[Tutorial] Flower farm in vanilla MTG

[Skamiz Kazzarch]

Flowers, one of the few few things that can be farmed in vanilla 'Minetest Game'. But also one of the resources which is relatively useful, since as a source of dye they add a lot to the building palette and can by themselves be used as a decoration.

Every 5 minutes each flower has a chance to spawn up to 3 flowers of the same kind nearby, but only if the area around the source flower isn't already over crowded.
If you just plant a few flowers on a flat area and let them spread you will end up with some thing like this:

screenshot_20230122_124138.png (95.28 KiB) Viewed 1441 times

At this point each flower has too many neighbors and you will first have to harvest some of them before new ones will grow.

If you build a proper flower farm instead, they will spread until they fill the whole area.

screenshot_20230122_124916.png (220.11 KiB) Viewed 1441 times

While there isn't a way to automate the farming without any mods, this setup requires your attention much less frequently.

First the construction, then an explanation why it works.

For your flower farm you will want a flat area. Changes in elevation make this not work. Then you dig 5 nodes under the farm, where you will place your seed stock.

screenshot_20230122_125044.png (95.85 KiB) Viewed 1441 times

All new flowers at the top will originate from this lower level.
On the lower level the seed stock is distributed in batches of 3, with 4 nodes of spacing between them.
Besides the spacing, what is also important is that the lower flowers sit on the same type of soil node as the above flowers should grow on and that each seed flower is directly next to a light source of maximum illumination (14), otherwise they can't spread.

-Picture in next post.-


Why does it work?
When a flower decides to spread, it checks a 9x9x9 area centered around itself for flowers, if there are more then 3 (including itself), the attempt is aborted.
In the next steps the flower looks in the same 9x9x9 area for soil under air. Selects 3 of them, and places new flowers above the selected nodes.
This 'above' is very important. By building the farm in such a way that all the 'soil under air' nodes it can find are just at the top limit of it's search range, we guarantee that the new flowers are outside the search range completely and thus they aren't counted on subsequent attempts of the origin flower to spread.
And thus new flowers will grow until there literally is no more space to grow in.

As a side note, this works for any node in the group 'flora', if you for some reason want to farm grass or maybe something added by a mod.

[Skamiz Kazzarch]

screenshot_20230122_125008.png (184.28 KiB) Viewed 1440 times

You can just tile this design how ever often you like. Just keep 4 nodes of space between the flower cells.

[monkeypox]

thanks. Trying this tonight (;

[v-rob]

Hey, this is really quite clever! Now I know how to get flowers if I want them. Although, I usually have the opposite problem of too many flowers due to building large buildings over a long period of time, and the flowers take over. (Nooo, not the dandelions! They're taking over!)

[MegaMegaMega]

That's ingenious. I love hacks like this.

[andreagray]

Thanks for sharing sir