I created a Google Sheet for planning crop rotation. With this you can select crops from the pull downs and it will tell you the remaining days in the year for crops and the net effect on your soil. Additionally there is a spot for the overall net effect of your 3 year rotation on the soil.
I’m not super knowledgeable with spreadsheets so if anyone wants to improve this or has tips or requests for this let me know.
Currently I’m doing testing on the effects of week suppression and working out how to have a soil composition recommender. Generally most crops like the soil being around 55% clay and 45% sand for the 10% yield increase. Personally I just get the fields as close to 50/50 and not worry about min/maxing the soil comp too much.
That’s good to know about the weeds and how your rotation does. I’d like to do some research on the effects of what the plant’s weed suppression levels mean and the effect of field maintenance on weed levels.
Awesome work so far! We’ve begun parallel work on this same topic on the Community Wiki, hopefully what we’ve documented already can help you take this further.
Slight problem… the effect on fertility has a ±5% modifier on it. So Wheat is -5 ±5, so it could be anywhere from 0% to -10%. Clover can be anywhere from 0% to +10%. So if you get a bad roll on both, instead of being even for the year you are at -10%.
Everything has a ±5% so in the long run everything would eventually balance out so I didn’t bother to include it in the math. The only thing that matters in the long run is the constant. It’s more to determine if on average you are net gaining or net losing fertility. You can always “top up” underperforming fields with night soil.
Wow I’ve been reading that wrong this whole time. I thought it was -5 to +5 out of +/-5 rather than X +/- 5 lol. Thank you for the insight. This explains a few things I thought were errors.
This is the initial crop rotation I use when I start a field. peas help improve the fertility of the field and provide food. I put the farmer in the middle to help reduce rocks and weeds. Then peas last again to help feed folks though the winter. When the fertility gets high enough I change crop rotation. I put double flax in middle rotation. My folks are wanting cloths made by the time the field is ready/fertile enough.
Dang [psiclone] you are a serious gamer. It hurts my 3 working brain cells just to read your very intensely serious posting. Go dude Go. I use a 10x10 field build. My ocd likes the 10 count and square shaped field. Is the 12x12 more efficient?
This looks like a good First Boost in general, but I’ve started varying my rotational plan based on what the new field needs most: fertility maintenance/enhancing, weed suppression, rock removal.
That, in turn, determines whether I start with the hoeing farmer, Peas/Beans, Clover, or Buckwheat. After a couple of years, I usually ‘fiddle’ the rotation to keep up with whatever negative factor (rock, weed, fertility) needs attention.
Farming efficiently takes a lot of attention in the first years, I’ve found.
I’ve also never paid much attention to the sand/clay mixture. Between a good rotational scheme (which generally is built around Clover, Beans/Peas, Grain) and Compost addition, I’ve had no problem getting Fertility levels of any field up to 95+% after some years and keeping it there. Given that too many maps don’t have enough of either or both of sand and clay, it doesn’t seem to me to be a good use of either to dump them on the fields.
I use a 10x10 field build. My ocd likes the 10 count and square shaped field. Is the 12x12 more efficient?