Crop Management

[Repercussionist]

Hello, I was just curious on how some of you other players handle your crop situation?

I have a large plot of land and some huge fields, but no where to store everything, and I don't know how to know what to throw out, when to keep it, or anything like that.

I'd just like some of you who are more experienced to possibly list your routines when you are dealing with corps.

Thanks!

[Potjeh]

Reduce the size of your fields. Ideally, you want a "just in time" production line, ie no crops laying in storage for extended periods of time. This means you can harvest more often without wastage, which means your crops' q will rise faster. So basically, if you have a lot of a crop by the time it's next harvest is ready, reduce it's field a bit, and if you run out before the harvest increase them a bit. You can make an exception for hemp and flax and keep huge fields for them, since you'll primarily make linen for trade and it's pretty much guaranteed you'll find a buyer for any quantity you make.

[Repercussionist]

That makes sense. I was kind of unsure about what size to make them because I didn't want to run out of food and such.

But if I may ask, how do you go about replanting them? Say I have a field of wheat. It grows and I harvest, and I only wish to plant the highest quality seeds from my harvest (since I'll have 3 times as many seeds as I can plant). I'm thinking I could store them in cupboards and sort through after I harvest them all, but that seems like a lot of work. Any other suggestions?

[Lusewing]

Do you have any seed bags? All you need is a bit of leather and string and you will find harvesting so much quicker.
The way I do it is I have 3-5 seed bags with me and once I have 1-2 of the bags full I check the ql range and dump (Or store for food) anything that is really low while I plant everything that is really high. As i work threw I get a good idea on what to plant and drop. For anything that you just want to raise the ql (for me it is grapes and hops) I only plant 6 squares.

[Chakravanti]

I found that having two wheat fields (and if you're doing lots of hemp it's good for that too) is ideal.

a 10x10 in which to q sort thew top 10 seeds into a chest and replant the remaining twenty (Math will be different for different inventory sizes for ideal size and shape) into one row of a 10x20 which gets harevted directly to two full inventories of seedbags. The seeds are stored as such and the quern becomes an integrated part of the 'kitchen' to conserve on storage space. I find that harvesting and replanting with regular chests outside (i find that one chest with a bucket of water and a skin/flask and seedbags is sufficient) can be done in ~45m. two bags are 9 flour and I sort seeds and skins from pumpkins at harvest so I just dump the bags and fill the inventory with skins and 3 flasks which I refill from a bucket that has the seeds in it. Set up right cooking becomes the sort of thing that you just do casually throughout the day whenever you get time to play before the next harvest. Seedbags make storage conservative enough to allow skipping cooking for sever al harvests and with an efficient enough operation pumpkin pies and RoBs can be churned out quite quickly. Of course, having the ovens to keep up with that rate of production and not be a major pitfa is another story.

*ahem* err...HINT HINT. Bigger ovens, pl0x!

[Potjeh]

I just put top half into a sorting chest and grind the bottom half right away. As long as you don't plant and harvest in the same direction (ie if you plant east-west, you should harvest north-south) it works quite well and is faster than sorting all seeds.

[burgingham]

I am working with fields which are 3x9 tiles with a chest at the end. This way I can harvest the field in one go and sort the seeds in the chest right away. For pumpkins I replace the chest with a trough and fill my inventory with one pumpkin first. That way being able to directly drag the other pumpkins to the trough from my cursor.

[Repercussionist]

Guys, you rock. Your input is very much appreciated. Thanks a ton.

[DatOneGuy]

A system divided into thirds for any main crop (wheat, grapes, hemp, flax, carrots, peapods, pepper, poppy) works best 100% of the time.


What do I mean by that? Simple there are two ways to do it, first way:
6x10 - Wheat, for use
6x10 - Wheat, for use
6x10 - Best wheat, for replanting all three fields.

The other option (which I prefer) is:
6x20 - Wheat, for use
6x10 - Best wheat, for replanting all the fields.

Obviously those numbers can scale back any which way, you can do 3 (5x5) fields, or whatever you want, I find it best to work by inventory and full seedbag though.


I agree the ovens are a big problem in this setup, other than that chak's setup is what I use pretty much, just larger scale.

[Sever]

10x10 fields, typically.

1. Harvest first 4 lines. Each line's seeds goes into a seperate chest. First line is highest quality, and descends from there.
2. Grab seedbags (22) and harvest the remainder of the field (6 lines).
3. Equip Traveler's Sacks* (2). Starting from the chest with the best seeds:
--Remove all seeds from first chest using CTRL+SHIFT+MWHEEL.
--Drop 6 worst seeds into the next chest, then CTRL+SHIFT+MWHEEL the best out until inventory is full.
--Refill first chest with the best seeds. Repeat this with the 3rd chest, then the 4th.
--Repeat all of 3 starting with the next chest, ignoring all the previous ones.

4. Replant and process material in seedbags.

*If you don't have traveller's sacks, get them. Otherwise, use cupboards and hope they don't decay while you have them out.

Add more rows and chests if you're picky about getting the best quality.

For anything that can't use seedbags, it's probably best to just quickly harvest everything into chests and replant. I usually keep as much of a crop as I can process, such as 90 pea plants for a cupboard of pea pies, 30 onions for a cupboard of piros, 60 poppies/carrots for a cupboard of bagels/carrotcakes.

And most importantly, lots of space so I don't go insane with micromaneuvering.