40d Talk:Irrigation

Irrigation is not always needed for farming. i have my plot inside on sandy clay loam and it works fine. But: would the harvest maybe be better/faster with water? will check out. --Koltom 14:20, 10 February 2008 (EST)

Made a few changes to clarify.--Koltom 14:36, 10 February 2008 (EST)

Irrigation is only needed to be able to farm on rock. Soil layers don't need irrigation before you can farm on them. --Eagle of Fire 15:04, 10 February 2008 (EST)

Irrigating a soil layer will however allow you to fertilize the farm plot using potash which increases the yeild. --Malibu Stacey 13:37, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

The article indicates that "some natural ponds replenish themselves at the beginning of spring." My research indicates that this is the result of water thawing. Any amount of water (x/7) becomes ice during winter (assuming your climate is cold enough). When melting, it becomes 7/7 deep water. Ripheus 02:57, 6 April 2008 (EDT)

Consequently... after irrigating land, is the muddied land subject to evaporation post-planting? Okita 03:28, 17 June 2008 (EDT)

I've tidied up the article a lot, and made it much more newbie friendly (thanks also to Brandonazz), but I'm still a bit of a newbie myself so if I've made any factual errors I apologise. Hopefully it should be a lot easier to follow for those new to the game. --Daxx 17:55, 14 August 2008 (EDT)

Is it possible to irrigate on constructed floors? I'm considering building a farm on top of a tower. Amenos42 00:12, 20 August 2008 (EDT)

Does the irrigated land dry up eventually? Arvid 17:24, 6 November 2008 (EST)

If it does, it dries very, very slowly, over the course of years. Using 'dirt roads' can clean up the mud, however. Sadly, there does not seem to be any way to clean up your muddy engraved floors. --Navian 17:37, 6 November 2008 (EST)

Depends on the local temperature, how wet the area is, etc. I've had muddy fields dry out in a season. If there's at least 1/7 water (and it's not just muddy), and you want to get the water out, your best bet is a screw pump. --RomeoFalling 19:16, 6 November 2008 (EST)

Confusion about growing outdoor seeds in mountain biomes

I put in info about why plants won't grow in irrigated outdoor plots based on this message from Toady. I suspect that the user who found that this was also true for 'greenhoused' tiles was probably trying it in a mountain biome, but I didn't verify that I could make it work in other biomes. --Threlicus 17:19, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

I have been successfully running an outdoor, irrigated plot in a desert biome for quite some time now, but I never realized this "bug" before because I had never tried it before in a mountain biome. 3lB33 17:44, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Toady One said that " if you settled in the mountains and there's a patch that's just grassless soil, it's probably a mountain biome square that doesn't accept any plant types." So as far as I can tell that means that the outdoor seeds will grow in mountain biomes, but just not on rocky tiles. 3lB33 18:11, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Are there non-rocky base tiles in mountain biomes? I don't know how to tell if a given tile is in one biome or another after the embark, and with the vast expanse of rock I've got in my mountain fastness here, I don't see any non-rock tiles that aren't at least plausibly the edge of the other biomes in my embark square... Threlicus 19:20, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Can be. It's not (normally) possible to embark on a map that is 100% mountain - so there is a chance that the non-mountain will bleed over into a mountain block. (No way to tell after embark afaik.) This is still not clear in the article - the diff between a tile that is rock and a biome that is mountain seems to blur.--Albedo 21:47, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

growth of Tower caps

Tower caps will grow on un-irrigated, underground soil just as much, as fast and as often as on irrigated soil - the catch is that you need a soil layer below the soil floor, just like for outdoor trees. Irrigating is only needed for stone. --Koltom 20:00, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Oh, not again! Wrong! TC's grow much more densely on irrigated soil, and do not need a soil layer beneath them! So, while an individual TC may(?) take just as long, the forest, overall, produces mass wood "faster" with irrigation. This is a DF myth that has been busted long ago, but still malingers like a bad smell.

Try it! Take one homogeneous area, irrigate half, go have dinner, come back and see the diff. And/or with half over stone or a mined-out area - makes NO difference to Tower Caps. (When you do, be careful of "damp soil" - over an aquifer, or near damp walls - they seem to like those better if unirrigated.)--Albedo 20:29, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

I "try" it in every fortress since i never start without UGR or sand. Tower caps and bushes grow on soil if -and only if- soil is below. Easy to check with reveal. The pattern is obvious. Unless irrigated, then soil below is not needed. Stone floor does not need soil(obviously) or stone below and of course needs to be muddy/irrigated. A quick count also shows that a muddy stone area is populated just as dense as a soil one without mud. (just as a sidenote, if those dwarven "mythbusters" are anything like the tv ones, i count that as further proof for my side ;-) Or were you referring to the rumor mill
honorable source with a reputation for fact checking
forum?) --Koltom 23:46, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm - well, I currently have a TC farm on the one, single layer of UG soil (white sand) on that map, with chalk underneath - some excavated - growing just fine above both. And on that, I had not irrigated the whole area, but only about 80% of the excavated sand tiles - density in the irrigated is (currently) an estimated 15% saplings/TC's, on the unirrigated about 5%. Sounds like we need independent input, and/or something more is going on. Does this map have an aquifer? Because the saplings that are growing in the unirrigated strongly tend to show up right at the edge of the irrigated soil, and/or even on the other side of a (damp) wall from a murky pool.--Albedo 00:04, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Reservoir Irrigation

The current version says you can "effectively" water an area 7x the size of the reservoir, but that doesn't seem to take into account the water that remains in the reservoir once the floodgate's opened which can lead to spots getting missed and people who're anal about this sort of stuff getting annoyed - maybe a 6x/5x figure should be used instead so we can get a depth average of 1.4-ish? --Sorenson 11 March 2008 (EST)

The current example for reservior irrigation is a rather bad example, as water flows far too slowly for it to fill the destination area before drying out - actually attempting it would likely only irrigate 60-70% of the growing room. A much more reliable setup would leave 1.5 (between 1 and 2) units of water on each tile (would take longer to evaporate, but you only need to irrigate once and it's well worth the wait), and the gate between the reservoir and the tree farm would ideally be significantly wider (ideally the entire wall separating the two in the current diagram) so the reservoir takes less than a month to empty. --Quietust 19:40, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

• Just for the sake of argument, I followed the exact diagram (which only used a 23x23 farming area rather than 24x24, which should have arguably worked better), and it only irrigated 78% of the tiles. With a 24x24 reservoir, that would've only translated to 71.5% coverage. --Quietust 19:57, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Underground River Irrigation

I find the description of underground river irrigation misleading. As a screw pump pulls water from the level below it to the current level it is far easier/simpler to build your farm(s) on the same level as the "open space" of an underground river rather than the same level as the water of the underground river. --Malibu Stacey 13:31, 20 October 2009 (UTC)