Ok so I made an Automatic Tree Farm some time ago and now I'm almost ready to start turning all of the saplings into biomass. The only problem is that I keep having to put Humus and Saplings into the arboretum manually. I would love to have it so that I can pump Humus/Saplings into the arboretum automatically. I have been trying to figure this out for a couple of days now and the only thing I've come up with is to get some golem workers and have them pick up some saplings and then put them into a chest and pump the saplings to the arboretum. I have no clue about the Humus though. And even though that might work with the golems it would be pretty inefficient so I would rather try going with something else.
Biomass/Automatic Tree Farm Setup
- Thread starter SeaStrudel
- Start date
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use a Steve's Carts tree farm, sooo much more efficient and requires no input after initial setup 
But then I wasted a bunch of time and resources on the Forestry tree farmuse a Steve's Carts tree farm, sooo much more efficient and requires no input after initial setup
Is that the only way?no, not the only way, just imo the best way. And certainly the easiest if you only want a ton of saplings out of it (you also get shit tons of wood and shit tons of apples)
Could you possibly tell me the harder ways? I know that sounds stupid but I have 5 solar panels and a whole bunch of water mills running 2 electrical engines for my setup. Plus then I would've wasted 5 diamonds on making the logger. Sorry for making you explain all of this to me lol.
well a peat farm would be able to produce peat (bear with me) that could be burned in peat fired engines. The waste product of that is ash. Ash can be used to create humus. That's the only way of automating the old forestry farms that I know of (there may be other ways) ofc you'd need some way of getting sand but that's piss easy (igneous extruder->pulverisor)
I did a steves carts tree farm last time, and went with an MFR one this time. At first it was fairly meh until i switched it over to redwoods. At that point it was on par with a cart farm. I had to tweak the config to allow it to harvest up to the top though. Added fertilizer production from my animal pens (MFR again) and it was easily outpacing the cart farm. Plus it only takes up a fraction of the space.
Then I manually updated MFR for some bug fixes and the harvesters went berserk (I had 2 of them on the tree), they now clear a redwood (including leaves) in under a minute and I had to set up deep storage units to handle all the output. Granted they are also sucking a solid 128 EU/t, so not a trivial power investment, but hey, that just means you need to build more power generators right!
edit: worth noting I have no idea if you can use the redwood sapplings to make biomass since they are mod added. I am just using the wood atm.
Edit2: Decided to time em, 30 seconds for a "small" redwood, 45 for a "big" one. Including all cooldown timers (fertilizer, planter, and harvesters only check if they need to work every few seconds to save on lag) it was easily a redwood per minute.
Then I manually updated MFR for some bug fixes and the harvesters went berserk (I had 2 of them on the tree), they now clear a redwood (including leaves) in under a minute and I had to set up deep storage units to handle all the output. Granted they are also sucking a solid 128 EU/t, so not a trivial power investment, but hey, that just means you need to build more power generators right!
edit: worth noting I have no idea if you can use the redwood sapplings to make biomass since they are mod added. I am just using the wood atm.
Edit2: Decided to time em, 30 seconds for a "small" redwood, 45 for a "big" one. Including all cooldown timers (fertilizer, planter, and harvesters only check if they need to work every few seconds to save on lag) it was easily a redwood per minute.
I might just pump the Humus from my house to the farm (It's a little far but still doable.) Anyways, if worse comes to worse I will use the Steves cart farm. But does anyone know if the Golem Workers will work for the saplings? If I use the golems plus pumping the humus then I would be fine with that but I just want to know if they will work before I go and make them.
Golems would work just fine. And you'd get bonus points for using them, because golems make everything better. Extra credit if the golems have little fezzes.
One continuously fed TE sawmill is significantly more than enough to keep up with two max temp HP 36. You will need a large stock to get through the heatup phase though.
I dunno why people think the fezzes are cool... the tophats are infinitely cooler!
I'm using logistics pipes for such stuff so i don't know if it will work for sure but you should be able to just pipe out the saplings into bc pipes and connect a diamond pipe to your arboretum rerouting the saplings into it. Anything that it can't put in should continue going through your pipesystem so you can send the excess to your storage.
instead of a turtle just use a fabricator with the Xytank, theres an IO (?) that will let you keep the bucket in there and just use it continuously
I'm also going for a Mine Factory Reloaded for my new tree farm, but instead of bothering with any Fertilizer I'm going to plant my trees on the new Xycraft Soil.
The only problem I have is that the MFR Harvester can't harvest the new Forestry trees, but the BiomesXL trees and stuff it harvests just fine. The BiomesXL saplings can be used for Biomass btw, I know Etho uses them and if you look in NEI you'll see the BiomesXL saplings in the Biomass recipe as well.
If you want harder ways though I think an RP2 Frame harvester (basically a frame quarry that only clears a certain area where you grow trees) is one of the more complicated builds (mostly because you have to deal with the logic), but quite powerful. It might not harvest as fast as some of the other farms, but it doesn't use any power besides some Blutricity for the frame motors and it doesn't need anything like Humus.
Basically Forestry farms are easier to build, but take more effort to fully automate (due to needed resources/fuel/power) and an RP2 farm is harder to build but quite easy to automate.
The only problem I have is that the MFR Harvester can't harvest the new Forestry trees, but the BiomesXL trees and stuff it harvests just fine. The BiomesXL saplings can be used for Biomass btw, I know Etho uses them and if you look in NEI you'll see the BiomesXL saplings in the Biomass recipe as well.
If you want harder ways though I think an RP2 Frame harvester (basically a frame quarry that only clears a certain area where you grow trees) is one of the more complicated builds (mostly because you have to deal with the logic), but quite powerful. It might not harvest as fast as some of the other farms, but it doesn't use any power besides some Blutricity for the frame motors and it doesn't need anything like Humus.
Basically Forestry farms are easier to build, but take more effort to fully automate (due to needed resources/fuel/power) and an RP2 farm is harder to build but quite easy to automate.
You can also create humus with compost in a crafting table (compost is created with a dirt surrounded by 4 wheat) or in a carpenter filled with water. 8 dirt with mulch in the middle. Mulch can come from squeezing apples as well as placing wheat in a moistener.
If you are running GT, ash can also come from dark ashes (byproduct of a few recipes) in an industrial centrifuge.
One 5x5 new forestry farm with redwoods and you will drown in wood and saplings, 12x12 xycraft biomass tank filling up quickly and the upgraded barrel is already full with logs... Pretty sure Ill be able to power a few HP boilers like that. Little downside is that it eats through fertilizer pretty quickly, used up about 16 stacks already.
I agree with lambert at this point steve's carts are WAY more powerful and easier to use then any other option. You just set it up and it goes. very cool.