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[Albedo]

Pro'ly too many other labors (esp various Hauling labors) enabled on your Grower(s). Just a guess, but I've seen it be a problem.

[greycat]

Updated the guide again.

[cochramd]

Not sure if this is the right place to ask, but I've downloaded a mod that significantly increases growing time for all crops and places seasonal restrictions on above ground crops and have 2 questions. Say we have Crop A that can only grow in Spring, Summer and Autumn, and takes 2.5 seasons to grow. My first question is that if I planted Crop A in the Spring and ordered that field "left fallow" that Summer and Autumn, would Crop A continue to grow through those seasons? My second question is that if instead of leaving it fallow I ordered Crop B planted in Autumn, will the farmers wait until Crop A has grown and been harvested to seed that plot?

[greycat]

Not sure if this is the right place to ask, but I've downloaded a mod that significantly increases growing time for all crops and places seasonal restrictions on above ground crops and have 2 questions. Say we have Crop A that can only grow in Spring, Summer and Autumn, and takes 2.5 seasons to grow. My first question is that if I planted Crop A in the Spring and ordered that field "left fallow" that Summer and Autumn, would Crop A continue to grow through those seasons? My second question is that if instead of leaving it fallow I ordered Crop B planted in Autumn, will the farmers wait until Crop A has grown and been harvested to seed that plot?

I don't have a lot of experiences with those types of mods, but from what I understand, you should be able to set the plot for planting Crop A in Spring and Summer, and Crop B in Autumn (and Winter?).  If I'm correct, dwarves should only be able to plant the seeds for Crop A in the first half of the Spring; after that, the seeds would not have enough time to mature, so dwarves shouldn't plant them (and the crop will show up in red on the plot's menu), but they should leave existing seeds alone until they mature.  Then they may be able to plant Crop B, depending on whether enough time remains for it to mature.

You'll need to test it all with your mod to be sure.

[Robsoie]

On my current fort i have decided to go with an "above ground" type of farming, it's the first time ever since i play DF that i do that, as i always use underground ones usually.
And as expected i run into a problem that i can't seem to solve.

So after embarking, i checked if there were trees growing (as i didn't checked if it was a mountain biome before embarking), and there were a lot (that i regularly cut), so fortunately it is not a mountain

I then channeled a big hole, and set the zone as a pond, so my dwarves would fill it with water.
Once the area i wanted to be a farm had at least 1 of water on each tile (so they all have mud), i removed the zone, and built my farm plots.
So the farm is not on the surface, but as it's fully lit, it's considered above ground farm so i can only use above ground seeds as wanted.

Now the problem (spoilers to not fill the whole post) :
- I have truckload of Prickle Berries seeds.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

- I have a seed-only stockpile with no barrel giving any problem, some of those bags have Prickle berries.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

- For all 4 seasons i setup the farm to make use of Prickle Berries

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

- I enabled the farming (field) skill to a lot of my dwarves.

And it simply does not work, not a single dwarf is even trying to plant any of those Prickle berries seed.

I'm using no mods, tried with a 42.06 using dfhack and a 42.06 without dfhack (to see if it was a dfhack problem as the 42.06 version of dfhack is not yet considered stable) without a difference in this problem.
I use a simple tileset

Here's my save in case someone may want to see if they find what's wrong (assuming it's not just a new bug), i'm still early game, only +40 dwarves and only surface + a little on the 1 z level of underground on a 2x2 map, so there's no performance problem.
http://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=11845

[Robsoie]

I think i solved the mystery , and this is probably a case of multiple biomes (as i spotted an aquifer on a part of the map while there's none on the other part), though the mountain biome is then not obvious at all, as there were trees around.

Anyways, i reproduced exactly the same process to build a 2nd farm in the bottom left corner on my map , and it worked without a problem, while the 1st farm still isn't working :

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

There should really be a way during gameplay to know exactly what biomes there are on your map at gameplay time and where, like some kind of filter you can enable/disable (similarly to how you can check path to the trading depot), it's just annoying when something is not working and there's no obvious way to tell why.

[Lemunde]

I think i solved the mystery , and this is probably a case of multiple biomes (as i spotted an aquifer on a part of the map while there's none on the other part), though the mountain biome is then not obvious at all, as there were trees around.

Anyways, i reproduced exactly the same process to build a 2nd farm in the bottom left corner on my map , and it worked without a problem, while the 1st farm still isn't working :

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

There should really be a way during gameplay to know exactly what biomes there are on your map at gameplay time and where, like some kind of filter you can enable/disable (similarly to how you can check path to the trading depot), it's just annoying when something is not working and there's no obvious way to tell why.

You can tell prior to embark what biomes there will be and the general area where they will show up. After embark there may be subtle clues to indicate which biome is which. One might have trees while the other doesn't, there may be different soil types, different colored grass. Unfortunately there doesn't appear to be any clear indicator on the surface in your particular embark. If you remember what the biome indicators said before you embarked you can make an educated guess where to put your farms, or you could try digging down a little in multiple locations to try to isolate where the aquifer is. You'd probably want to do that anyways to avoid too much fun.

[Fleeting Frames]

Farm plots are my favoured vanilla method to tell biomes with no other indicators (i.e. in air) apart. For non-vanilla, there's showbiomes.

And yeah, sometimes it can be pretty obvious, i.e. in the screenshot in wiki Desert page.

[Sarmatian123]

I play only vanilla. Farming is a clunky plaque, but to have 12+ types of alcohol, it is a must. Without automation (using linked stockpiles) I couldn't deal with farming tbh.

Though from time to time I still need to spring clean my seeds stockpile, or my entire stash of bags will get infested with seeds. Though cooking all eatable seeds helps somewhat to keep it under control.

[Sarmatian123]

Farm plots:
My farm plots are 3x5 size and have 1x3 seed stockpiles besides. When kick-starting production, exactly 4 potash bars are used for 1 season fertilization per 1 plot.
For above ground crops I have one dedicated farm plot with its seed stockpile to one crop, which is planted and harvested all the time.
For underground crops I fit 6 farm plots to cover 4 yearly harvests from each crop.
In my init_d.txt seeds are restricted to 60 per type and 6000 in total.

My plant stockpiles are 3x6, which contain around 1000 plants in barrels each.
These plant stockpiles are linked with dedicated to them farmer workshops, stills and querns, which in turn are linked to barrel and bag stockpiles.

My fruit stockpiles are 1x2, which contain around 2000 fruits in one barrel, each.

Automated production for stills: if there is less then 60 units of given alcohol, then do 10 more barrels of that alcohol, checked daily.
Automated production for querns: if there is less then 1 unit of given powder, then do 3 mill jobs, checked daily.

This automation requires quite few workers in brewing, milling and growing. Do not be surprised with a planter's guild in your fortress.

Mead production:
I have set up a closed and highly in traffic restrictive 3x15 room with 5 doors with 35 (34 actually because of one odd corner) hives.

Code: [Select]

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRX
XR+RR+RR+RR+RR+RX
XR+RR+RR+RR+RR+RX
XXoXXoXXoXXoXXoXX

X -wall
R -restricted traffic, hive
+ -low traffic, floor
o -low traffic, door, closed for pets. Cats get still in, but they get out eventually on their own with beekeeper.
I have one stockpile accepting both all honey products and all tools.
This would be a cumbersome business without additional quantum stockpile for all tools, royal jelly and honey.
Wax cakes are being fed to quantum stockpile, where I changed stockpile for a 1x1 hole in a floor, which bottom can be squashed by bridge. Now I use it to dump all materials and production, which I wish atom-smashed. The thing is to forbid the minecart before each pulling of the lever for the bridge, so no additional items are piled on top of it, when it is down.
Though I have a dedicated press and still for mead and honey production, those do not need to be dedicated at all to have automated mead and honey production.
The setup for cooking royal jelly (jugs have to be emptied somehow) is more complicated.
Dedicated kitchen is right by the quantum stockpile for all tools, but it is linked both with quantum stockpile for all tools as the general stockpile for all tools.
I have quantum stockpile with bags of all kinds of flour in some good distance from kitchen, which is also linked to that kitchen.

Automated order for mead: if there is less then 60 units of mead and 1 honey, then brew 1 barrel (=5 units) of mead, checked daily.
Automated order for kitchen: If there are 3 royal jellies, run order for 1 lavish meal, checked daily.

Due overproduction of mead, sometimes you get honey beside royal jelly in the flour roasts.

Due a bug (work conflicts), only 1 beekeeper can be assigned for beekeeping. Make sure, it is stress resistant Dwarf from your latest migrants, so not cave adapted. He will be going on surface fetching wild beehives. When you spot a hive with around 19k bees in it, then lock it for colony install and gathering of products. Locking around 5 of such gives seems to keep your farm going alone on those copied hives for ever.

Tree farm:
(This part is always last to implement, as it needs some above ground construction)
Closed all around with walls 32x32 room with roof at 2nd level, so trees can grow inside and directly connected with a safe passage into fortress.
Stepladder reaches only to 2nd level, so no point doing it higher.
There are some issues with stepladders, but not from wild animals (keas?).

----------

Cooking is still done mostly manually (exception being for royal flour/sugar-jelly roasts).
This covers 18+ different alcohol types plus mead for my oldest embark fortress now.

I could imagine some automated fish farming both for pest fish and animal fish, animal husbandry (breeding, shearing, milking, butchering, egg gathering, training and taming), but currently game misses some counting abilities for manager to use proficiently auto-orders on those jobs. Particularly butchery does not distinguish females from males, even if restricted in their own burrows (why burrows can not cover each other btw?). Plus cooking lavish meals on auto-orders is too cumbersome.

I usually just buy all cooking ingredients from caravans and use those for cooking variety of foods. Plus some own butchering, own rare cheeses and wide variety of own produced eggs. I allow alcohol to be used as the last ingredients, as alcohol barrels get picked last anyhow and because the stockpile is pretty far from kitchens.

What do you think about this automated farming-setup?

[Fleeting Frames]

It's worth mentioning target population for your farm sizes. You have 7*15=105 tiles of farm plot if I got it correctly, meaning you need 3 active Legendary farmers and will harvest roughly 732 plants per season; enough for ~244 dwarves (less with less than L+5 skill).

- Regarding tree fruit farms: A fruit gathering dwarf will grab all the fruit contaminants in 3x3x3 box surrounding them. This means it can be profitable to build a stairway up so you can harvest more from single tree.


- Automated fish farming could be done using minecart on pressure plate to seal/unseal fishing locating depending on weight. Thankfully fishes are accessible inside cart for cleaning and eating. Egg gathering can work similarly.

- Automated butchery is done automatically for wild animals. Additionally, undead ones count as wild. Unfortunately, chained pair of wild animals mostly stop further spawns from their layer.

- WDYM with burrows?

[Sarmatian123]

It's worth mentioning target population for your farm sizes. You have 7*15=105 tiles of farm plot if I got it correctly, meaning you need 3 active Legendary farmers and will harvest roughly 732 plants per season; enough for ~244 dwarves (less with less than L+5 skill).

- Regarding tree fruit farms: A fruit gathering dwarf will grab all the fruit contaminants in 3x3x3 box surrounding them. This means it can be profitable to build a stairway up so you can harvest more from single tree.


- Automated fish farming could be done using minecart on pressure plate to seal/unseal fishing locating depending on weight. Thankfully fishes are accessible inside cart for cleaning and eating. Egg gathering can work similarly.

- Automated butchery is done automatically for wild animals. Additionally, undead ones count as wild. Unfortunately, chained pair of wild animals mostly stop further spawns from their layer.

- WDYM with burrows?

I do not know how to link a minecart to kitchen, but I see your point about raw food.
I think 2 floor fruit garden is a wee too low, then.

6*15 actually. 1*15 per each above ground plant though. 18 types of drinks (plus mead, but you can't cook mead??? OMG!) makes it 14 above ground plants. 3x6 stockpile stores around 1000 plants of each type and rest of harvest ends wittered in refuse. 60 seeds limits the one time production from fields. The settlement has 250 Dwarves population and about 10 farmers/growers. Too few farmers?

[Fleeting Frames]

Linking minecart to kitchen is just painting workshop-restricting burrow over kitchen, minecart and all stockpiles you want kitchen to take from. Then kitchen will not take from everywhere else in fort, but will take from minecart as normal.

6*15+1*15 is 7*15, but I guess you had more. 10 growers should be able to handle that, based on that link. However, given that you send overproduction into refuse, it's seems to be less about food and more cross-training; and farming is rather slow way to do that - herbalism is better for its stats as long as you have plants to pick up and want to use plant-based crossfit; about on par with screw pumps for endurance.

[Pyrite]

Tree farming is a kind of farming, right? I've been trying to build an underground tree farm, and I wanted opinions on the optimal height above the muddy floor to leave for the trees to grow. How tall will fungiwood and other multi-log trees get? How tall should I let them get before I cut them?

I made a pit 8 z levels down for this, but I'm thinking I may want to build a floor 4 levels up from the bottom to make a second tree farming layer. Will trees grow on a muddied block floor?

[willjuZ963]

Thanks man, you're a saviour.