DF2010:Farming
Farming is the action of growing crops for food, alcohol production and cloth manufacturing. While small forts can easily be sustained by plant gathering, hunting and trading, farming is vital to large settlements.
Farming is done at a farm plot building (b-p, resize with umkh). It requires seeds and a worker with the “Farming (Fields)” labor enabled.
Depending on where the farm plot is constructed, different crops may be planted. Farm plots built above ground are not suitable for the crops grown on subterranean farm plots and vice versa. Note that the attributes Inside, Dark, Outside and Light are of no relevance.
See the article on crops for details on the conditions needed to grow the available plants.
Introduction to Farming
After building a farm plot building (b-p, resize with umkh), you must select which crops to plant there.
Press q and move the cursor over the farm, you will see a list of crops you can select to grow in the current season. You can change which season is displayed by pressing a, b, c, or d. Move the blue selector up and down with – and +, and press Enter to choose a crop to plant during that season (highlighted in white).
You must have the appropriate seeds to plant a crop there. To easily see how many of each seeds you have you can go to the Kitchen menu (z right Enter). Plump helmets are a good beginning crop for a first cave farm, and wild strawberries are a good choice for outdoor fields. Check the crops page for details on different seeds. Only some plants are edible so make sure the seeds you’re using will produce food. It’s often a good idea to pick a seed which produces a plant which can be brewed. This will create alcohol and also give you a seed to plant again next season.
Instructing a plot to remain fallow z during a particular season will instruct dwarves not to plant in that plot during that season.
Fertilization
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Farm Size Potash Per Square
1 1 1.000
2 1 0.500
3 1 0.333
4 2 0.500
5 2 0.400
6 2 0.333
7 2 0.286
8 3 0.375
Pressing f lets you toggle fertilization on or off. To fertilize a farm plot, one needs potash, which is produced by processing ash. It greatly increases the yield of a plot (approx. multiplied by four). However fertilization only lasts for one season, and requires plot size / 4 (round down) + 1 of potash for saturation. Therefore fully fertilizing a farm would require burning a large amount of trees each season. The table on the right illustrates the effect of the formula on potash needed per square. Generally, larger farms use less, approaching a limit of 1/4 bar per square. The worst sizes are multiples of 4, it’s better to have plots one or two less than a multiple of 4. While costly, fertilization enhances productivity of not only farmers, but many industries down the line, e. g. brewing, cooking, milling and threshing, due to the large increase in stack size of the plants, which are still processed in a single action.
Subterranean Farming
To grow the six “dwarven” plants, including the plump helmet, you will need an underground farm plot. The seeds and spawn available to your dwarves at embark will only grow underground. Underground farm plots must be placed on soil or muddy stone. v0.31.19
Muddying a stone floor requires temporarily covering it with water: common methods include a bucket brigade or controlled flooding (see: Irrigation) by temporarily diverting a river or pool, using a floodgate or door to stop the flow.
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