Turning Farmland back into Dirt

[TheRedCreeper29]

I have noticed that when you break farmland, you get nothing. Even if it has the base stats of the dirt (like mid fert dirt starting with a base of 50%). I have also seen grass grow from the farmland. So what I was thinking is that when the farmland is at its base stats, grass can grow on top of it, and, after some time, the farmland gets reverted back to dirt. This allows any farmland to go back to how it was naturally and allows for random patches of farmland to be reverted. You should also be able to stop this by having a block in between the farmland and grass, allowing people to control this feature.

Edited September 3, 2025 by TheRedCreeper29

[Echo Weaver]

I agree. I think the idea is that if you dig up farmland with depleted nutrients, you could turn it back into farmland and reset its nutrients to their starting values. But I'd be happy if farmland could only be dug up as dirt if its nutrients are at the same or above starting levels. Anything to be able to move my terra preta to a new base.

[Bruno Willis]

3 hours ago, TheRedCreeper29 said:

So what I was thinking is that when the farmland is at its base stats, grass can grow on top of it, and, after some time, the farmland gets reverted back to dirt. This allows any farmland to go back to how it was naturally and allows for random patches of farmland to be reverted.

One hundred percent, and I think this is a really good fix. It really feels like it needs to be fixed.

Bumber suggested on a different thread:

There's a mod that gives it a chance to drop based on the remaining nutrients. If it's fully replenished for the quality, it always drops.

Another alternative would be to store the nutrients in item data. That might create an issue with item stacks (like pressed fruit), but it's on the player for not waiting.

And I wonder if that alternative could work in a similar way to how when you put two ingots of different temperatures together, the temperatures average out - the calculation would be three times as complex for soil nutrients as with metal temp. but if the code isn't awful I think this would be the cleanest method. 

[Diff]

14 minutes ago, Bruno Willis said:

Another alternative would be to store the nutrients in item data. That might create an issue with item stacks (like pressed fruit), but it's on the player for not waiting.

And I wonder if that alternative could work in a similar way to how when you put two ingots of different temperatures together, the temperatures average out - the calculation would be three times as complex for soil nutrients as with metal temp. but if the code isn't awful I think this would be the cleanest method. 

Maybe have the soil it drops differ based on how its been treated. Perhaps based on the amount of the lowest nutrient? Barren if you've depleted it, but you could also dig up a higher tier soil than what was originally there if you tended to it carefully enough, hopefully tuned to match the crafting recipes.

[Bruno Willis]

Just now, Diff said:

Maybe have the soil it drops differ based on how its been treated. Perhaps based on the amount of the lowest nutrient? Barren if you've depleted it, but you could also dig up a higher tier soil than what was originally there if you tended to it carefully enough, hopefully tuned to match the crafting recipes.

I would love for there to be a way to turn medium fertility into high fertility soil, but it would have to be challenging to reach that limit. I also love the idea of creating barren soil if you're a monocropping.

We need someone with familiarity with the code to tell us how impossible this stuff is, or we're just going to get carried away. 

[TheRedCreeper29]

12 minutes ago, Bruno Willis said:

I would love for there to be a way to turn medium fertility into high fertility soil, but it would have to be challenging to reach that limit. I also love the idea of creating barren soil if you're a monocropping.

We need someone with familiarity with the code to tell us how impossible this stuff is, or we're just going to get carried away. 

I like the idea, but I think that goes a bit too far and will be somewhat of a worthless feature because finding and getting high fert soil is way easier (imo). It could be where breaking farmland should drop something like dirt bricks (similar to peat bricks), the amount dropped is depending on the lowest percentage of nutrient. These dirt bricks then can be reconstructed into a dirt block.

Edited September 4, 2025 by TheRedCreeper29

[Facethief]

10 hours ago, Bruno Willis said:

I would love for there to be a way to turn medium fertility into high fertility soil, but it would have to be challenging to reach that limit.

You can turn medium fertility into terra preta, but that isn’t the same, I suppose.

[Never Jhonsen]

11 minutes ago, Facethief said:

You can turn medium fertility into terra preta, but that isn’t the same, I suppose.

High, not medium, but otherwise correct 

[Facethief]

2 hours ago, Never Jhonsen said:

High, not medium, but otherwise correct 

Right, there’s a way to make it without any dirt.

[LadyWYT]

16 hours ago, Diff said:

Maybe have the soil it drops differ based on how its been treated. Perhaps based on the amount of the lowest nutrient? Barren if you've depleted it, but you could also dig up a higher tier soil than what was originally there if you tended to it carefully enough, hopefully tuned to match the crafting recipes.

I like this. Barren soil is useless for farming, but still useful for some building and landscaping. I like the idea of being able to tend your farmland carefully and have it increase in quality over time--maybe this could be a benefit of actually using fertilizer? As it stands now I can't say that I've ever really bothered with fertilizer since it's easy to just build bigger fields and rotate crops accordingly.

[TheRedCreeper29]

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

I like this. Barren soil is useless for farming, but still useful for some building and landscaping. I like the idea of being able to tend your farmland carefully and have it increase in quality over time--maybe this could be a benefit of actually using fertilizer? As it stands now I can't say that I've ever really bothered with fertilizer since it's easy to just build bigger fields and rotate crops accordingly.

I would agree with this, even though I have fertilizer, I dont use it. Maybe there should be some like universal fertilizer, where you combine all three (potash and saltpeter could be interchangeable), and when crafted with a soil, makes it a better tier. For example, low fert dirt + uni fertilizer = med fert dirt. You could scale this up by making the amount of the uni fertilizer in the recipe to the tier it would be. So like barren dirt + 3 uni fertilizer = rich dirt. With Terra Preta, the recipes could stay the same with the difference that the uni fertilizer would replace the bonemeal and compost. (Also, obv the uni fertilizer could fertilize dirt with all three types of nutrients)