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[Troas]

I'm set up in a nice temperate 39c embark area (6x5 with magma, trees, soil, sand, iron, flux, chasm, HFS, underground waterfall - all the conveniences).  The treehugger caravan arrived and wonder of wonders they brought a bag of sunberry seeds!  After parting with a few alunite mugs I greedily begin setting up my booze-berry farm - or so I thought.  I couldn't plant them!  My surface plot can grow hide root, blade weed, rope reed, fisher berries, rat weed, wild strawberries and prickle berries but not sunberries.  In prior versions whenever I lucked into elves with sunberry seeds I was able to plant them, but alas not now.

I note in the wiki that sunberries are good-aligned plants.  So was I simply lucky to be in good-aligned areas in my prior forts or is the alignment restriction now being enforced?

[Dame de la Licorne]

As far as I'm aware, the alignment restrictions were always enforced, so you may have been lucky previously.  Have you tried planting them in the different biomes, if you have multiple ones?  You may have one that is good and the one you're planting in now probably isn't.

[Zakastra]

My reccomendation is to build a greenhouse

Channel out an area into the topsoil where you wish your new underground farm for overland plants to be. Then roof over it with constructed floor. I prefer to use glass for realism and aesthetics, but you can do it with sheet iron and it will still let the sunshine through, by the power of dwarven ingenuity.

you basically get a Light inside above ground room. (Even if its 30 z levels underground with 29 floors of solid steel towering over it). And you sun berries will grow quite happily.

[Lalandrathon]

When I was messing around with farms recently, it seemed like the sunberries would only grow around summertime. Maybe you should wait a couple of seasons to see if that's the issue.

[Awayfarer]

I know it's up for me if you steal my sunshine.

But in any case, my current fort is situated between a (temperate) savage-benign biome and a (warm) sinister one. I've got a nearly year round sunberry plot in the savage biome and I've never had any trouble with it.

Sunshine is a very good way to keep your dwarfs happy. I think it's the main reason the fort avoided a tantrum spiral about 2-3 years in. 

[Troas]

I have four biomes - mountain, temperate grassland, and two temperate shrublands.  All calm surroundings.  Test plots on the three non-mountain biomes were unsuccessful - I haven't tried forcing a cavein to make mountain soil, as I recall in 38g you couldn't grow outdoor crops in a mountain biome even after muddying exposed rock. 

I prefer to excavate an 11x11 room, sectioned into four 5x5 plots.  A stair in the center for access to seed storage, and potash bins between the plots.  For the greenhouse roof I do clear glass over the plots, with green glass center ribbing.  Sadly no luck there either.

I tried again during summertime - it still doesn't list sunberries as a valid crop.  I even tried muddying loam directly adjacent to the brook and then building a farm plot.

It looks like my dwarves will have to settle for whip wine.

[Jing]

depending on the crops you have available, you might need to scroll down.  I once had every (to my knowledge) top-side crop available for planting, and one or two were off-screen at the bottom.  As I recall though, the off screen crop wasn't sunshine berries, but I don't know if that particular list is static...

Also, keep in mind you may have bought berries.  Which, unlike seeds, cannot be planted.

[Troas]

Scrolling down didn't work, my 7 available crops fit on one screen - a good thought though. 

I keep my seeds in separate no-barrels stockpiles, so it was easy enough to reconfirm - I have a "Sun berry Seeds Bag" filled with 20x (Sun berry Seeds) in the stockpile and not forbidden. 

I also tried upgrading to 39d, and creating another plot in 39d - I'm still unable to plant sun berries. 

This leads me to the inescapable conclusion that the bag of "Magic Boozeberries" sold to me by his haughtiness Trader Ricote Ametharofa are defective.  I think I'll try planting them one more time - after I muddy the plot with elf blood...

[Fossaman]

Maybe it's not the 'goodness' of the biome so much as it is the wetness, in this case. Got much surface water?

[Troas]

I even tried muddying loam directly adjacent to the brook and then building a farm plot.

Unlimited water is available.

[Troas]

Wow - it seems blood was the answer.  While waiting for spring to arrive I constructed a clear glass wall around 3 sides the trade depot, with enough clear glass blocks stockpiled to quickly erect the 4th wall, to make an "elven terrarium" and let the elves be torn apart by their own insane pack camels. 

The glass blocks for the final wall were mostly removed from the roof of the greenhouse plot - it seemed only fitting.  In early spring before the treehuggers show up I have a Rhesus Macaque invasion.  One of them gets its head golfed into the greenhouse by a off-duty hammerdwarf.  Soon after the elves show up.  In setting up for their final trade I notice they aren't carrying more seeds but they are carrying a pack of Sunnberry [5].  Again quite fitting - I'll get to make one keg of sunshine to toast their demise. 

But then I do the last pro-forma check of the plots - and NOW I am able to plant sun berry seeds and whip vine seeds.  So whether it was the Rhesus blood fertilizer, the threat of impending elven doom, or having a plot that was partially roofed with glass - now I can plant them.  Very strange.

[MuonDecay]

Blood is always the answer, my friend.

[soup_alex]

Holy balls those elves are a weird/scary bunch.

(On-topic: I once had a fort over a Good biome, and didn't have a problem finding all sorts of seeds when sening out my herbalists. My surface farms could support sun berries, prickle berries, wild strawberries, etc. etc. but for some reason—I'm guessing climate, if not alignment—I could never plant any of the rope reed seeds I'd bought. Also, the dastardly elves seemed to have known this would happen, and subsequently only ever brought caravans of nothing but bins upon bins of Rope Reed Cloth, mocking the insufficiency of my hard-worked and carefully-tilled adopted dwarven soil )