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[Mushroo]

According to the stock screen I have 13 plump helmets, but the miller says there are no millable unrotten plants. Also, I can't find the plump helmets on my plants stockpile (and all other piles should have plants disabled).

Are plants "in the field" counted as plants in the stock screen? If not, where are my plump helmets and why can't they be milled?

If so, is there any way to know how many plants are ready to be processed without counting barrel contents?

Plump helmets cannot be milled. You can: eat them raw, cook them into meals, or brew them into dwarven wine. (Note that eating raw and brewing produce a spawn/seed, while cooking into a meal destroys the spawn.)

Each plant has its own uses as detailed in the wiki: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Farming

For milling edible flour, your choices are: sweet pod, cave wheat, longland grass, whip vine. Of these; whip vine flour is the most valuable, and sweet pod sugar is inefficient compared with processing plant (barrel) at a farmers workshop into dwarven syrup (5 times the yield). Your quern/millstone workshop can also be used to produce a variety of plant-based dyes and/or rock nut paste for pressing into rock nut oil.

[vanatteveldt]

D'oh!

Sorry for wasting your time. I actually had a long look at the production schema before, but I apparently didn't remember it correctly...

(and I just built this beautiful watermill driven powered millstone, so I'm really anxious to use it :-))

[thistleknot]

Hot biome: low # of alcohol being produced.  I have cave wheat, plump helmets, and cave wheat being produced just 1 z level below surface, I started a few more maybe 2-3 levels below as well.  It seems to be very low output from these farms...  I was wondering would a hot biome have any affect on underground crops?  I'm fertilizing these crops too.

update: I also have tons of barrels being managed by falconne's plugin... hrmmm...

[FuzzyZergling]

Hot biome: low # of alcohol being produced.  I have cave wheat, plump helmets, and cave wheat being produced just 1 z level below surface, I started a few more maybe 2-3 levels below as well.  It seems to be very low output from these farms...  I was wondering would a hot biome have any affect on underground crops?  I'm fertilizing these crops too.

No, biomes shouldn't effect underground crops at all.

[TripJack]

maybe low grower skill on the guys planting seeds?

[Mushroo]

Hot biome: low # of alcohol being produced.  I have cave wheat, plump helmets, and cave wheat being produced just 1 z level below surface, I started a few more maybe 2-3 levels below as well.  It seems to be very low output from these farms...  I was wondering would a hot biome have any affect on underground crops?  I'm fertilizing these crops too.

update: I also have tons of barrels being managed by falconne's plugin... hrmmm...

Go into your z, stocks, plants screen and press Tab to see how many plants per stack on average. If you are only getting 1-3 plants per stack, you have a problem.

Traders from the mountainhomes always bring "plump helmets [5]" so I have always used 5 plants/stack as my benchmark goal for successful agriculture.

[greycat]

I believe Quietust wrote somewhere that the number of plants in a stack is analogous to the quality level of a workshop product.  A stack of 5 plants (without fertilizer) is like a masterpiece mug.

[Extreme Boyheat]

Hot biome: low # of alcohol being produced.  I have cave wheat, plump helmets, and cave wheat being produced just 1 z level below surface, I started a few more maybe 2-3 levels below as well.  It seems to be very low output from these farms...  I was wondering would a hot biome have any affect on underground crops?  I'm fertilizing these crops too.

update: I also have tons of barrels being managed by falconne's plugin... hrmmm...

Are your farms too large? If they're too big it's far less efficient than smaller plots.

[callisto8413]

I am now having trouble feeding my Dwarfs.  Before the change I just slapped a few farm plots on the surface but now I can't seem to set up a underground farm fast enough.  I tried the flood a chamber under a water source tactic with levelers and supports and stuff, but my colony started to starve because they refused to deal with the damp stone. Oh the horror!  I know the changes with what seeds you can start out with were meant to make the game more complex but none of my guys are having any luck.  Any advice?  The problem I am having seems to be the water source - either too far, too dangerous to get to, or frozen!

[Laurin]

You only need muddy ground if you have only stone. If there is some sort of soil, sand, loam, silt you can build underground farm plots without watering.
If there is stone only you need to make a bit of mud. It doesn't have to be very large. You could assign a pond zone and have it watered via bucket brigade. You only need a 3x3 spot for a start. Once the water is gone, make a farm plot and start planting.

If you have any crops outside, declare a large area for plant gathering (d-p). With some luck you will get a few brewable plants to start with. (At least one of your dwarfs need to have the plant gathering labor enabled.)

Also, try digging for the first cavern, you might find underground crops there. If there is soil digged out, underground crops will start to grow on their own every now and then.

[Mushroo]

I am now having trouble feeding my Dwarfs.  Before the change I just slapped a few farm plots on the surface but now I can't seem to set up a underground farm fast enough.  I tried the flood a chamber under a water source tactic with levelers and supports and stuff, but my colony started to starve because they refused to deal with the damp stone. Oh the horror!  I know the changes with what seeds you can start out with were meant to make the game more complex but none of my guys are having any luck.  Any advice?  The problem I am having seems to be the water source - either too far, too dangerous to get to, or frozen!

Soil layers (including sand and clay) require no irrigation, you can start growing plump helmets or whatever immediately. Surface farms require no irrigation either.

If you start with the default Play Now build, you will not run into thirst or hunger issues until summer at the earliest. Brew the plump helmets you embarked into wine and butcher the animals, and you'll have food and drink through into autumn, even with absolutely no effort to create additional food.

Starvation should never, ever be a problem in current versions of Dwarf Fortress. Food production is too easy, almost to the point of being unbalanced! A couple of hunters, a couple of fisherdwarves, and a couple of planters farming a 5x5 plot, and you're set for your first 200 dwarves.

If you ever get into extreme starvation then look at your z kitchen stocks screen and designate for cooking items that cannot be eaten uncooked: seeds, flour, sugar, tallow, quarry bush leaves. Then queue up a bunch of prepare meal tasks. For example 200 prickle berry seeds will feed 100 dwarves for an entire season (and cooking seeds has the side effect of freeing up a bag for other uses). Rock nuts can be milled and pressed to double their nutritional output. (Or planted for an explosion in production: 4 rock nuts planted by a legendary farmer = 4 x 5 quarry bushes = 4 x 25 leaves = 100 servings of quarry bush roast!!!)

But really this should not be a problem; in a well-run fortress you ought to be wondering how to deal with the incredible surplus of food! (not lack thereof) I have had fortresses where I reached the theoretical maximum prepared food output, because my dwarves could not haul massive surplus of food from the kitchen to the stockpile before it rotted.

[UPevail]

Um I have a question (btw new to this forum, not new to DF so direct me to the related topic if it exists):

All you guys are talking bout is irrigation in relation to farming. Well what about pastures? Sure its the ame concept, but you have to keep in mind I prefer my goats tender and juicy from a (somewhat) clean slaughter, not hard and chewy from drowning! Also been in need of cheese and milk cause they are tasty and nutritious.

Aaaanyway, I notice there'd need to be a different strategy for a pasture than a farm because of this, so how can it be done while keeping my helpless---I mean tamed meat juicy?

[Garath]

above ground anything that is ground or muddy will grow grass except in some specific biomes. Underground, fungus can grow anywhere you'd be able to place a farm, soil or muddied stone, as soon as you breach a cavern that has fungus growing in it

as a side note, drowned or starved to death goats can't be slaughtered or butchered if they were tame, good to remember, that

[Mushroo]

I do not use pasture zones; it's a pain in the butt to assign animals. I have a simpler method that requires much less micro-management.

First I dig out a large area of soil/sand/clay. Then I breach the caverns. Mushrooms will grow in the mined-out soil area. Then I place statues and designate a large sculpture garden. Grazing animals will naturally congregate around the statues and graze on the cave fungus. Dwarves will get happy thoughts from parties and weddings. Plus your woodcutters and herbalists can do their jobs safely underground, rather than outside on the surface.

[Urist McVoyager]

When I leave animals to roam freely, they starve within a year or two. I was under the impression that if you want your animals to survive, you had to pasture them.  And yes, the plants regrow every year and there's no good reason for the starving. I don't get that problem from pasturing.