | Effort | Yield | Speed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Compost Bin | High (Micromanagement) | 1 Bag per 50 mins | Very Slow |
| Dung Beetle | Low (Set and forget) | 1-3 Bags per 15 mins | Fast |
| Toilet | Medium (Manual) | 1 Bag per flush | Instant |
Why Nitrogen Matters More Than You Think
In ARK, Fertilizer isn't just a "speed boost" for plants. It’s their lifeblood. If a crop plot runs out of Fertilizer, the plant begins to lose health. Once it hits zero, the plant dies. This is a nightmare if you've spent days growing a high-level Plant Species X for base defense.
A single bag of Fertilizer lasts for about 9 hours of real-time in a small crop plot, but that duration changes based on whether the plant is currently growing or if it's already fruit-bearing. If you’re playing on a PvP server, letting your Fertilizer levels drop is basically an invitation for someone to C4 your front door.
Greenhouse Effect and Efficiency
If you want your Fertilizer to go further, you need a Greenhouse. Using Greenhouse glass walls and ceilings provides a "Greenhouse Effect" bonus up to 300%. While this doesn't technically make the Fertilizer last longer, it makes the plant grow and produce fruit much faster.
This means you get more "value" out of every point of nitrogen consumed. If you’re trying to figure out Ark Survival Evolved how to make fertilizer because you’re running out too fast, the problem might not be your production—it might be your lack of glass. A 300% bonus means you’re getting triple the crops for the same amount of Fertilizer.
Dealing with Overproduction
Eventually, you'll have too much. It happens. Once you have a pack of Beetles, you’ll find yourself with vaults full of the stuff.
Don't throw it away.
Fertilizer is surprisingly good for taming certain creatures, like the Gacha on Extinction, or for trading with newer players on a server. It’s a "stable currency" in the early-to-mid game because everyone needs it, but nobody likes making it.
Actionable Steps for Industrial Farming
- Tame a Phiomia immediately. Even a level 5 will do. It's just a waste disposal unit.
- Build a 1x1 stone pen and drop two Dung Beetles inside.
- Farm Stimberries with a Trike or Bronto.
- Force-feed the Stimberries to the Phiomia while standing behind it.
- Load the Beetles. Overload them if you have to; they don't need to move to process the goods.
- Check back every 15-20 minutes to collect your "black gold."
If you follow this pipeline, you will never have to worry about your crops dying again. You’ll have enough Fertilizer to maintain a massive footprint, allowing you to focus on the fun stuff, like breeding Rexes or raiding underwater caves. Gardening in ARK is a chore, but with the right systems, it becomes a background process that just works.