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[lordnincompoop]

Firstly, I'd like to suggest vertical farming: One would build a tower or dig underground and create farmland by creating a soil bed, probably by creating a zone for dwarves to come over with buckets, shovel,s or handfuls of soil, which one would get by scooping off the ground. This would provide a new method of farming besides drowning half one's fort and the two levels of soil present on maps. If one could import dirt, it would also provide a method for farming where there isn't any farmable land, such as on glaciers, mountaineous landscapes and others.

Secondly, I'd like to suggest manual irrigation. One would set a zone for manual muddying, and lots of dwarves would come over with buckets full of water to irrigate the stone. This would of course take longer, but would be safer.

[Pilsu]

Designate the above level as a pond. While inconvenient, it'd solve your problems

[Impaler[WrG]]

That's close but the dwarves make no effort to see that they dump the water EVENLY over the area, they will just dump at the edge over and over and the water will take a long time to spread if its even able to do so before evaporating.  Plus theirs the whole 'not stopping until the water is 7 deep' issue.

Having a simple manual method to dump water a bucket full at a time would be an excellent way to create farm able areas under ground and its a prerequisite to proper irrigation.  I also approve of the idea of having a full z level of soil required to plant in and a method to move dirt to create such spaces.

[lucusLoC]

I like that idea. Pots or troughs should be required to plant on stone floors. A full level of silt or soil would be required for an actual farm plot (what would happen when you dig under a farm plot?). Soil could be dumped to form this, or water could be deposoted over long periods of time (that may be too complicated though, as it would need things like 2/7 of silt and the concept of a part full tile...) I also would prefer that soil (and sand for that mater) not be imported. Fetalizer ( and the eqivalent raw glass) could be though. And organic things should be able to be composted to make fertalizer, which could be mixed with sand or something to make soil, which could then be dumped.

Many threads on this already though.

[Syff]

I was hoping that "vertical farming" meant some kind of vine-based crop that grew up the sides of suitable caverns, requiring some form of scaffolding to harvest.

[lucusLoC]

oo i like that idea too. ancient vine covered castle anyone?

[HAMMERMILL]

"Here is an ivy-covered Dolomite cavern wall"?

Anyways, the suggestion makes sense. Some of the farming revisal suggestions say that all farming should require water for irrigation to water the crops anyways. Could be accomplished manually or automated with plumbing and floodgates.

[lordnincompoop]

While this is an excellent idea, I was actually referring to something else: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_farming. While hydroponics is obviously too advanced for dwarves, one could simply dump soil on the floor of the tower (or in troughs, and such) and farm on them, creating "fams on legs".

Also, if one could create arable fields in rocklayers, this could also mean having grass, grees, herbs and plant life underground as long as some illumination method was provided (light shafts, anyone?), so that one could have an undergound garden.

[HAMMERMILL]

Well, thats an interesting idea, but since underground dorf-food doesn't need sunlight, you can build underground farms all you like.

As for aboveground plants, you can already make underground greenhouses. Just dig a deep hole and cover it with green-glass at the surface for asethetics and you can grow Sunberries 4 z-levels down. But it does have to be natural floor where you put the farm plot.

As for stacking aboveground farm plots above one another?

[Slackratchet]

That's close but the dwarves make no effort to see that they dump the water EVENLY over the area, they will just dump at the edge over and over and the water will take a long time to spread if its even able to do so before evaporating.  Plus theirs the whole 'not stopping until the water is 7 deep' issue.

I've done quite a bit of stacked farming. I made a 10x10 cube with 6 evenly spaced holes in the top and designated each as a pond. With six dwarves dumping water at a time in each hole it didn't take long to get the whole place wet. The only real problem was filling it up too much but I kept an eye on it to stop that when it got all muddy or had 1/7 of water.

[Granite26]

or draining into your exploratory mines behind a deconstructed wall...

[Jurph]

You ought to be able to specify that your dwarves build a "planter":

1 bag of sandy soil
1 bucket full of water
1 seed
1 of any of the following items: metal barrel, glass terrarium, stone coffin, etc.

It would create a 1x1 farm tile and a piece of furniture to admire. The quality of the furniture would impress the farmers but probably not influence the growth of crops.

[lucusLoC]

There should be a way to group those buildings, so they can be managed as a sigle farm plot. And i think it should be a specific item "planter"

Maybe build a planter and designate a farm plot on top of it, allowing it to span multiple consecutive buildings.