Could you please explain in depth as to what #3 entails?
this is how i built my automated crops for making fuel for big reactors, i have a map with 10 of these going
dig a 9x9 area
dig 5 trenches, 2 blocks deep. the 2 left and 2 right are only 8 long. the center trench is 3 blocks deep, this is for planter and pipes for power, items.
place water in trenches, (must be source, no flows) leave center trench dry. then place lilypads of fertility above water
place a chest, the place hoppers so center hopper faces chest, the rest point towards the center hopper. place planter in center of 9x9 plot
run power line for planter, place row of dispensers down at back of plot.
run itemduct from planter to chest behind hoppers. use wrench to remove connection to hopper
set up planter. for this crop, 72 plants, i add 2x that so i dont have to wait for seeds coming from hoppers. note the +3 upgrade to increase range of planter
place ender chest ( or whatever u prefer) this is where all exported items go. add a servo to the pipe under the chest
set the top connection so it pulls items from top chest, open servo interface on top connection under chest, set redstone enabled low
now open servo gui on connection to ender chest, set it to black list, ignore metadata and put in a seed for the crop you are growing. this ensures seeds from hoppers go back to the planter. the ignore metatdata part is important, sometimes seeds come out with different data values, this ensures all those seeds go through to the planter.
place fertilized dirt from Random Things. if everything was done right, you should see plants
because this set up uses water flooding, we need to build walls to contain the water and the drops. the sides MUST be 2 high or stray drops will escape. the back wall over dispensers will be 3 high, youll see why (note, i used blocks up front by hoppers, use stairs instead, especially on the block that goes over the wood chest)
wiring of the crop timing circuit. basically, going from right to left (all project red components + wireless redstone):
wireless reciever -> not gate -> timer (set to 90 seconds) -> repeater (8 ticks)
from here it branches to a buffer gate to the wire on the dispensers, then to the second part of the circuit:
state cell (set to 13 seconds) -> repeater (8 ticks) -> wire on dispensers. the switch is optional, its there to run the crop manually if you want. when the reciever is acttive, the crop will cycle every 90 seconds, with a 13 second delay that gives the items time to travel to the hoppers when the water is active before toggling the water off. the wireless reciever allows you to control this crop remotely, use ae level emitters or whatever you use to monitor how much of that crops item you have and turns it on when you run low of that item. if you want it running 24x7, dont include the reviecer and not gate. place 1 water bucket each into all dispensers
last part of this is the lamps of growth, with an essentia mirror to transport the herba to the lamps. this gets the crop to grow fast enough to keep up with the 90 second cycle on the control circuit. this does NOT guarantee a full harvest every cycle, but at the cost of 2 or 3 plants not maturing, i think this is good enough for full automation and getting all the drops, including nature and weak essence.
