Clay Pot

Herbs growing in a pot ignore ordinary tool swings, so you cannot wipe out a row of them while clearing grass or hacking at cobwebs nearby. Getting the harvest out takes a pickaxe or one of the regrowth staves. That protection is the real argument for pots over planting straight into the ground.

Keep the matching seeds in hand when you break the plant and it replants itself in the same pot. Do that and a row of pots becomes a farm you never have to re-seed, which is the whole point of building one. Forget it and you will be buying seeds again next cycle.

The boxes came later and are easier to work with: they sit flush in a continuous row and read better in a built room. Pots stay useful when you want a single plant on a shelf or a windowsill rather than a production line, and clay is something you have from the first day of a world.

An empty pot left on the surface or up in space will grow ordinary grass and flowers on its own over time. It is a decent decoration trick for a house that looks too clean.