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)
 * I for one was basically busy in the real world all week. I'm not going to blindly revert, but can you give a fuller description of the experiments you ran?  This seems like new and useful information, but a decent how-to-reproduce would make it better grounded.  Also, I'm guessing the growth rate is calculated on the stem's square (since the table only applies to farmland), is this right?    --MentalMouse42 (talk) 00:10, 21 November 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)
 * I'd say the proper metric for space efficiency is "number of possible simultaneous pumpkins" / "total area of the plan". Including extra spaces for the pumpkins to grow lowers space efficiency, but increases growth rate -- either way is a valid tradeoff.  For design A, removing the bottom row of blocks is not valid, because then the bottom row of stems have nowhere to grow fruit.  The maximum possible space efficiency is 50%, one fruit per stem.  However, this would presumably be dry farming, with abysmal growth rates, especially if the claim above is accepted.  --MentalMouse42 (talk) 00:02, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

So that means we have to take into account for every place that a pumpkin is able to grow, making the efficiency of A 36.4%. Or do you mean something completely different? KGuitarMan94 (talk) 16:34, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
 * I do not see how you are getting that number. Pumpkins cannot grow diagonally, so in design A, each stalk has exactly one place it can place a pumpkin, and none of those spaces is shared with another stalk.  One stalk/space pair is preempted by the water (but still counts against area), so the efficiency is slightly below 50%, as noted.  Several of the basic designs have the same quality.  Another point: if each individual stalk can place their fruit in any of several places, and some or all of those would prevent another stalk from fruiting, that reduces efficiency (over and above having extra spaces per stalk).  Thus, the middle row in design D should not be empty dirt or farmland, because any fruit placed there will occupy the stalks both above and below it (but not if they already have a fruit in their "expected" row).  --MentalMouse42 (talk) 01:46, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * ETA: Having dirt in the middle row of D would reduce the number of pumpkins fom a constant 36 to an average of 32 (for the 8 spaces in that row, of the two nearest stalks, the first one to fruit has a 50% chance of blocking the other one).  This would reduce the efficiency to an average of 39.51%. --MentalMouse42 (talk) 02:08, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

What I am saying is that in every row there are pumpkins that can grow to the left or right of the stem as well as up or down. So yes I was doing that math wrong, it would be an 11x11 minus a few squares that can't be grown on, but my point is that there are more spaces that can be grown onto than what is being represented by each picture. For example, the pumpkins at the ends of each of the five rows of pumpkin stems is able to grow left or right of itself depending on which side of the farm it is. KGuitarMan94 (talk) 21:56, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Notice that increases growth rate (maybe) but not yield. Also, if you're allowing the ones on the ends to grow to the sides, that effectively means your farm is two blocks wider than the diagram, with a correspondingly larger area, so much lower efficiency.  The efficiency numbers for these diagrams assume that the outside is unavailable, perhaps fencing.  That's why I fixed the diagram for B -- someone had clipped off the top row of dirt, leaving the top row of stems blocked.  --MentalMouse42 (talk) 23:45, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

At least for A as a single unit it lowers efficiency, but if you count the outer blocks in the calculations without assuming they are blocked, the efficiency actually goes up if you repeat the pattern for A. If add a repeat of A on the left or right side and assume that the 10 outer blocks that can be grown on are available, the efficiency goes up.
 * If we use a single A unit, and assume that those 10 outer-lying blocks are available (leaving out the 10 that are not)the efficiency is 39.7%.
 * If we use two A units side-by-side, so the rows of 9 become rows of 18, we now have an 11x20 farm (minus 10 for the unusable blocks) gives us 41.9%

I don't really care what method is used, I'm just trying to better understand why the methods that are used are used. KGuitarMan94 (talk) 01:55, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
 * And none of those values are close to A's "enclosed" efficiency of 48.9%. The extra border cuts the space efficiency, because it counts against the area (denominator);  when you tile the plot, the border is proportionately less of the area, so it cuts less efficiency.  Note that if you tile A vertically without mirroring it, you get the same problem as with D's middle row.  --MentalMouse42 (talk) 12:22, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
 * The convention is that the "area" of a farm is the smallest rectangle including all blocks that are actually relevant to growth, specifically so that it almost doesn't matter what you have outside the diagram: fences, walls, flowers, moat, cobble border, even lava (it looks like crops aren't flammable).  But that "almost" pretty much consists of dirt/grass/farmland next to pumpkin and melon farms, because if you allow blocks beyond the diagram to receive fruit, then you're letting the farm occupy that additional row or column. --MentalMouse42 (talk) 12:37, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

How is the water placed in plan H
I am not following the description for the placement of the water block in H. Could someone describe it in more detail. Specifically, I don't understand "if there is the usual pit in the bottom layer (and matching hole above), the source block can be placed against one of the upper blocks, or 2 blocks above that layer". I understand that on layer 1 there is a 1 block hole in the center, on layer 2 there is a gap (or a hole with two sides open if you prefer) directly over the hole in the first layer. However, when I attempt to place a water block against the upper layer, even if I dig down an extra layer so there is a two block deep hole under the water block, it flows out onto my fields.BewareofDoug (talk) 21:06, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Is this what is intended? or for a complete version:

Does it matter whether the blocks above are transparent? BewareofDoug (talk) 16:47, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Error (?) in "Growth Mechanics" Section - Wrong Light Level?
In the "Growth Mechanics" section, this article says "Growth only occurs when the light level is 10 or higher." I wasn't sure if this was referring to the light level of just the stem or also the space where the pumpkin or melon would appear (which can sometimes be 1 light level lower than the adjacent stem), so I did an experiment in-game. I assumed the article was correct and just wanted to know whether the mechanics applied only to the stem, and my experiment seemed to confirm this -- but it also seems to have proved that there is an error in the article! My experiment showed that the stem will grow and produce fruit even at light level 9! So is the article wrong when it says "10 or higher"? I didn't want to edit the article unless someone else confirmed my test results with their own tests. I was using a torch as a light source, not sunlight, and it still grew at light level 9. I am playing on a CraftBukkit server but I assume the growth mechanics are the same as in official Minecraft. I only tested pumpkins, not melons.

Note that the article Tutorials/Crop farming currently says "Any of wheat, carrots, or potatoes will only grow under the following conditions: [...]   A light level of 9 or higher. This doesn't have to be sunlight, so torches will let crops grow at night or underground." But it doesn't say whether this also applies to pumpkins and melons.

In the "Effects of light" section of the Light article, there is a chart that says "Saplings, Crops, Pumpkins, Melons, Carrots, Potatoes, & Beetroots" will grow at light level 9 ONLY IF THE LIGHT IS SUNLIGHT. This seems to be disproved by my experiment, in which I used a torch. I am going to post a note in that article's Talk page as well but I'm not going to make any changes to the article because I haven't performed experiments on other crops and I don't really know if using CraftBukkit makes a difference.

I wonder if the mechanics were changed at some point in a Minecraft update. Or is it possible that the author performed some flawed experiments or misinterpreted the results??

--HeyoSpeaker (talk) 19:30, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Any of these are possible -- Our research is often imperfect, and the game is a moving target. Currently your info is in the article marked as "tested" (not by me). --MentalMouse42 (talk) 11:27, 11 May 2014 (UTC)