Farming, how do you do it?

[Patto]

In the romeo update it states that ‘‘Basic farming support’’ has been added.

I have gone around tilled dirt, dropped plants onto that dirt, attempted to activate the plants. Tried to obtain seeds from them. Everything I can think of.

So how do you farm, I can’t see any farming ‘‘support’’, which means what exactly.

The update is great, just not sure what the basic farming support is and what it can do.

Thanks in advance.

[Miloch]

I’ve only found a few kinds of seeds. Strawberry, Blueberry, and Cannabis. You examine a mound of dirt. You can make a mound of dirt with your hoe. Activate the hoe and it’ll till the tile you are on. You can also make fertilizer, but I never bothered so I’ll leave that one to you to figure out. I believe you need a quern, bones, and chitin. No idea how to apply the fertilizer. But I’d guess you activate it or examine the tile in question.

[Iosyn]

‘farming support’ means the basics are pretty much in, but it needs to be fleshed out a bit more fully.
You can find seeds on wild blueberry/strawberry plants, although there are wheat seeds and other stuff in too.

As to the fertilizer, it’s bonemeal. The rest is as Miloch said, you just need a hoe. Can’t remember if they’re craftable or not though.

[Miloch]

You can craft a hoe, though I don’t remember the requirements at all.

[John_Candlebury]

Also take note that bonemeal is not a direct fertilizer, it first needs to be combined with chiting and other things to become plant fertilizer

[Lost]

It seems that the devs did not take the standard abridged version of farming. They went with realism.

I don’t remember when I planted it (I should have timestamped it), but at least three weeks later, and saplings have begun to sprout up. It’s still a work in progress, so I just check back every now and then to see the progress. I’m also testing the difference between fertilized and non-fertilized. It doesn’t look like fertilization sped up the process, so maybe it increases the yield.

[Endovior]

The problem, I think, is still that the tile activity tracking isn’t really in an advanced enough state to support farming. Just like everything else in the game, if you’re not in range to watch it happen, it won’t happen. Maybe if you were to park your RV in the same map tile as your farm, and live out of it for a few months while you experiment with the system, but that’s such a hassle.

[Lost]

I think my advantage was I was building Outer Heaven for a good portion of those weeks, so I was in the general area of the farm the entire time.

[i2amroy]

The problem, I think, is still that the tile activity tracking isn’t really in an advanced enough state to support farming. Just like everything else in the game, if you’re not in range to watch it happen, it won’t happen. Maybe if you were to park your RV in the same map tile as your farm, and live out of it for a few months while you experiment with the system, but that’s such a hassle.

Actually (IIRC) I think this might be one of the few things that will work if you aren’t near them, since instead of using a counter that is updated every turn the game simply compares the current turn against the birthday turn of the plant and updates based on that when it reloads (though you might need to check up on it a few times, I think it might only advance one “state” at maximum instead of jumping straight to harvestable/etc.

[Endovior]

[quote=“Endovior, post:7, topic:3366”]The problem, I think, is still that the tile activity tracking isn’t really in an advanced enough state to support farming. Just like everything else in the game, if you’re not in range to watch it happen, it won’t happen. Maybe if you were to park your RV in the same map tile as your farm, and live out of it for a few months while you experiment with the system, but that’s such a hassle.

Actually (IIRC) I think this might be one of the few things that will work if you aren’t near them, since instead of using a counter that is updated every turn the game simply compares the current turn against the birthday turn of the plant and updates based on that when it reloads (though you might need to check up on it a few times, I think it might only advance one “state” at maximum instead of jumping straight to harvestable/etc.[/quote]

Duly noted; I’ll try that particular experiment one more time.

[Endovior]

For reference, my current methodology is:

1: Till earth with hoe
2: Drop seed on tilled earth
3: Pour plant food on dropped seed

There is no way to 'a’ctivate the seeds, and 'a’ctivating the plant food is unhealthy, so I can’t see anything I should be doing other than this. As it stands, doing this seems to result in nothing happening. Am I missing a step?

[i2amroy]

Steps should be:

1. Till earth with a hoe
2. (E)xamine the dirt mound
3. Select which seed you want to plant
4. (E)xamine planted plant to use fertilizer
5. Wait
6. (E)xamine harvestable plant to harvest

[Endovior]

Ah. That explains the lack of results thus far.

Off to try again, I suppose.

[kevin.granade]

With a note that “wait” means wait 21 days with season length at the default.
In a way it’s similar to df, where if you want it to be a thing you’ll want to start planting stuff ASAP, and only get the payoff much later (probably after much of the nearby scavenging is played out).
I’m not at all sure if it’s balanced in such a way that sustanable harvesting is possible, and we probaby need to figure out a more streamlined way to make farming happen, because people are obviously having issues successfully making it happen. (It doesn’t help that the maturation time for a crop is something like 10x the average lifespan of a survivor…)

[Lost]

So it’s based on the passing of seasons? That explains why it’s taking forever for me; I set it to 90 day seasons.

The plants all matured for me. Soon enough they’ll be ripe to harvest.

[Labtop_215]

Eh… Just a few hints in the help file would suffice, and possibly getting more than 1 seed for each successful plant you manage to harvest so that eventually, you can live sustainably off of farming.

Like planting 1 fruit seed per day or something, so that in 135 days, you’d have a never ending food supply. You’d be living almost entirely off of strawberries/blueberries, but eh, what can one say?

[i2amroy]

Eh… Just a few hints in the help file would suffice, and possibly getting more than 1 seed for each successful plant you manage to harvest so that eventually, you can live sustainably off of farming.

I’m pretty sure you do, though the chance is based of survival skill or something similar IIRC.

[Lost]

[quote=“Labtop_215, post:16, topic:3366”]Eh… Just a few hints in the help file would suffice, and possibly getting more than 1 seed for each successful plant you manage to harvest so that eventually, you can live sustainably off of farming.

Like planting 1 fruit seed per day or something, so that in 135 days, you’d have a never ending food supply. You’d be living almost entirely off of strawberries/blueberries, but eh, what can one say?[/quote]

There are also wheat and hemp seeds (hemp seeds are edible, though, so watch it), so you can also make bread and pizza. A future update will probably have us see seeds for broccoli, tomatoes, cucumber/zucchini, and apples.

[system]

No, I don’t want to wait for a tree to grow. Make saplings or already mature trees.

[Endovior]

[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:14, topic:3366”]With a note that “wait” means wait 21 days with season length at the default.
In a way it’s similar to df, where if you want it to be a thing you’ll want to start planting stuff ASAP, and only get the payoff much later (probably after much of the nearby scavenging is played out).
I’m not at all sure if it’s balanced in such a way that sustanable harvesting is possible, and we probaby need to figure out a more streamlined way to make farming happen, because people are obviously having issues successfully making it happen. (It doesn’t help that the maturation time for a crop is something like 10x the average lifespan of a survivor…)[/quote]

The biggest hurdle, in my experience, is the need for a hoe. I’ve never found one anywhere, so basically farming doesn’t unlock until you’ve got a blacksmith’s shop running, which is quite a bit of infrastructural development, and probably doesn’t happen until fall, which means that farming is more or less only available to one-year survivors. As such, probably the one change I’d recommend is letting a digging stick work as a hoe (or, alternatively, making a similarly crude and available tool that does the same thing). It’d be less efficient than a real hoe, but for an early starting garden, you’re probably not doing anything too huge, and it’d be enough to let you get your foot in the door.