Producing fertilizer to keep up with a MFR tree farm

[dieselfuelonly]

Hey ya'll, need some ideas on methods of producing fertilizer for a MFR tree farm in Monster. I'm using Monster 1.0.3, Gregtech, and ExtraBees/ExtraTrees.

I'm building my base in a 1x1 chunk area, just something I'm doing for fun this time around. I can go as high or as low as I want, but all of my machines have to be in a 16x16 area.

I still want to build a tree farm to power boiler(s). The problem is, I can't do my usual massive tree farm with upgrades that takes up several chunks itself. I was testing out small tree farms (I tried using the new "-1" upgrade that makes the machines plant/harvest a 1x1 area, as well as 3x3, 3x3 seems faster) that I could fit inside a level of my base. With a planter, harvester, and fertilizer it would definitely be possible as a stupid amount of wood is produced with the fertilizer nearly instantly growing the trees.

It looks like all types of fertilizer need bonemeal or apatite. If I went the bone route, Soul Shards 2 only spawns entities when a player is nearby, I want this thing to be able to run when I'm not around.

I set up a test system with a MFR auto spawner/grinder in singleplayer, unfortunately it was slow to spawn the skeletons and it looks like it doesn't product enough mob essence to continuously run.

This pretty much leaves me with bees, I could either go for the bees that produce apatite, or I wouldn't be surprised if extrabees includes a bee that produces bonemeal. I think I'd lean towards apatite bees for simplicity sake. The question is, just how quickly can a bee produce apatite for fertilizer when in an alveary? Would it be enough to keep up with the tree farm? Unfortunately I don't know a way to "cheat" myself the bred bee in creative mode in a test world, so I'm hoping someone here can offer some advice.

Of course, if there are any other ideas for producing fertilizer to keep up with the farm, I'd be perfectly interested in hearing those as well.

Thanks!

 

[PierceSG]

Did you try the sewage block and composter?

 

[Loufmier]

It looks like all types of fertilizer need bonemeal or apatite.

nope. there is one with alternative recipe that doesn't require either of those.

 

[ScottulusMaximus]

Did you try the sewage block and composter?

Only played up to 1.5 but I've found that you need a hell of a lot of animals to produce enough sewage, and because a sewer only keeps up with 6 animals at a time you're gonna need a lot of them too...

As for the bee it's an Apatine Bee from Magic Bees, if you breed one up with fastest traits and in an alveary with a few frames you'll have more apatite than you could possibly deal with. To be fair I'm pulling this out my arse but by judging on other bee production rates I'm willing to bet on it.

To OP, make sure you have a monster of a pc, I only had my processing base all in one chunk and it produced a TON of lag.

 

[Revemohl]

It's still a better option than the other two, in my opinion. A few sewages under his animal layer should be enough to, at least, make trees grow faster in case they aren't fast enough to instantly grow any tree that gets planted.

 

[WTFFFS]

I have about 10 sheep in a 5x5 pen with a single sewer it keeps up with my 3x3 MFR tree farm fine.

 

[ToLazyToThink]

Only played up to 1.5 but I've found that you need a hell of a lot of animals to produce enough sewage, and because a sewer only keeps up with 6 animals at a time you're gonna need a lot of them too...

It's not an unmanageable number. You get 4 sewers from the recipe. In my 1.5 world I had 4 1x1 pens with 6 cows each powering a 3x3 oak tree farm. It powered 6 boilers with plenty of compost left over. The worst part was the cows glitched out of the pens often. Not a big problem, I'd just count heads any time I wandered by and either gravity gun the escapee's back, or breed a replacement. It never caused a power outage.

In my 1.6 farm I have a 3x3 pen with 6 donkeys that's feeding a 2x2 jungle tree farm. I tested it in creative, and it's enough to drive ~5000RF worth of steam dynamos (feeding planks directly, no boiler). Even then the limit was the tree farm itself, not the sewage.

 

[ScorpioOld]

Of course, if there are any other ideas for producing fertilizer to keep up with the farm, I'd be perfectly interested in hearing those as well.

Rotary Craft skeleton spawner can give you all bones you might dream about, if you use MFR grinder you can feed essence to AutoSpawner so you can have even more bones.