Using dung in automated farms

[Chuffy]

I think I already know the answer to this, but is there any way of using a dispenser or block dispenser to fertilize crops/trees with dung - Im guessing theres no BTW device that lets you *use* an item but I thought its worth an ask in case Im missing the obvious

Waiting for trees to grow is a pain!

[Urian]

No, by design you can't automate fertilizing. FC has a very firm view on this and it will almost certainly never be possible since it makes things too easy and overpowered farms.

[Chuffy]

No, by design you can't automate fertilizing. FC has a very firm view on this and it will almost certainly never be possible since it makes things too easy and overpowered farms.

I guess so, my lumber farm is getting stupidly big to get the output I want, but I guess the pretty much unlimited world size makes this all fine :D

Cheers for the fast reply

[Mason11987]

No, by design you can't automate fertilizing. FC has a very firm view on this and it will almost certainly never be possible since it makes things too easy and overpowered farms.

I guess so, my lumber farm is getting stupidly big to get the output I want, but I guess the pretty much unlimited world size makes this all fine :D

Cheers for the fast reply

It might be worthwhile to consider a bloodwood farm.

[Stormweaver]

Yeah, you either want a bloodwood farm (has to be in the nether, high upkeep costs, simple construction, high output) or a birch tree farm (can be built in the overworld, low upkeep cost, difficult construction, also high output).

Standard wall o' saws tree farms are just too...slow, imo.

[Biohazard91X]

Could you possibly provide an example of a birch tree farm please? I have a pair of normal tree farms in the overworld and a bloodwood tree farm in the nether, but the former is too slow and I don't spend enough time in the nether for the latter to be effective :P

[Stormweaver]

I don't have one on hand, but the general concept was discussed way back when, here. You're looking for the ones with sand and pistons, and the circuitry is nowhere near as big as that in reality.

[Williamson]

If you want a commented design, both me and Chaechew have made videos explaining how to make different tree farm designs, all of which have different considerations, like Stormweaver said.
Here are the links:
*Shameless self plug* My sand based birch tree farm, with connected mass kiln:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2501
Chaechew's saw based birch farm (easy and fast to use with bonemeal or otherwise):
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2484
Chaechew's block dispenser based bloodwood farm:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2542

Hope those help!
Williamson

[Stormweaver]

I was just playing around (I havn't built an auto-birch farm in ages) and created a really nice design for one....and when I was fine tuning, I put one too many wool slabs in the counter and the resulting exposed water stream washed away all of my redstone.

I'll post screenshots tomorrow, when I have the heart to reassemble it.

[Starshifterxen]

God I feel your pain...

Water and redstone, gah!

[Stormweaver]

Well, I got distracted from rebuilding by coming up with a better way of doing it. As a result, all I've got is a messy, WIP build with wiring everywhere, randomly placed blocks, and general mess. Kinda easy to see what each bit does though.

...so my plans for today will be to shrink the footprint by a large amount. Till then, since I've finally got a dropbox account, I may as well use it for something - The tree farm. Just bonemeal the sapling to see it in progress.

[Starshifterxen]

Just had a look at this storm and its looking good. I'm still not sure what all the redstone does, but i got the general idea. :)

I like the alternating sand/gravel effect, although i notice that you lose a few blocks every now and then (converted back to items)

I can't help feeling you must be able to collect a few of those sapplings to full automate it? Although i guess that would probably inhibit growth.

[Stormweaver]

Just had a look at this storm and its looking good. I'm still not sure what all the redstone does, but i got the general idea. :)

I like the alternating sand/gravel effect, although i notice that you lose a few blocks every now and then (converted back to items)

I can't help feeling you must be able to collect a few of those sapplings to full automate it? Although i guess that would probably inhibit growth.

Yeah, I need to fudge around with the timing a little to prevent that; I'm not sure it can be considered a bug with the BD or not.

Collecting some of the saplings is more than doable though; the redstone on the top can all be moved underneath (other than that repeater on the Block dispenser and the dust on the other side of the sapling) - this was my messy prototype build. My older ones needed an extra block of vertical clearance, which prevented pine trees from working with it unless I wired the bit at the top to the main circuit, which is a pain to do - of course once we have lenses I can do that anyway, for a slightly higher growth rate.

I ended up building something different this evening, so...bah, I'll finish it tomorrow. Redstone is fun, but the loss of sand/gravel is going to be a pain to debug >.>

[Biohazard91X]

Thanks guys, I managed to build a nice sand tower auto tree farm with all your help! :D

It's a mixture of all of your ideas, mostly hidden underground to look prettier.

Here's a picture of what you see on the surface :)

Spoiler

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