I've noticed most crops have a range in days for how long they take to grow. For example, the description for Turnip states:
Harvest it 4 - 5 days after sowing.
What does this range indicate? Is it the upper and lower bounds for how long a crop takes to grow (i.e. no matter what you do a Turnip will never be ripe for Harvest before four days of growth), or something else? Furthermore, in what ways can I decrease the number of days it takes crops to grow?
The soil on you field will dry after 10 hours in-game time. This means you can water your fields again on the same day. Watering your crops twice per day will increase their rate of growth.
Note that if it is raining, the weather will water the crops for you, but it only counts as watering them once and you cannot re-water a second time on rainy days to increase your crop's growth rate. Additionally, snow will not water your crops.
Lets use the Turnip as an example.
This plant has 2 growth stages.
So it's growth based on watering and field type would be something like this:
+-------------------------------------------------+
| Field (watering) | Stage 1 | Stage 2 | Total |
|-------------------------------------------------|
| Gravel (x1/day) | 3 days | 2 days | 5 days |
| Gravel (x2/day) | 2 days | 2 days | 4 days |
| Regular (x1/day) | 3 days | 1 day | 4 days |
| Regular (x2/day) | 2 days | 2 days | 4 days |
| Soil (x1/day) | 3 days | 2 days | 5 days |
| Soil (x2/day) | 2 days | 1 day | 3 days |
+-------------------------------------------------+
