Talk:Tutorials/Pumpkin and melon farming

Hello, I just built this new tutorial page, so we can get the farming info out of the Melon (block) and Pumpkin pages. I've converted the various examples from Melon into BlockGrids, and then converted those into PNG images (because two grids of this size will bump into a per-page limit on looping). I also copied in much text (mostly from Melon) linked in various other images from both pages.

The big thing I haven't done is to actually test the various efficiency values, and if anyone wants to test and update those, thank you! --Mental Mouse 17:38, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

From what I've seen in my tests, placing a (solid? non-transparent?) block directly above the melon/pumpkin stem makes the fruit grow very slowly. Someone else wants to test/confirm this, and add the info to the page? Moo 11:54, 20 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm seeing this too and came to the farming page here to see if anyone else had noticed it. 124.188.145.99 02:13, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Fruit spawn rate
Why do all of the photos show farms using a block of water? It states earlier in the article that water only increases the rate at which the stems grow, not the fruit themselves. The water blocks seem to be unnecessarily decreasing efficiency. 216.229.86.125 02:41, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
 * If nothing else, planting without the water is a PITA, and if you accidentally break a plant the farmland is likely to revert. More to the point, a 9&times;9 plot of farmland with water in the middle is a "generic farm plot":  You can plant whatever you want on it, harvest when ready, then change crops freely, or just leave it empty while you decide what to grown next.  Without the water, you'll be doing a lot of hoeing every time you replant, and if you leave it empty, it'll quickly revert to dirt.  --Mental Mouse 03:19, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi guys. I've read contradictory statements about whether hydration affects melon/pumpkin spawn rates so decided to go into creative and set up my own test. My results clearly indicate that the growth rate algorithm is used in determining whether a fruit is spawned or not. Does anyone have any evidence to the contrary?

I tested only with melons but I assume pumpkins are the same. --OminousPenguin 11:48, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

No additional comments after a week so I've changed the main article. OminousPenguin 14:32, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Efficiency, How Should it be Calculated?
Should we base efficiency based solely off of how much space is used for the stems of the pumpkins, or should we include the space that the pumpkins grow into? The reason I ask is because of farms that are listed in the Basic Farms section seem to count the spaces that the pumpkins grow into, but they only count the spaces that are above or below the plants themselves and not the ones that are to the left or right of the plants.

As an example: Farm A from the basic farms section (the one I use) is listed as having 48.88% efficiency, but it counts the size of the farm as being 10x9. If we make the range of the farm only 9x9 and take out the row on the bottom of the picture of empty dirt blocks, the efficiency is up to 54.3%. Finally, if we count all blocks that could possibly be grown onto, making the farm 11x11, the efficiency goes down to 36.4%.

I personally think that only counting the spaces that the stems could grow up or down to is a broken method. Any thoughts on this? KGuitarMan94 (talk) 15:00, 20 November 2013 (UTC)