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[Medicine Man]

I have just set up my military (Gobbo's ambushed a few secs after,no dwarves were lost) now I think I should focus on farming,for a start WHAT exactly do I do?do I highight and press enter on the plant I want to plant into the farm plot and what seasons should I fertilize?and what seaons should I fallow in?

[Naros]

You can safely ignore the fertilizing until you're more established, as that just improves the yield. It's a worry for later.

Fallow currently doesn't do anything, AFAIK. As in, it doesn't allow the land to recover nutrients like it does in the real world or anything. It's just 'nothing grows here this season'.

[Medicine Man]

Thanks,any further help would be appreciated but this should be enough.

[Jelle]

Yep you select the crop you want to plant by highlighting it. Note that you have to make a selection for all four seasons for it to work. Or you could have a crop rotation to allow a steady supply of different crops without micromanaging a whole lot of plots.

I never have fertilized before, I usually just make bigger plots if I need more stuff since the farms are already incredibly small to begin with. (I'm working a 36 tile farmplot for 200 dwarves without fertillizer.)

As a crop to start out with I suggest plump helmet because it can be eaten raw, cooked and brewed wich is all your dwarves need for food. Later on devisify the crops to suit dwarves preferences.

[Kietharr]

As has been said, fallow is useless and fertilizing is 'meh' at best. If you want to do be sufficient all you really need is a 10x10 plot of mud, divide it into four equal sections and dedicate fields to

Pig Tails
Cave Wheat
Quarry Bushes
Sweet Pods

Grow plump helmets in the off seasons of the main crops. Only plump helmets and dimple cups will grow year round and dimple cups are only for producing dye. They're only really useful if you plan to set up a cloth exporting industry, and if you're surviving goblin sieges goblinite and giant cave spider silk socks will probably be good enough trade goods to buy what you want every time.

Having several farmers (or just one or two with all other labor disabled) is also a good way to ensure the fields are all sewn in time for harvest, buy seeds from the caravans and gather plants from caverns for more seeds if you can do so safely. Eventually you'll have more seeds than you know what to do with and a stupid amount of food you can make into lavish meals and have constant stills running, producing all of the kinds of alcohol to prevent the 'tired of the same old booze' thought and to satisfy favorite drink requirements. Lavish meals are also great trade goods so you can use the surplus to buy out every caravan so they bring more stuff in the future.

[greycat]

One giant farm plot restricts your flexibility, since you can only grow one type of crop per season per plot.  I prefer to have a bunch of little plots, so I can have a mixture of plants all year 'round.

Above-ground plots can grow any plant in any season, but below-ground plots have restrictions on which crops will grow in which seasons.  For example, in winter you can only grow plump helmets and dimple cups.

I generally designate one plot to be plump helmets all year.  Plump helmets are a great staple crop, and you want some available pretty much all the time.  Then I designate one plot to be pig tails in the two seasons where pig tails will grow, and dimple cups the other two seasons; this becomes the basis for my textile industry (dyed cloth).

After that, I'll designate crops according to what I think I'll need.  If I've got above-ground farm plots producing distillable plants and millable grains, then I'll focus more on cloth/dye below ground.  If I think I'll need more booze from below-ground plots, then I'll focus on that.

You don't need huge areas for agriculture.  Once farming is set up, and your planters have some experience, it becomes quite efficient.  A 2x2 plot of plump helmets with moderately skilled planters and no shortage of labor/seeds will produce something like 30-40 plump helmets per season, which is 150-200 units of booze (minus however many are eaten or cooked).  With highly skilled planters and/or fertilizer, it can yield even more.

[kaijyuu]

Side note: I turn off cooking plump helmets until I know I've got way more seeds than I'll ever need. Cooking destroys the seeds, so...

You can turn it off in the stocks menu I think, under kitchen.

[Lytha]

If you want to do be sufficient all you really need is a 10x10 plot of mud, divide it into four equal sections

That's 5x5 tiles per crop. Don't you find this a bit excessive?

I normally have 6 stripes of farming plots (1x9 tiles, usually), one for each crop, and the stuff piles up at an alarming rate. Of course, that may be different with fortresses with a huge amount of dwarves, but I really never reach huge population sizes before I grow bored.

[Sergius]

Fertilizing is not "meh" if you intend to use your crops for Booze. A single barrel will hold from 5 booze for a 1-plant stack, to 40 units for a 8-plant stack. More yields could be possible.

Which is another reason you want to have a few Legendary growers instead of an army of Novices. Which is another reason set the labor options to "only farmers harvest", so they gain even more experience (not to mention how annoying it is to have every single dwarf in your Unit list listed as a grower once they gain enough skill from harvesting).

[slothen]

Fertilizing is not "meh" if you intend to use your crops for Booze. A single barrel will hold from 5 booze for a 1-plant stack, to 40 units for a 8-plant stack. More yields could be possible.

hmm, this is a good reason.  God, with stacks of 40 beer, boozecooking would really get ridiculous.

If you're new to farming, know that its about ten times as awesome if you set up a millstone or two, as well as a few farmers workshops and kitchens.  On my last embark I made that a priority, and my cooks were churning out 10k dwarfbuck roasts in time for the first caravan.  It also makes your dwarves really really happy.  Seems far more useful than trying to churn out a few pathetic rock or bone crafts just so you can afford some booze from the caravan.

I also embark with at least 10 of each kind of seed, because wheat and pig tails only grow half the year.

[Psieye]

I recall in 40d the wiki said the maximum yield using fertilizers was a stack of 11 plants.

[Beeskee]

Make sure underground farms are muddied. Emptying a small pond works well, and you can seal it up and let it refill with rainwater afterwards. Planting in the caverns works well too. Enable the crop you want for each season, and remember the view defaults to the current season when selecting farms.

For size, I've been doing 1x1 farms, I've found that a tiny, ~40 tile total farmland (above and below ground combined) with skilled farmers supports over 100 dwarfs. I keep farming enabled on a bunch of folks to start until I have some high-skill farmers, then I remove the labor on everyone who still sucks at farming. I leave "everyone harvests" enabled though, and periodically check farmer skills and enable the ones who have been gaining skill through harvesting. It's also a good way to see who is idle, if they have free time to harvest they obviously aren't doing anything else.

As your farmers gain skill, the batches of plants harvested get larger, but it's planter skill not harvester skill that causes this. You will find that your farmlands "grow with you" as your planters get more skilled, but the more planters you have, the more the skill gains get spread around. In other words, 10 farmers will be legendary in short order, but 100 farmers will not. For a high-population fort with low skill farmers you'll find that you need 100 farmers and 1,000 tiles worth of crops to keep up with the demand, instead of 10 farmers and 100 tiles of crops.

I don't fertilize but that doesn't mean it's a bad option, only that I personally don't need it. Fertilizing can provide a huge boost to crop production though, with minimal work needed and no additional land.

Fallow: like others said leaving a farmland fallow doesn't provide any bonuses or anything, it only leaves that farmland empty for that season. It may be useful to temporarily deactivate a field for a crop that you are overproducing.

Remember you can send herbalists out to gather plants, if you find yourself running unexpectedly short on crops. It may be a good idea to gather plants occasionally even when you don't need them, to train your herbalists up for the time when you DO need them.


.. sorry, I'm apparently channeling Verbose Man.

[greycat]

I found that fertilizing goes through trees much too quickly for my taste.  It's something like one entire tree per season for every 3-4 squares of farm, IIRC, or worse if your plots aren't just the right size.

On the subject of booze, having your booze spread out across multiple barrels is actually a good thing, up to a certain point.  You could have 20 dwarves and 20 units of booze and lose some of them to dehydration.  Why?  Because if those 20 units of booze are all in one barrel, only one dwarf at a time can drink it.  And they take their time when they're having a drink.  But if the booze is spread out in 4 barrels of 5 units each, then 4 dwarves at a time can have a drink.  (There's also the variety factor.)

Of course, this is mostly a concern in younger forts, where you don't have thousands of units of booze stockpiled yet.  Those first couple years can be touch and go sometimes.  In mature forts, I agree that having fuller barrels is a good thing.

[Foehamster]

I usually embark with a stream or river and use a floodgate/bridge to tap it and get my muddy ground. I used to use bigger plots but 3x3 is the size I use now. I don't bother fertilizing and am usually swimming in food. 4 plots is a good minimum to start with, I've never needed more than 12.

One final thing, you need barrels, lots and lots of barrels. Buy barrels from the trade caravan (preferably containing exotic liquors.)

[Fearless Son]

If you have lasted this long, then you undoubtedly have already been doing things like hunting, fishing, gathering, and trading to get food.  Keep doing that even after you start farming.  A single staple crop might keep your dwarves alive, but having variety will keep them happy.  In fact, one important thing to keep trading for is booze, even if you already have plenty.  You will find that not only is more variety in booze just as important as variety in food, but all booze comes in barrels and you will find good use for them, and here is why: 

As has been said, you will find that farms becomes more productive over time as your planters gain more experience through harvesting.  This can actually be a big issue for you if you are not prepared for it.  Much like the American midwest during the Great Depression, the excess of food production can actually wreck your overall economy, unless you take steps to accont for this.  The number one thing that will happen is that your barrels will all go to storing food, which limits your ability to brew and store booze.  That in turn causes all dwarves to slow down their duties and become unhappy, and if you are not paying attention you might realize this too late. 

Some steps to mitigate such overproduction are for starters set any booze stockpiles to have a certain mininum number of barrels reserved for them, which will allow at least some booze to be brewed and stored at all times.  Also, keep your barrel production going, with either wood or metal or both as you can manage.  You do not need to go overboard, but do keep occasionally turning out more.  Keep a stockpile reserved for only empty barrels to account for them, as their number will fluctuate up and down as barrels are filled and emptied. 

Additionally, when your food reserves start getting high, use your job manager to start producing large orders of lavish meals.  This will use up some of the food and consume some of the seeds/spores to slow the farming a bit, as well as compressing that food into smaller stacks and giving happy thoughts to dwarves who eat them.  Plus they are high value, allowing you a lot of trade power with them.  I also recommend starting to rotate your crop production, so you produce less total eatibles, and more things that require more stages to go through to be used.