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[Cheese]

I don't get this pond thing. You fill in a channel and it irrigates the surrounding land?

[zergl]

Can you give screenshots of what you mean by poke? Without floodgates, what's to stop your farms from being irrigated everytime there's a rainfall?

Walling up the tile where I breached the pond after it drained out, which also has the advantage of keeping out any potential building destroyers that might come with a surprise goblin siege.

In case I think I might want to tap into the pond again later I put in a fortification (again to keep out building destroyers) and a floodgate (or door) instead. And since the floodgate is built closed by default (and nobody ever goes through the door even if you don't forbid passage since there's nothing but a fortification and/or water behind it) I don't have to bother with linking it up to a lever until I actually need to open it.

[Psieye]

I don't get this pond thing. You fill in a channel and it irrigates the surrounding land?

No, you make the pond water spill downwards and fill a room/hole you dug out previously. Channeling is just a convenient way to safely make the pond spill into a pipe/corridor that ends in a hole/staircase.

[Lord Darkstar]

Best luck I've had is simply bringing a couple buckets along at embark, channeling out a narrow strip for farming, and designating lots of 1x1 ponds on it.  They seem to fill it up pretty quickly, and I can cancel the pond designations as soon as there's just 1/7 water there.

It's been much quicker for me than draining a murky pool or setting up floodgates or anything like that.  And I can construct floors over the channel and use the upper floor as storage once everything is done.

This and the murky pools are the fastest ways to irrigate something. I prefer the method Ephemeriis describes, myself. Especially since in 0.31.x, you always embark with 3 buckets standard (for health care--- watering the wounded).

A complex irrigation system with a fill chamber might be more dwarvenly, but it also takes longer to set up (you have to get a mason and a mechanic making stuff). And if I go that way, I set the inner floodgate to be a DOOR the first time. Flood fill chamber, close water floodgate, order door to be removed. That gets me up quickest (no second lever and being hooked up needed), and then I can finish out the dwarvenly irrigation system with a second lever and floodgate and hooking it up at my leisure.

Remember, that the Dwarf Wiki is your friend: http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Irrigation

[Ephemeriis]

I don't get this pond thing. You fill in a channel and it irrigates the surrounding land?

Typically I'll dig out a 10x10 room, with stairs in each corner, and then another 10x10 room immediately below it with matching stairs in the corners.

Then I'll dig a series of 8x1 channels in the upper room, which winds up poking holes into the bottom room.

You designate those open spaces that you channeled out upstairs as ponds.  The dwarves will then grab buckets and attempt to fill the ponds.  Which means they're actually throwing water into the room below.

As soon as a tile has 1/7 water in it, you remove the pond designation so they don't keep trying to fill it.  That 1/7 water will evaporate fairly quickly and leave mud behind.

Eventually I've got a series of 8x1 farms in the bottom room.  I'll then construct floors over those channeled spaces upstairs, and use that room for food or seed storage.

[greggbert]

Tips on how not to starve.

*  First off you should have a dedicated food dwarf that is gathering until your farms are set up.  Have him at least get up 2-3 levels of gathering skill.
*  Second you should try to get a strawberry or prickleberry farm going on the surface as soon as you get enough seeds from your gatherer
*  Thirdly, you should have your miner go ONE LEVEL BELOW the surface near a pond or lake and build the following: 

PPPPPP         TTTTT  TTTTT  TTTTT
PPPPPP         TTTTT  TTTTT  TTTTT
PPPPPPPP*TXTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT
PPPPPPP       TTTTT  TTTTT  TTTTTT
PPPPPP            D          D          D
                      T          T          T
TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT(LEVER)


P = Pond/Lake
T= TUNNEL/ Open Space
D = Door
X = Floodgate
* = Last wall to knock out before pulling the floodgate closed

Seriously this whole thing taks a very short time to set up.  Pull the lever to open the gate, then have your miner knock downt he last wall, then pull the lever after some water spills into the first farm room.  Then just wait for the water to dry and build your cave wheat or plump helmet farm.

The cool part is that your pond will fill back up when it rains again.

[Ephemeriis]

Seriously this whole thing taks a very short time to set up.  Pull the lever to open the gate, then have your miner knock downt he last wall, then pull the lever after some water spills into the first farm room.  Then just wait for the water to dry and build your cave wheat or plump helmet farm.

I understand the mechanics of it...  But this always seems to take too long.

By the time I've built the workshops, doors, floodgates, mechanisms, and convinced a dwarf to build/link it all...  I could have just channeled out a couple ponds and be done with it.

[Nobbins]

I've noticed severe lack of diagrams/images, save the wiki, so here's my personal setup:



A fallout ditch on the right prevents flooding, to an extent, and two sets of floodgates block off civilian access, and water overflow; the other lever controls the water passage. I set this one up in the first month, and it provides very good amounts of farmable soil, and can even go through multiple z-layers, if for some reason having five/six/thirty/whatever plots isn't enough, using some simple engineering. Also, for the falloff, it goes straight into the fort's water supply, to recycle the water, sorta.

[Hyndis]

The method I use is to first dig out the farms. I also dig to the edge of the map and carve fortifications to form a drain. Alternatively you can use a door hooked up to a lever to smash the water. Make sure the level is outside of the farm area of course.

Then pump in water from the top. Easiest way is a dwarf powered pump. You only need 1.

Once all of the tiles are muddy let the water drain off or smash it away, leaving only mud. Build your farms and start planting.