Alternative Automation for Wheat, Peat, etc.

[abculatter_2]

This is a thread for sharing ideas for non-obvious or unorthodox methods of farming the various plants/things in minecraft.

To begin, here is an idea I came up with for automated peat farming, which is based off of one of Eloraam's systems from Direwolf20's server let's play.

This is an overview of the design, with the water left out to maintain ease of viewing;
http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r31/abculatter_2/2013-02-02_025551_zps591fdece.png
http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r31/abculatter_2/2013-02-02_025613_zps40c95680.png
http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r31/abculatter_2/2013-02-02_025624_zps8bf03c02.png

And here with water, with the second one being an example of its ease of stacking for efficiency;
http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r31/abculatter_2/2013-02-02_030253_zpsc1867c81.png
http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r31/abculatter_2/2013-02-02_031802_zps8e39a202.png

Basically, pistons push the earth forward along the path, and at the end of it the earth is broken by a block breaker to harvest. There are three steps in the process, which is begun by a timer, with each step separated by a Redpower repeater which was right-clicked once; First, the pistons push the earth forward, immediately after which the deployers replace the block with a fresh piece of bog earth. Then, the redstone current is carried over to the block breakers, which harvest the (hopefully) matured bog earth.
The timer can be set to any value beyond 5 minutes, with 7.5 minutes possibly being better, though I'm honestly not entirely sure. In-game testing is encouraged.

Up next is applying the same concept to wheat production.

 

[Abdiel]

I had a turtle watch and automatically harvest peat and replant bog earth from a "standard" flat peat farm setup for a while. The turtle would automatically refuel from the peat gathered, but couldn't craft bog earth by itself (although that could be easily added given an infinite supply of sand and an infinite water pool). Since then I tore the system down, so no screenshots, sorry.

 

[abculatter_2]

I had a turtle watch and automatically harvest peat and replant bog earth from a "standard" flat peat farm setup for a while. The turtle would automatically refuel from the peat gathered, but couldn't craft bog earth by itself (although that could be easily added given an infinite supply of sand and an infinite water pool). Since then I tore the system down, so no screenshots, sorry.

This, honestly, is probably the best option.
If you code the program to do so, you can easily have a single turtle checking both above and below itself for matured bog earth (which can be silk touched, by the way) allowing for a 66.6% space-efficiency, as well as not having to muck about with filtering out and replanting the bog earth in my above system, which reduces the efficiency of a design which is already somewhat inefficient of space.
However, obviously, you'd have to actually know how to program, which many people probably don't.
I may program this eventually and, if I do, I will certainly make it available to the public.

 

[whythisname]

I'm curious how that setup in the OP compares with the regular Peat Bog+Turbary combo. Is it just as fast for a similar size? Or do you need a huge farm to get Peat Bog+Turbary efficiency/speed levels?

With the new Forestry farms I've also been looking at a way to harvest trees with RP2. Though there are many ways to go about it and I'm not sure which would be the best. I could restrict it to 1 (or a few) types of trees and only have to harvest a 1x1 or 2x2 area. Or I could make it so it can cut down (almost) any tree, but that would require almost a frame quarry to do that.

 

[abculatter_2]

Well, theoretically, all you'd need to match a peat bog-turbary set-up is to match the number of blocks it has, which is 128. (two stacks) Since each piston pushes 12 blocks, that means after 13 pistons (pistons, not layers), you should match the output of a bog. As for the space required...

This farm would, I believe, require a 4x15x15 area. I believe a peat bog requires a 15x2x15 area. So I suppose if you wanted to economize horizontal space, then this may be better, but otherwise the peat bog-turbary would be better... Assuming you could get them to stack correctly, which can sometimes be difficult and unreliable.
However, if you want the most space-efficient method, replacing the bog and possibly the turbary with a digging turtle would be best. Additionally, the maker of Computer Craft does not intend to remove turtles in the future.

 

[EPfencer]

Where can I find Eloraam's system? I've been searching but can't find a video or tutorial.

 

[Whovian]

I like Deployer/Block Breaker/Frame Tree Farms, despite the fact that I've never tried to build one.