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[Shrugging Khan]

So far, I never allowed my kitchens to cook plants. Why? Because there's been several occasions on which I unintentionally cooked all my plants and then had no seeds left to plant next season! And that's scary! Because my fortresses tend to get big, and hungry, and without stable food supply except for the farms. But I want to make proper food for my dwarvies, not have them gnaw on plump helmets and berries all the time.

So: Is there a way of having automated cooking of plants, without the kitchens consuming all the plants? So some can be saved for seeds?

[existent]

So far, I never allowed my kitchens to cook plants. Why? Because there's been several occasions on which I unintentionally cooked all my plants and then had no seeds left to plant next season! And that's scary! Because my fortresses tend to get big, and hungry, and without stable food supply except for the farms. But I want to make proper food for my dwarvies, not have them gnaw on plump helmets and berries all the time.

So: Is there a way of having automated cooking of plants, without the kitchens consuming all the plants? So some can be saved for seeds?

Forbid some of the plants. (The ones you want to save.)

[Shrugging Khan]

I want all of them saved...in seeding quantities
Not just specific kinds, but some seeds of at least un-consumed specimen of each type of plant.

No workarounds for this one?

[Keolah]

Use types of plants that you can process before cooking?

[numerobis]

A million years ago there was discussion on these boards of a way to keep some number of seeds (or whatever else -- booze, for example) safe from cooking.  It would be nice.

[Urist Imiknorris]

Quarry bush leaves, dwarven syrup/sugar, dwarven wheat flour, longland flour, whip vine flour, etc. are your friends.
or you could just go ahead and forbid the plants and compensate by seeding your caverns with serrated disc weapon traps. You'll get a pretty good amount of meat.

Or you can just gather plants in the caverns.

Generally my dwarves eat meat and all the plants get brewed.

[UmbrageOfSnow]

I tend to do it in cycles.

I wait until I have a bunch of seeds for a plant, over 100 usually, sometimes even 200 (max).
Then I enable that plant for cooking and keep planting it.

Every season or so I recheck my food stocks, when the seeds are down to roughly the order of magnitude of how much of that crop I'm planting, I turn off cooking them until I'm well restocked with seeds.

I tend to rotate doing this, so I'm cooking one plant at any given time.

[Mush]

Have a book keeper? Good.

Status -> Stocks -> Seeds

Press Tab, Forbid all you want to save.

OR

Forbid them all, then Tab and unforbid the ones you want planted.

That's as easy as it can get, I'm afraid.

EDIT: ACTUALLY! There is another way, using burrows. You can have a burrow encompassing the kitchen with a small plant stockpile, beds, and food (I think you need all that?) Assign two or so cooks to it, and cook the small supply of plants in the stockpile.

EDIT2: I just realized you would only need a nice batch of "emergency" seeds you could have forbidden while you have cooking enabled. Haha...

[Shrugging Khan]

Christ on a tricycle...forbidding a small stockpile. Ingenious! But indulge me: How can I make sure all my 15 crops (have an aboveground farm) are represented in proper amounts? Making one stockpile per crop?

[Mr.Elendig]

Christ on a tricycle...forbidding a small stockpile. Ingenious! But indulge me: How can I make sure all my 15 crops (have an aboveground farm) are represented in proper amounts? Making one stockpile per crop?

Yes. You will probably only need one tile of each plant type, so it won't take up much space either.

[Shrugging Khan]

I'm going to try this in mah nu 31.09...oh, wait, 31.10 fortress. Wagonloads of thanks, finally my dwarvies can stuff themselves properly 

[lanceleoghauni]

>_> why not just brew until you have enough seeds to cover the plot. I have never run out of seeds before unless something drastic happened and I lost one of my starter crops.

[Shrugging Khan]

Because I prefer to automate things as far as possible. I'm usually far too giddy about my big projects to watch food supply and such. Can't multitask.

And because I *always* run out of barrels. Trees just don't grow fast enough to accommodate my monstrous industrialism!

[Urist Imiknorris]

Because I prefer to automate things as far as possible. I'm usually far too giddy about my big projects to watch food supply and such. Can't multitask.

And because I *always* run out of barrels. Trees just don't grow fast enough to accommodate my monstrous industrialism!

What metal do you have the most of?

Is there anything you can alloy it with to increase yield?

If no, make barrels out of the metal. If yes, make fuckloads of the alloy and make barrels out of that. When I embark on volcanoes, all my stuff gets made of black bronze (native copper+galena+native gold) and I never have to worry about my wood supply.

[Shrugging Khan]

Hm. So far I never ever hit magma. It's my one failing I really have to work on. So it's usually fuel I'm running out of. Especially since making barrels takes up so much metal per piece