Farming - Failed Crops

[hyansith]

Is there away to remove or reuse a plot of land where the crops failed? 

 

Also - as my farming skill increases will i find out why crops have become "Stunted"? I watered all the plants daily and some still failed which has me a little confused. 

 

At what rate do the water barrels replenish also? I remember reading somewhere that they were not very efficient at collecting water so i build loads of them but they seem to be permanently full. Is this dependant on rainfall? Will it vary with the seasons? i.e. hot summer = less rain?

 

And one more question (just to save myself the pain of going all over the map looking for something that doesn't exist) Has pesticide been implemented yet?

 

Thanks for any replies. 

[Tympanic]

I just had this problem. What worked for me was to dig in that same plot again. I could just seed new seeds and the process started over again. Hope this helped 

 

Watter barrels seem to be efficient enough in my eyes. I am near a farm and I have three different ones. They are currently all doing very well and I think that is enough for now. I am only one month in though. Maybe seasons will affect this.

 

And, once again an answer that is solely from personal experience, I don't believe pesticide is in yet.

 

Good luck farming out there 

[hyansith]

The barrels are super efficient... i built 9 of them thinking that they wouldn't be very good. lol

 

i've tried re-digging the same plot with the trowel, however each time i do so, i get a trowel glitch where it no longer digs at all and then i can't equip it or equip anything else until i restart the game. 

 

On the other hand i've been successful with 4 out of the 7 varieties, and started making larger plots. So it's not all bad.

[PlasticandRage]

Some of the specific types of crops are a little buggy from what I understand. A guy posted a farming guide in a thread that's floating around here somewhere, where he said he'd done extensive testing and his strawberries ended up carrying disease something like 90% of the time, which will actually spread and kill your other crops too, and he said he'd never had a carrot crop grow to maturity. A few of them are just a lot harder to grow than others. After reading his guide I generally go with cabbage, broccoli, potatoes, and tomatoes, and I've had a lot less trouble. Actually harvesting veggies that I plant now.

 

 

Here it is: http://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php/topic/2054-farming-guide/?hl=%2Bfarming+%2Bguide

He's really extensive. Lots of helpful info in there.

[hyansith]

I've read the farming guide many times, but thanks for posting. Like you say i'm also having mixed results. Carrots and Radishes seem to die pretty quickly and my first attempt at Cabbage didn't end well. 

 

Second time around though and i seem to be successfully harvesting multiple plots of Tomato, Cabbage, Broccoli and Potato. However for some reason when i put my newly grown fresh veg into a storage the potato crop appears to have vanished. :/

[Tooks]

How big do you guys make your farms? I was also considering planting in stages, so a chunk one day, a chunk a day or two later etc, so not all my crops are finishing around the same time. With no way of keeping my crops fresh once the powers gone I don't want to finish my farm to find half of my food spoils before I can eat it :S

[RobertJohnson]

The crop vanish when you harvest them yup, I'll change that

 

To remove plants, use a shovel, but I may add the option if you have a hand shovel too...

[hyansith]

At the moment i have 4 plots per plant variety - my intention also is to stagger their growth so they don't all finish at the same time.

 

But with the different growing times on each plant it's tricky to gauge at what intervals they must be planted. For example Cabbage doesn't seem to take long at all, so i currently have lots of cabbage but still looks like i have a long time to wait for my Toms, Broccoli and Potato. Will get there in the end though... unless of course a hoard comes knocking and i have to abandon my primary safe house. I've just expanded into the garden of the house next door though so lots more room for planting. 

 

Do Veg last longer when made into soups and salads? Could be one way of limited the decay of our harvests.... Would be great if they implemented more seed for some of the other veg items in game too. Onions, Eggplants etc. But i guess that'll be further down the line. 

 

Shovel makes sense for removing plants tbh, or a Fork of some kind, since you actually have to remove the roots system of the plant and not just the visible part. It could be done with a trowel i suppose, but in real life thats not something i would fancy doing even in a relatively small vegetable patch. 

[PlasticandRage]

I usually will do between 4 and 8 plots total, usually consisting of 2 different kinds of crops. I tend to rely much more heavily on finding berries, and just use the farms as a secondary source in the meantime. With so few plants it doesn't require much of a time commitment, so I can just deal with it in between other things. It's been more of a priority for me in West Point though, because there are no berry bushes within the city limits yet. The furthest ones north that I've found are along the path that the railroad tracks run on, which actually isn't terrible considering I've been living in the camp. It's not going to be a long term solution without having to travel a lot closer to Muldraugh eventually though. There's a bunch of bushes along the main highway that are fairly close to the West Point side too, but that's about it.

[hyansith]

can't say i've ever used berry bushes..... or indeed seen one. Would go looking for some but i'm also in West Point and don't fancy the journey back just yet. Maybe when i've exhausted my supply of nails and i need to head back to the Warehouses 

[PlasticandRage]

What's really nice about them now is that they don't rot. So when you do manage to find a good thicket, you can sometimes walk away with over 100 units of non-perishable food. I'm sure they won't stay that way forever, but for the time being it's a pretty viable replacement for farming. Probably even will be after they're made perishable, at least in Muldraugh where the thickets are prevalent.

[gekkobear]

Do Veg last longer when made into soups and salads? Could be one way of limited the decay of our harvests.... Would be great if they implemented more seed for some of the other veg items in game too. Onions, Eggplants etc. But i guess that'll be further down the line. 

 

 

Actually they last shorter when made into soups/salds than they do without cooking.  Cook just before you'll eat from what I've seen for optimal duration.

 

Soup/salad goes rotten in a day, 2 days max depending on which it is.

[hyansith]

 

 

 

Actually they last shorter when made into soups/salds than they do without cooking.  Cook just before you'll eat from what I've seen for optimal duration.

 

Soup/salad goes rotten in a day, 2 days max depending on which it is.

 

 

Thanks for post.... i have since discovered this myself. The unprepared Veg last much longer than the prepared soup or salad which makes perfect sense - did not prevent me losing 2 game days in a fierce battle with food poisoning though.

 

In fact despite having my longest survival, this playthrough has been riddled with misfortune. Had food poisoning multiple times and i don't think my character has a head for heights - completion of the second floor of my safe house has seen me falling and breaking my ankles on at least 5 occasions. I'm going to need to craft some crutches and splints for my legs if it happens again.  hehe

[PlasticandRage]

You can exploit cooking to make your spoiling raw foods last slightly longer too though. Say you have all the ingredients you need to craft a salad, and all of them get to the point where they're just about to spoil, but aren't rotten yet. Craft em into a salad, and the salad will appear as fresh. Can help you stretch those perishables out a bit longer. I've been doing it a lot with watermelons. I store them as the whole melons, then when they start to turn I slice em. You get 10 fresh pieces instead of one rotting piece.

[hyansith]

nice advice. Thanks. Still working on my efficiency in this area. 

 

Started a new veg plot to try to work on staggering the crop yield. Now working on 6 plots of four. Farming skill a little higher. Will let you know how it goes. I think it's time to plant second stage of veg soon.

[doomblood66]

Following on what Plastic said, you can also craft soup out of vegetables which is actually non-perishable!

[PlasticandRage]

Does your farming skill go up when you actually harvest your plants? I don't think I've ever done enough farming to gain skill points in it.

[doomblood66]

I dont think so, i believe its only when you plant them

[hyansith]

i have grown a lot of plants... 3 months in (been a long weekend, thanks devs for stealing my life) i'm farming level 2. I don't really get how the skills work tbh. sometimes it shows a skill is completed but you don't have a XP point to spend to finish it. 

i had assumed you got xp for planting and harvest.... i've definately had a skill up occur upon harvesting.

[doomblood66]

i have grown a lot of plants... 3 months in (been a long weekend, thanks devs for stealing my life) i'm farming level 2. I don't really get how the skills work tbh. sometimes it shows a skill is completed but you don't have a XP point to spend to finish it. 

i had assumed you got xp for planting and harvest.... i've definately had a skill up occur upon harvesting.

I havent farmed in a while, so i guess you do get xp from harvesting!

[PlasticandRage]

It's definitely not from planting. I have an 8 plot farm planted right now, and 0 farming xp. I've also been watering regularly, so it can't be that either.

[doomblood66]

Are you sure? others have reported you do get it from planting

[PlasticandRage]

Positive. I'm roughly 10 days later in that save now, I've planted 4 more plots, in addition to my original 8, and I still have 0 farming xp.

 

Does anyone know what the "verdant" status means exactly? I keep getting it, but then my plants seem to bounce back from it. I went from healthy, to verdant, to healthy, to verdant, to flourishing over the course of maybe 5 days. They've been flourishing for about 2ish days now, and I still haven't had a single harvestable crop. If I'm getting verdant does that mean they're just screwed? Should I just scrap em and plant new crops? Or are they still okay?

 

Yeah, you definitely don't get xp until you harvest. Just harvested my first crops and went from 0 xp to gaining a level immediately. I have to say it's pretty worth cultivating even just like 4 crops at a time and staggering them. It'd probably keep you fed. I staggered 2 groups of 4, 4 cabbages and 4 potatoes, and I just harvested my 4 cabbage crops and it yielded 27 cabbages. Probably more than I can eat before they start to spoil. Not going to grow that many in the future. Good to know though.

[doomblood66]

that settles it then

[gekkobear]

Following on what Plastic said, you can also craft soup out of vegetables which is actually non-perishable!

 

Um, the boring/simple/tasty soups  (both pot & bowl) now have a "days to totally rotten" tag on them... so I'm pretty sure the non-canned soups are perishable.

 

And opened cans of anything become perishable once you open them... so opening and cooking a can of soup makes a perishable soup too.

 

Chocolate, chips, sealed cans of beans soup or tuna, ramen (before adding water), jerky I'm pretty sure (even though it's always found in refrigerators), soda/pop, popcorn, TV dinners... most everything else will rot eventually.

 

And a rotten uncooked dead rat?  Not as good a meal as I had hoped... perhaps I'll try something else next time.  Maybe if I burn it first.  Rotten burned dead rat has to be better than tasty soup; right?

 

Ok, and I'll throw a bone to the devs... you guys forgot the perishable tag on cheese sandwiches in the items files. 

Bread will perish, cheese will perish, cheese sandwiches will last forever (in the current patch).

 

And to be fair, I've never eaten a rotten dead rat; but doing cooking practice on bacon bits and eating them for two days... I didn't notice when they turned, until I got green moodles telling me I'd made a horrible mistake.