Farming: Fallow Method

[Muru]

Hey, this is my first post here. Wanted to share this strat with others. The fallow method is one that I picked up recently and saw it's very, very good for producing a lot of up to 3 (1 per nutrient type) different crops. I mainly use it to mass-produce flax on the servers I play on, and allows me a harvest every in-game week throughout spring and summer (~25 harvests, medium fertility) without having to use crop rotation or re-till soil.

The way it's done is by creating a farm with minimum 4 (suggested 5 to be safe) and planting all of your seeds in a single bed. The beds can be made however you want (3x15, 3x15 with a hole in the middle, large plots), just be sure you're able to distinguish each bed from another easily. After you harvest from the next bed, you plant on the next one. Repeat this til' you're at the last bed, and then go back to the first bed. You don't really have to water them. Fertilizer is unnecessary as long as you're doing it correctly. This should work for all crops, since flax takes 50 K nutrient and I've been fine. I advise against using it for plants that take a long time to grow (pineapple, bell pepper, cassava, ect.), since nutrients restore quite a bit as the crop is growing (2.3% per day I think, but 1% if something is growing).

For me, I prefer to put water on all sides and use 3x3 farmland with a hole in the middle so all the farmland is at 75% moisture. I usually use medium fertility soil due to it's availability, and I reserve terra preta for my garden where I grow crops I don't have a lot of, or crops that take a long time to grow.

 

If anyone has any interesting farming methods, please reply with them. I'd like to read up on some other potential methods I could use. Hope you find this useful

[TooSalty123]

Great way to corner the linen market

[Maelstrom]

Although they could utilize their space more efficiently to produce even more linen.  Just have farmland surround a single water source and cut out the rows of watery irrigation.  

 

[maibock]

 

On 10/2/2021 at 11:07 PM, Maid said:

Hey, this is my first post here. Wanted to share this strat with others. The fallow method is one that I picked up recently and saw it's very, very good for producing a lot of up to 3 (1 per nutrient type) different crops. I mainly use it to mass-produce flax on the servers I play on, and allows me a harvest every in-game week throughout spring and summer (~25 harvests, medium fertility) without having to use crop rotation or re-till soil.

The way it's done is by creating a farm with minimum 4 (suggested 5 to be safe) and planting all of your seeds in a single bed. The beds can be made however you want (3x15, 3x15 with a hole in the middle, large plots), just be sure you're able to distinguish each bed from another easily. After you harvest from the next bed, you plant on the next one. Repeat this til' you're at the last bed, and then go back to the first bed. You don't really have to water them. Fertilizer is unnecessary as long as you're doing it correctly. This should work for all crops, since flax takes 50 K nutrient and I've been fine. I advise against using it for plants that take a long time to grow (pineapple, bell pepper, cassava, ect.), since nutrients restore quite a bit as the crop is growing (2.3% per day I think, but 1% if something is growing).

For me, I prefer to put water on all sides and use 3x3 farmland with a hole in the middle so all the farmland is at 75% moisture. I usually use medium fertility soil due to it's availability, and I reserve terra preta for my garden where I grow crops I don't have a lot of, or crops that take a long time to grow.

 

If anyone has any interesting farming methods, please reply with them. I'd like to read up on some other potential methods I could use. Hope you find this useful

Hol' up, I know you!

[Muru]

On 11/26/2021 at 6:32 AM, Maelstrom said:

Although they could utilize their space more efficiently to produce even more linen.  Just have farmland surround a single water source and cut out the rows of watery irrigation.  

 

Yeah, in the photo I made it in lanes because it's easier to tell which lane is being used. I once made a farm with 1600+ farmland that were separated by plots rather than lanes, was pretty wild

[Muru]

On 11/26/2021 at 11:02 AM, maibock said:

 

Hol' up, I know you!

Hello mai bock : )

[Maelstrom]

7 minutes ago, Maid said:

Yeah, in the photo I made it in lanes because it's easier to tell which lane is being used. I once made a farm with 1600+ farmland that were separated by plots rather than lanes, was pretty wild

I like the layout.  In my next world I'll probably adopt it for my farm.

 

[ArZog Magescales]

I'm sad my simply brain did not think of this. 

[Lumber Jackson]

If you use three of the four rows in your picture instead with three different crops with a different nutrient type, you'd get more production out of it. Right now I'm planting three fields and leaving one fallow. N crops in one, P in the next, and K in the third. Every rotation nutrient is maxed out for what I'm planting in Terra Plata. It seems like you could be producing more, unless you don't want some onions and spelt to go along with your flax.

[Nii P.]

Well, this actually IS crop rotation, but with the worst efficiency possible, as you lose all the P and N crops between them, while you "rotate".

[Muru]

On 12/21/2021 at 10:44 AM, Lumber Jackson said:

If you use three of the four rows in your picture instead with three different crops with a different nutrient type, you'd get more production out of it. Right now I'm planting three fields and leaving one fallow. N crops in one, P in the next, and K in the third. Every rotation nutrient is maxed out for what I'm planting in Terra Plata. It seems like you could be producing more, unless you don't want some onions and spelt to go along with your flax.

Yeah, this can be done as well with similar efficiency. I just left it out for the sake of simplicity. Plus, I don't usually farm stuff like veggies or grain using this method, so it's not really on my mind most of the time.