This thread can be used as a generic location for making your crop related ideas.
Here is what i have:
-For a lot of interesting ideas, check out http://www.ss13.eu/wiki/index.php/Guide_to_hydroponics
Anyway, now for individual suggestions:
-Allow growth of plants that have features independant of their type or harvest stats. For instance, one strain of wheat/watermelon/whatever glows weakly, macerates to bear a tiny uranium dust, releases Weed-Ex into nearby soil, is thorny and hurts on contact, etc.
-Allow growth of plants outside of cropsticks, primarily for non-harvest or breeding usage. For instance, a breed of brambles that you made to be especially spikey.
-Plant mutagen, likely crafted into a can using some manner of bone meal combined with tiny uranium dust. Plants growing in a mutagen treated tile will suffer hwalth penalties, but the stat shift from breeding it into the tile will be more random and extreme, with a higher chance of new species or strains.
-Hydroponics tray. A machine which acts as a high-tech crop location of such. Cross breeding and the like is significantly easier, and can use power (comparable to a lamp) to give read outs on it's hydration and nutrition levels, automatically administer water and fertilizer to player set levels, emit light (similar costs to the electric light) at specific user-set levels, and has a slot to place a block in for "block below " requirements of certain crops. The block itself occupy the block below the crop itself, and would resemble a machine block of sorts with a water tray on itself, and would accept liquid and item pipes.
-Kudzu weeds. A strain of weeds that can be made via labored or very unlucky (as in, careless spraying mutagen everywhere) mutation of normal weeds. Once it fully grown, it breaks it's cropsticks (replacing it with a Weed Core block) and begins to rather rapidlu spread, breaking cropsticks and torches in it's wake, trapping and suffocating any mobs and players that get caught in it for too long, entrapping items and breaking wooden doors slowly. It will only spread out to a specific maximum distance from it's core, and is weak against swords, hoes, chainsaws, and is extremely weak to fire and Weed-Ex. The spreading will cease completely when the core is broken.
These are just a few of m ideas, and were a bit inspired I guess, what do you think?