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[zooeyglass]

so, i've been fairly wary of
a) farming - trying to encouraging a few, select, experienced dwarves to farm as opposed to everyone in fortress.
b) economy - it can make all sorts of problems for dwarves as tasks suddenly have an instrinsic value (which as far as i can tell often clashes with the df system of prioritising various tasks, like mass-dumping).

but suddenly i got this situation, where my 8th or so year arrived on this fort, and i decided to branch beyond just have 2/8 fields planted and to go for 5/8 (longland grass/fisher berry/quarry bushes/dimple cups/sweet pods). and instead i got this, halfway through the season:

 

dammit, i am an image moron. so instead, picture the scene - eight fields, and only one of eight with longland grass. the other four that are definitely set to be planted instead offer nothing!!

any thoughts? is the economy? or is it something else? all planters are set to planting and food gathering and nothing much else....your thoughts.....??

[Jim Groovester]

The economy does not interfere with dwarves doing their job, thank goodness. It must be something else.

Do you have seeds for the plants you want to grow? You may have the plants themselves, which enables selection on the farming menu, but do you have the seeds?

Other standard questions:
There's enough time in the season for the plants to grow to maturity?
The plots are not accidentally set to lie fallow?

There are other questions to ask, I'm sure of it. I just can't remember them.

[Albedo]

Did you actually use <q> to tell them what to plant, all 4 <a, b, c, d> seasons?
Are your seeds accessible/not forbidden?
We'll assume you have a dwarf w/ the "Farmer" labor enabled, and not too many other jobs?

[zooeyglass]

jimmy g, albedo,

thank you - you've both asked both informative and obvious questions - to respond:

 - no seeds are forbidden (been through the stocks to check this) and i have all the seeds i want (have far too many seeds at the moment in fact - running on a surplus)
 - went through each of the fields (8 ) setting five (5) to the plants i wanted (3 underground - dimple, quarry, sweetpod; 2 aboveground - longland, fisher) - checked to ensure that the 3 UG were UG fields, the 2 AG were AG - all clear and yes, checked all for <a, b, c, d> seasons. my requirements are all <a> spring settings, leaving 3 fallow for this season.
 - i have a dwarf with the farmer labour enabled and no other jobs except food hauling (and no major food hauling jobs like a sudden influx of food hauling from trading - no such thing has happened)
 - on economy - jg, you say it does not, and i have no concrete evidence to prove the contrary, but i will continue gathering it, because i think the economy makes all sorts of changes we have not charted. but i agree that it should not.
 - yes, there is enough seasonal time - the time i wanted to show from my image (Which i failed to post) was from 15 slate (mid spring) but to be honest, i could have taken the picture on 15 of the first month....granite....
 - and finally , no, fields are definitely set to grow fisher/longland/dimple/sweet pod/quarry respectively.

well, that's qs answered....thank you for your swift responses.

[Jim Groovester]

Well, it looks like everything is in order. I have just one more question before I run out of ideas.

Is your dedicated planter on break or drinking or eating or sleeping or otherwise occupied?

[Derakon]

Does the game say something along the lines of there being no available seeds for your location when you 'q' onto the map?

[zooeyglass]

Does the game say something along the lines of there being no available seeds for your location when you 'q' onto the map?

nope, no problems at all with lack of seeds

Is your dedicated planter on break or drinking or eating or sleeping or otherwise occupied?

no problems with breaks etc - it's been just over half a season and what should have been 3/5 planted seeds has rested at 1/5 - hence this query in the first place - hoping to find an obvious glitch in what i've been doing  that i could remedy.
but damn - wish i could find an obvious fix for this.....grrr....

[Albedo]

It's not so much that any one of the questions isn't obvious - it's the fact that there are about a dozen obvious questions, and it's easy to miss the one you need.  (Took 3 of us to remember them all!)

Question - what has your Grower been doing for those weeks?

(And, sorry - what do you mean by 3/5 and 1/5? Not standard notation)

[Skorpion]

Is the farmer off doing something else that's not farming?

[zooeyglass]

Is the farmer off doing something else that's not farming?

i don't think so - i followed him around for a bit, he just got booze, hauled a bit of food, took water to an invalid, nothing time consuming. harvested one plant of longland grass as well.

It's not so much that any one of the questions isn't obvious - it's the fact that there are about a dozen obvious questions, and it's easy to miss the one you need.  (Took 3 of us to remember them all!)

Question - what has your Grower been doing for those weeks?

(And, sorry - what do you mean by 3/5 and 1/5? Not standard notation)

it is indeed easy to miss something. my grower has been, well, see my response to skorpion there...nothing unusual, and he's not injured or anything like that.

i meant by 3/5 and 1/5 that by halfway through the season 3 out of 5 of the plots i'd requested planted should have been planted, at least, depending on how hard the grower works, rather than 1 out of 5. but i went and put seeds instead of plots in my last post, so it was rendered a nonsense....sorry...

[Eater of Vermin]

So...  you've got one - and only one - planter looking after 5 farms, 2 of which are above ground?   And only 1 of the above ground farms are planted?

2 questions:

1. Is he suffering cave adaptation?  Has he been spending most of his time vomiting while planting that above ground farm?

2. How big are the farms?  3x3?  10x10?  One planter can only do so much, especially when he's not particularly skilled. 

Me, I set 'em up as 5x5 farms, with a planter for at least every two farms.

I'd try giving him an assistant and see if they get more done...

[Albedo]

he just got booze, hauled a bit of food, took water to an invalid, nothing time consuming. harvested one plant of longland grass as well.

I'd turn off 100% of labours except Farming, see what happens.  (That includes all Hauling and Health Care.)  Also, if he's spending any time Harvesting (instead of Planting), turn on "All dwarves harvest" (which I personally don't recommend, but it's a personal call).  See if you can force him to do the planting.

Without getting into the discussion of "How many farm tiles you need" (which is covered in any number of recent threads), one Proficient Grower should be able to cover 25 tiles easily/season, and maybe twice that.

[sunshaker]

I had a problem like this once. Right off the start I had a Farmer and a Mason that didn't do much in the way of work. I couldn't figure it out for the longest time, turns out that both of them had something along the lines of "doesn't like to work to hard" in their descriptions. I had two lazy dwarves out of a group of 7, the mason I could live with but the Farmer I needed to keep my dwarves alive, good thing I brought lots of food and booze. First immigrant wave both of them got demoted to haulers. Oddly enough they ended up married with kids (I had dwarf trash in my fortress).

[zooeyglass]

problem solved? maybe...

i have more than one grower (3) - but all with similar labour settings. i checked cave adaption, but nope. farms are indeed 5x5. anyway, that's by the by, as this is what happened:

still no change until late spring when suddenly one of the growers runs over to a stationed soldier, and picks up a seed (fisher berry). suddenly something clicks and the growers plant fisher berries, quarry bushes, etc, happily. i wonder if it was something like the seeds were queued to be planted, but one of them was with the soldier (from his rations) so they waited for him to discard that seed before moving on to the others. i know it sounds farfetched, but that seemed to allow things to work as usual once again.

[assimilateur]

You mean they had queued up an as of yet - in game terms - nonexistent seed, namely one that was part of an uneaten vegetable? That does sound far fetched, to say the least.