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[vertinox]

Something since one of the updates is that my farms keep running out of plump helmet spawn and other seeds without making new ones during harvest. I have four plots with 2 running full plump helmet spawn and two running cave wheat and pig tails. What am I don't wrong?

I made sure seeds is set to not be cooked so I don't know what is happening to the seeds unless farmer skill is somehow related to the amount of seeds created.

Also as a secondary question, what is the most efficient setup in regards to plots and number of farmers/planters to feed and quench a force of over 200?

Does plot size matter? Or is it the number of plots in question. Should I build a single really big plot? Or maybe a bunch of small plots? Or mabe 4 to 5 big plots and have 5 farmers tending each.

Any advice on farming would be appreciated.

[Sirus]

Are you cooking the plump helmets themselves? Cooking a plant will destroy it's seeds.

[weenog]

You're probably not running out of them.  Haulers will now take an appropriate container with them to pick stuff up.  Most likely what's happening is a farmer sets his sights on a seed barrel to plant, the brewer at the still generates some seeds, a hauler swoops in and nabs the seed barrel to pick up at the still, and the farmer notices the seeds he wanted have up and vanished.

You could alleviate this problem by having two seed stockpiles, with one of them giving to the farm and taking from the other, and the other one taking from anywhere.  This way when someone wants to grab a seed barrel for storage, he doesn't swipe the one the farmer is wanting to plant from.

Same thing happens a lot with stills, kitchens, and jeweler's shops, IME.

[vertinox]

It was set to cook on plump helmet and there is plenty of plump helmet biscuits in the stockpile so it seems to be the culprit.

I got plenty of other foods to cook so I'll disable plump helmet for cooking.


Does brewing destroy the seeds because I do need to make liquor?

[Corai]

It was set to cook on plump helmet and there is plenty of plump helmet biscuits in the stockpile so it seems to be the culprit.

I got plenty of other foods to cook so I'll disable plump helmet for cooking.


Does brewing destroy the seeds because I do need to make liquor?

Brewing makes 2-3 seeds. Cooking destroys the seeds.

[weenog]

You brew plants.  You eat meat.

[DTF]

Ever tried fertilizing? More plants at same plot size/work time.
Read the wiki article on fertilizer to get some ideas about plot sizes, etc.
You can easily provide all necessary plants for a 150ish population with only, say, six 1x6 farm plots.
A highly skilled grower also helps - dont let everyone plant seeds; the higher the skill the higher the yield.
If you can offer the cook more valuable stuff like quarry bush leaves, sugar, syrup and flour, he may not use plump helmets as much. This also makes crafting trade goods redundant... a stack of excellent prepared meals is worth several thousands db.

[Dorfimedes]

Yes, fertilizer is fantastic. Generally you want to just make bigger plots to increase production, but when you only have a few seeds or all your farmers are unskilled it helps a great deal.

[NTJedi]

Even with cooking plump helmet spawn and selling pots of seeds at the Depot I still have too much plump helmet spawn.

[DTF]

Even with cooking plump helmet spawn and selling pots of seeds at the Depot I still have too much plump helmet spawn.

Yeah it is a weird thing. It just depends on who gets his hands on the plump helmets first: the brewer or the cook. In one fort where the brewer is pumping out dwarven wine, you'll swim in ph spawn - in the other you'll have a serious shortage because of all the ph roasts. This can kind of snowball further as the brewer will keep using the plants that you have more of or depending on his preference, brewing away all your sweet pods and cave wheats, leaving the millers and threshers with limited plants for sugar and flour and thus forcing the cook to cook plump helmets, resulting in fewer spawns.
It is fairly easy to rectify, but can catch you off-guard with only ~20 plump helmet spawns for the next season if you thought your food production was in a good equilibrium.

[i2amroy]

I personally just stock so much meat and other plants that the chance of my cook actually grabbing a plump helmet is rather rare. I mean when you have like 2500 meat, 1000 fish, and 4000 plants of which only like 100 are plump helmets (or any other given plant) then I tend to never really have problems with cooks destroying something.

[Garath]

plus you probably have a lot of back up spare seeds of any plant

[sbr]

Yes, fertilizer is fantastic. Generally you want to just make bigger plots to increase production, but when you only have a few seeds or all your farmers are unskilled it helps a great deal.

Is fertilizing worth it now?  I haven't tried it in many years but it always seemed to be a waste of time and wood in previous versions.

Also I never cook plants, at least until the fortress is self-sustaining and I am annoyed by all of the extra plants and seeds I have to deal with.

[Dorfimedes]

Yes, fertilizer is fantastic. Generally you want to just make bigger plots to increase production, but when you only have a few seeds or all your farmers are unskilled it helps a great deal.

Is fertilizing worth it now?  I haven't tried it in many years but it always seemed to be a waste of time and wood in previous versions.

Also I never cook plants, at least until the fortress is self-sustaining and I am annoyed by all of the extra plants and seeds I have to deal with.

It hasn't really changed, it's still situational. The only thing that's different is that the elves don't bother you for chopping wood and you're guaranteed to have an underground source of lumber, so wood isn't as scarce.

[Quietust]

Also, you don't need to worry about having too many seeds - once you have 200 of a particular type, then jobs will stop producing those seeds until you use up some of them.

Using fertilizer can be very useful for increasing the efficiency of booze stockpiles - a single barrel can only contain the results of a single brewing job, so using really large stacks of plants (fertilizer can potentially boost it up to 11) can allow you to store vast amounts of booze in small stockpiles.