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[Pinstar]

The folks on /r/Dwarffortress over on reddit seemed to like this, so I figure I'd post it here.

According to the wiki, any immature crops left on a field when the growing season ends will immediately become useless, yielding no plants and no seeds. Having that happen wastes both the seed used to plant it and the farmer's planting action.
This isn't a problem for year-round crops like plump helmets, but other seasonal crops can have issues with it. I found a way around it: The Four Field System

Edit: Adjusted suggested crops to 3 plantings of plump helmets and one of dimple cups

Field 1:
Spring: Sweet Pods
Summer: Fallow
Autumn: Plump Helmets
Winter: Fallow

Field 2:
Spring: Fallow
Summer: Pig Tails
Autumn: Fallow
Winter: Dimple Cups

Field 3:
Spring: Quarry Bush
Summer: Fallow
Autumn: Plump Helmets
Winter: Fallow

Field 4:
Spring: Fallow
Summer: Cave Wheat
Autumn: Fallow
Winter: Plump Helmets

Methodology:
In any given season, only two of the four fields will be actively having seeds planted. The fields can be sized to fit the number of farmers you have. So either have one farmer working on smaller plots or two farmers who are each fully occupied filling up the larger fields. Fields entering a fallow period will probably still have crops leftover from the previous season, but because the fallow season is technically a growing season, they won't rot and will grow to maturity... marking it fallow just prevents new seeds from being planted (and potentially wasted). Having a fallow period before each planting period also ensures that the field is empty and thus every square can be used to plant the new crop in question without worrying about old crops lingering from the previous season and taking up space.

Another good idea is to put smaller above-ground farm plots set to grow a specific type of above ground crop year-round. This will allow your farmers to keep busy in the event that they max out their underground fields early or run out of seeds. If you keep your seed stockpile closer to your underground farms, farmers SHOULD prioritize planting them fully before running upstairs and planting the above ground fields.

Speaking of seeds, make sure you embark with enough seeds to plant the first year's worth of crops for each crop type based on field sizes. I personally like 5X5 fields, so I would embark with 25 of each seed type and 51 of plump helmets and dimple cups (the 1 to get the extra barrel).

Edit: After much experimenting, I've found the ideal size is 4X4 for each field for a single farmer who has no other labors enabled

This does eat up a lot of space, especially if you use 5X5 plots and two farmers, but provided you have a soil layer of some sort it should give your miners some early mining skill practice digging out a large farm area.

I always set my fields to be harvested by anyone. While harvesting DOES give my farmers faster skill growth, I'd rather them be planting while otherwise idle dwarves busy themselves with the harvesting. If my fields are setup properly, they'll always have an open farm plot and a seed somewhere.

Rationale:
Using Sweet Pods as an example, a sweet pod planted on the last day of spring would still grow to maturity and be harvested before autumn arrives, thus ensuring no loss of plants or seeds. If I had marked a field to grow sweet pods in the summer, anything planted nearer to the end of summer would be wasted as it would still be immature when autumn came.

Growing all the various crop types gives your brewer and cook a wider variety of booze and food to work with. It also gives you access to all the economic benefits of the various plant types, such as cloth from the pig tails.

While this does take more setup time than "make giant field to grow plump helmets year round" once you have your fields setup and the seasons defined, it is just as automated as plump helmet spam. Provided you bar cooking with the various plant types and instead brew/thresh/extract them you'll always have a steady supply of seeds to replant the whole plot when its season comes around.

This method also enforces plant variety. Dwarves often will do nothing but plant one field until it is full before starting on another. By marking half your fields fallow at any given time, you force your farmers to ignore them in the new season and start working on a brand new field with a different crop. You still will run into your farmers planting all of one field before starting on the 2nd, but if you size them properly, the 2nd field should get enough attention too. Err on the side of 'too small' and let some distant above-ground farms soak up any free time your farmers might otherwise have, thus giving you even greater plant variety.

Sweet Pods/Quarry Bushes, Pig Tails/Quarry Bushes/Cave Wheat and Dimple Cups/Plump Helmets can all be swapped out if it fits your fort's economy better, the suggestions listed here ensure relatively even production of all 5 underground plant types.

[Gentlefish]

PTW. This is actually really cool yeah. It might help me actually make use of all the crops, haha.

[wierd]

huh.. I already do something similar.

The real trick, is to ensure that planting only happens at the beginning of the growing season and not at the end. Leaving a field fallow helps to automate this somewhat, but it can still happen.

thought experiment:

You have 5 10x10 farm plots you want to be growing pigtails on. You have a "seeds per type" limit of 200 seeds. So, your farmers will only plant 2 of the 5 plots, and then complain about having no seeds.  However, pigtail can produce more than one crop per season, and your dwarves dont put all seeds into the ground simultaneously.  This means that if you immediately process the pigtails, and get stacks of seeds, they will immediately rush out to plant them, since it is still "in season", and there are farm plots that will accept them.  This means they will be stuffing seeds into the ground right up to the end of that growing season, and will have wasted seeds at the end of the season.

This is caused by having too many active farm plots allocated to that crop, and the 200 seed restriction.

It has been my anectdotal experience that the most you can get out of a single seasonal crop, is 3 10x10 plots per year, if you are aggressively processing the produce.  More than this and you run out of season and waste seeds and labor.

If you micromanage it, and hold stacks of unprocessed produce in reserve, you can do 4 of them, usually.
(You plant the 2 10x10 plots your 200 seeds allows, then as soon as those seeds are in the ground, you mass-process the unprocessed crops from last season for more seeds, to plant the other two quickly.)

I have never been able to go passed 5 of the same seasonal crop without having seed waste.

[Mushroo]

Great system!

Only comment/suggestion: Unless you are dying lots of imported cloth, I would recommend tweaking the ratio of dimple cups to pig tails.

[Pinstar]

Yeah I probably should have made one of the two plantings of dimple cups be replaced with a 3rd planting of plump helmets.

The reason I made it this was was that my fort where I tried this strategy was VERY sheep-heavy. So I had a lot of wool products coming in alongside the pig tail ones. Most forts would appreciate the 3rd planting of helmets, and many might dump the dimple cups completely.

[WanderingKid]

Going to play a bit of devil's advocate here.

With one, maybe two, dedicated farmers I've never had a problem keeping up 3x3 plots for all underground crops.  Add a third in if you're doing aboveground too.  The bit of waste at the tail is unexceptional to me, usually, as I'm almost always overflowing with seeds.  I recently started goofing around with 5x5s and I'm overwhelmed by the plant life.  So, bear with me...

I'm confused by the concern.  With 6 plots, each dedicated to their own crop,  growing as often as possible with some seed bags next door and a little stockpile magic and I can usually booze up a fort of 150-200 dwarves with little to no issue.  Add in the surface 6 going year round (if the biome allows) and I'm swamped in goods, to the point where I'm donating them to the caravans just to get them out of the stockpiles.

What, in particular, does this allow for in the current system?  The system makes some sense, sure, but you're losing most of a season per crop just to save a few seeds.  Why worry about it?

[wierd]

Probaly more to do with labor time waste.

The time urist is spending wasting seeds, is time he could be using to make socks.

[Pinstar]

Don't think of it as "losing a season of crops" but merely transferring it to a different field.

For ultra simplicity's sake

Say a farmer can plant 10 plots in a season

Therefore, a single farmer could keep a single 10-plot field fully planted without going idle.

That also means the farmer could keep two 5-plot fields fully planted.

Now...the season turns and the farmer stops planting field #1 and #2, and starts planting #3 and #4. 3&4 are also both 5-plot fields. So the farmer, once again, spends the season planting 10 plots, 5 in one field 5 in another.

Now lets compare this to a simple 10-plot field growing plump helmets all year.


Spring:
Plump Helmet farmer plants 10 units of plump helmets into his one field.
Total Plots Planted= 10

Rotation farmer plants 5 units of sweet pods and 5 units of quarry bushes into two fields
Total Plots Planted= 5+ 5= 10


Summer:
Plump Helmet farmer plants 10 more units of plump helmets into his one field

Rotation farmer's first two fields go fallow. He plants 5 units of pig tails and 5 units of cave wheat into his third and fourth fields.


Total plots planted by plump helmet farmer over two seasons = 20
Total plots planted by rotation farmer over two seasons = 20

The difference is that the rotation farmer got 4 different varieties of plants while the plump helmet farmer only got one. The plump helmet farmer's field only takes up half the space as the rotation farmer's fields, but as long as space is not at a premium (which it normally isn't in soil layers) the extra space used by the rotation farmer isn't a significant downside.


Granted, you get fewer crops of each type and if all you want are plump helmets, of course the single-field plump helmet farmer is what you'll want to do.

As for what to do with all that food and booze after you've bought out every caravan? Well, part of me sees the "fortress wealth" value as my score. There is something to be said about carving out an entire mountain and storing more booze there than your local aquifer.

Probaly more to do with labor time waste.

The time urist is spending wasting seeds, is time he could be using to make socks.

This is EXACTLY about labor time waste. I know that forts can easily max out their seed counts and having a few go to waste isn't a disaster. But the time it took that farmer to haul the seed and plant it is now wasted if they rot on the field.

[WanderingKid]

Probaly more to do with labor time waste.

The time urist is spending wasting seeds, is time he could be using to make socks.

On the surface, I agree with you, but the devil's in the details.  Not being able to prioritize farming over socks means that you're losing ground either way on your farming, in one season or two, unless you're micromanaging at the seasonal level.  Else, Urist runs off and makes socks in the middle of season 1 anyway. 

However, if you split those tasks between two dwarves, this does halve your planting needs. Thus Urist McFarmer doesn't need Lilo McSockmaker to help out during summer, and you can get more bang for your dorf who's only working 2 plots/season, so that does help a bit.  I guess I'm so unconcerned with labor shortages by the time I've got the farms up that this isn't even something I'd consider a problem usually.

[sirdave79]

I would have sworn that plants that I plant just before a season (and cannot be planted next season) changes do grow to maturity and can be harvested. Is that definitely wrong ?

[wierd]

I can confirm.  I have personally witnessed it. Seeds simply vanish.

[sirdave79]

I need to fire up my fort. The fact that you say "seeds disappear" makes me think that the fields sort of "unplant" at the season change.

Ive definately seen the graphics for (I use mayday tileset) a fully planted field remain beyond a season change boundary. What I wasnt sure is if the plants that later appear are actually harvested or just get dumped/disapear.

Im gonna fire up my fort now.

[Snaake]

Nice. But of course my plants are modded to be plantable all year (to simulate winter wheat and whatnot), but take 3 seasons per crop. So I only get 1 crop per field. I do have a similar staggering system, to allow for approximately even plant production throughout the year (including both plant fibers and all 3 non-evil-biome dyes).

[WanderingKid]

Nice. But of course my plants are modded to be plantable all year (to simulate winter wheat and whatnot), but take 3 seasons per crop. So I only get 1 crop per field. I do have a similar staggering system, to allow for approximately even plant production throughout the year (including both plant fibers and all 3 non-evil-biome dyes).

I should probably do this.  Would help lower the inane volumes of goods I have from food surplus.  What's standard growth for the plants?  Is it in the raws and easily read?

Edit: I just looked over the Raws and there's GrowDur, but it's not available on all plants, in particular the above ground ones don't carry the tag.  I'll have to head over to the mod forum or read the wiki on modding for a bit.  I haven't done much of it.

[sirdave79]

Blow me down, my fields are empty at season change! It must have been aboveground plots I changed the crops on that i saw with previous seasons plants growing during the wrong season.

This might (read does) also explain where I seem to lose seeds from time to time (makes sense to me now) which has been posted already I knew.