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[Angela Christine]

Real life gardeners put all sorts of repulsive things on their gardens, especially if they are trying to avoid using "chemical" fertilizers.  I admit that I've only grown things outdoors or in sunny greenhouses, but from what I've heard indoor mushroom farms also use a variety of repulsive growing mediums too.

With the miasma problems indoors and their ever increasing dislike of going outdoors, I can see why our dwarfs might not take to composting and-well rotted manure as sources of fertilizer.  It is their loss, but then dwarfs aren't known as great farmers.  But it is a shame that dwarfs on wood-poor maps are deprived the benefits of fertilizer.  Even when the tower caps start to mature after 3 years, there never seems to be enough wood.

However, in many fortresses fish, bones and blood are abundant and unappreciated resources.  Often the halls are awash with blood, though it can't actually be collected yet.  It would be cool if alternate fertilizer could be created using these resources.  

Fish meal or fish emulsion fertilizer is made from fish, mostly the undesirable bits that are probably discarded by the "prepare raw fish" job, but for simplicity it could be made from whole fish.  

Bone meal is of course made mostly from ground bone, bone marrow, and various things stuck to the bones.  

Blood meal is made mostly from blood.  Since blood isn't collectible, we could cheat a bit and make the blood meal out of "chunks" which are probably pretty bloody.  

Or we could make a slightly more complex fertilizer using a stack of fish, a stack of bones, and a stack of chunks, all ground up and mixed together into a nice slurry, or dried to a fine meal.

These jobs would work in the fishery, butchery or farmer's workshop, but that might be too cheap and easy.  Potash is a pain in the butt to make, so any non-wood alternative should be similarly inconvenient.  Move it to the alchemist's shop and you make it more difficult to get running, and also get to use your alchemist's shop for something other than soap.  Depending on how concentrated you make it, it could work either in barrels or vials.

Or the Human Caravans could start selling Miracle Grow.  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertilizer  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_meal  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bone_meal  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_meal  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_emulsion

[Mechanoid]

quote:Originally posted by Angela Christine:
Blood meal is made mostly from blood.  Since blood isn't collectible, we could cheat a bit and make the blood meal out of "chunks" which are probably pretty bloody.

Finally a freakin' use for chunks, aside from the strength bonus from hauling it to the chasm to be dumped.

[Seryntas]

I've always wanted to pave a road with chunks, personally.

Also: I don't think a non-wood-based fertilizer needs to be as inconvenient to create as a wood-based fertilizer, it just needs not to work nearly as well.

[Veinless]

This:
"
Blood meal is made mostly from blood. Since blood isn't collectible, we could cheat a bit and make the blood meal out of "chunks" which are probably pretty bloody.
"

Absolutely brilliant.

Also agree with different graes of fertilizer.

Or perhaps different fertilizers for different plants?   Aiie, that sounds like more work.

I think the farmer workshop might be good for making bonemeal?  Or the kitchen.  Hrmm.

[grendel]

quote:Originally posted by Veinless:
<STRONG>This:
I think the farmer workshop might be good for making bonemeal?  Or the kitchen.  Hrmm.</STRONG>

The mill, of course!
 

[ November 03, 2006: Message edited by: grendel ]

[Nobody]

Oooooooohhhh, this is probably going WAY off topic, but in the far future maybe what you fertilized the ground with could affect it's alignment? Sowing your corn with the bloody slurry of your criminals might make that little farm darker, and maybe when picked you'd hear whispered moans that the gatherers would dismiss as being from the cave river. The blood of trolls could make the corn grow faster, but also make it tougher to eat and give it a greenish tint. Course, you'd have to be pretty grim to want to water your fields with the blood of your enemies, but I can see a "dark" dwarven colony doing that.

I dunno, just another one of those random things I thought of. I highly approve of the alternative fertilizers though. My above suggestions might get too magick-y, but I highly approve of being able to have alternate fertilizers.

[Maximus]

I'd love to see composting in the game.

[Aquillion]

"This is a stack of 10 blood meal.  The ingredients are minced blood, minced blood, minced blood, minced blood, and finely minced bloody chunks."

Finally, we can profit from the fact that our fortresses keep going all Shining on us.

[DimmurWyrd]

doesn't even need to be all that much work... American Indians used to plant fish heads along with the crops for the same overall reason of fertilization   except I think they probably did it as a "nature offering" lol but it did the job.

[dav]

Err . . . why lol at nature offerings?

Anyway, Angela Christine, great idea, and amen.  I won't even make the requisite joke about blowing chunks.  (I keep reading your user name as Agatha Christie, though.)

[DimmurWyrd]

lol was kinda cuz I find it somewhat amusing that something works for the purpose it was used for but not for the reason it was thought to work.  

[Chthon]

quote:Originally posted by DimmurWyrd:
<STRONG>lol was kinda cuz I find it somewhat amusing that something works for the purpose it was used for but not for the reason it was thought to work.   </STRONG>

Kinda like Feng Shui?

[DimmurWyrd]

quote:Originally posted by Chthon:
<STRONG>

Kinda like Feng Shui?</STRONG>

hehe

[bbb]

there was a snes game ... sort of involves feng shui...

synergistic effects with room / location alignments

[DimmurWyrd]

quote:Originally posted by bbb:
<STRONG>there was a snes game ... sort of involves feng shui...

synergistic effects with room / location alignments</STRONG>

Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdoms a PC citybuilder used that for building placement but it was rarely all that important except as a win criteria for some maps.