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[Kilngod]

I'm really trying... I don't know how I'm messing up. 
Attempting to follow the directions in the Wiki on how to make zones and get the dwarves to use buckets to irrigate an area.  I have a well, plenty of buckets. Trying to force two miners to do it by turning off all their jobs except for Water Hauling and some other random stuff, but they sit idle instead of trying to irrigate where I want the farm.

I dug out a rectangle that was one level below the surface.  Then I channelled one length of the rectangle on the surface level directly above the lower level. I tried to set a pit/pond activity zone on the channel, and it looked like it worked.  But no one looked like they were hauling water.

So I set up another pit/pond activity zone directly under the one on the surface.  Maybe that is breaking what I did?  Why won't these Miners go haul some water so we don't starve to death?  There isn't much wild game to hunt and we need to get some food growing!

[Spectre Incarnate]

First of all, do you have any soil layers? As of several years ago, soil does not need to be muddied, but many older tutorials might say otherwise and we do apologize for that. Try making a farm plot and if it is green, the farm will work fine.

Also, I assume you are trying to make an underground farm for mushrooms and such? By channeling the surface to expose the layer underneath you will be creating an area for above ground plants.

[Walen]

Well the process is subtle enough that I was baffled by it in the beginning myself. And while it is doable to irrigate stone with buckets it is slightly cumbersome to do even if you did this before. Are you 100% sure there is not even a single soil layer in your whole embark you can use?

If you want to try it anyway for the sake of trying there are some pointers off the top of my head:
make sure there is an active water source zone
make sure the pit/pond zone is actually set to pond (it got me a few times)
make sure the pond zone is one z-level *above* the area you plan to farm (the most counter-intuitive part initially)
make sure that either the intended plot is small enough or that multiple dwarves haul water (each pond zone means one dwarf assigned, and yes you can (read: should) designate multiple overlapping zones) or else it evaporates before reaching the opposite end and thus leaves no mud.

[wuphonsreach]

When I do the water-bucket brigade, I cut out multiple holes in the room above the planned farming room.  Every 3rd square seems to work well.

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Each of the open holes into the room below gets designated as a separate pond zone.  Once the floor under that area is adequately irrigated, I remove that pond zone.

[Blue_Dwarf]

A pit/pond has to be designated "in the air" above the tile you want to irrigate. Try digging a hole in a layer above your farm, and designate the hole as a pond.

[Uggh]

Also, try to change the pit/pond information. I'm always confused by whether this is the current state or the state I want to set.

[Garath]

I think the default is Pit

[PatrikLundell]

I tried muddying a farm plot by going about it in all the wrong ways; channeling a plot rather than digging one out on the lower floor and then make a hole in the floor above; having a single dwarf trying to muddy it (drying caused a maximum of 3 wet tiles, and it still took an eternity with two dwarves AND rezoning); I also found removing muddy ramps did NOT leave a muddy floor. My experience leaves me to recommend somewhat against wuphonsreach's recommendation, namely to make a slit in the upper floor (if you normally use a 3*3 plot, it would be a 9*1 slit), mark each tile as a separate pond (and yes, it defaults to pit, so the sequence is "pPf" after having defined the zone, using default key bindings). If you're creating the farm upon startup of your fortress, you don't have too many dwarves to manage, so I would micromanage it such that I would remove each pond designation after a dwarf has dumped a bucket of water into it, thus getting rid of the frustration caused by evaporation (and also allowing the job to be done by a single dwarf).
It looks like wuphonsreach is describing a later stage when you want to create a new set of farm plots a fair bit lower down in the fortress; using that method then and there is less efficient than a tile at a time, but it allows you to just start it off and let the dwarves take care of it, and then stop them when the work is done.

[celem]

I've always been quite fond of doing this by digging out a little farmplot room and then an adjacent pond-room of 2x1 tiles sealed behind a floodgate.  I designate a pair of pond zones on the level above and the bucket brigade fills my 2 tiles all the way to 7/7 in short order.  You then open the floodgate and it irrigates your room all at once, this relieves a lot of evaporation-during-spread grief.

If your dwarves dont move to fill ponds at all then they are likely set as 'pits', or 'full ponds'

[PatrikLundell]

I had problems with filling up to 7/7 when creating a timer for my coinstar: the dwarves just filled up one tile to 7 while the others remained at 6. I eventually had to dig a hole one level further up and assign it as a pond zone in order to fill it up the last bit, possibly becaues the 7/7 shifted back and forth such that the fillers thought it was full and cancelled their tasks. 6/7 + 7/7 should be good for irrigation, though.

[greycat]

When I do the water-bucket brigade, I cut out multiple holes in the room above the planned farming room.  Every 3rd square seems to work well.

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I use 2x2 farm plots, with 2x2 holes above them for pond-zoning:

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+..+..+..+
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In reality, I will most often skip the vertical dead space between plots:

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+......+
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I designate each tile as a 1x1 pond zone, and remove it when a single bucket has been dumped into it.

I had problems with filling up to 7/7 when creating a timer for my coinstar: the dwarves just filled up one tile to 7 while the others remained at 6. I eventually had to dig a hole one level further up and assign it as a pond zone in order to fill it up the last bit, possibly becaues the 7/7 shifted back and forth such that the fillers thought it was full and cancelled their tasks. 6/7 + 7/7 should be good for irrigation, though.

Pond zones are only filled to 6/7.  Then the dwarves stop filling them.  It has always been like that, as long as I've been doing it.  I don't know why.

[Troas]

It's a lot easier if you can use underground soil as that doesn't need watering,  but if you have only rock here's how I did it:

Dig out a 7x7 area for the farm.  If possible dig this out on a level lower than your pond or brook.  Then in the middle of one wall dig one square out for a floodgate, a 3x3 water room, another floodgate, and a corridor to your water source.  Put in a door for safety then install two levers outside and connect them to the floodgates.  It will look something like this:

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^ to water source ^
       W.W
       W.W
       WFW
      WW.WW
      W...W 
      W...W  Water room
      W...W
    WWWWFWWWW
 WWWW.......W
 WLWW.......W
WW.WW.......W
....D.......W Farm room
WW.WW.......W
WWLWW.......W
WWWWW.......W
    WWWWWWWWW

W=Wall
L=Lever
F=Floodgate
D=Door

If you aren't able to easily tap a water source like a brook designate a pond above the water room to fill it. Once the water room is full to 7/7 open the lower floodgate and the water will rush into the farm.  With 10 squares of 7/7 water you have 70 units of water to flood 60 squares (49 + 1 + 9 + 1) so you should get complete coverage but it is possible evaporation will hit before the corners are muddied. 

[wuphonsreach]

The number of pond zones that you will need in order to get muddy floors will depend on how many water haulers you have, how many buckets you have, and how far they have to travel from the water source to the pond zone.