Hydroponics - Ad hoc outdoor farming *included suggestions*
Posted: Mon Mar 27, 2017 9:38 pm
Because this isn't exactly a PLANNED colony, what if we had a arrangement in which hydroponics is partially a small/medium size room and a open grassy courtyard with lots of soil plots, a bit more like a traditional garden rather than a high-tech installation.
Most importantly, there are no vendors for seeds, just a creaky dusty cupboard with some basic vegtables & wheat, other foodstuffs around the station can be converted into seeds but inherently beside from about 3 hydroponics trays readymade, botanists have to monitor everything that they are making regularly and remain involved rather than laid back. There is no vulgaris naturally in hydroponics as rule to stall the use of mutating it into Gaia and to stop botanists goofing off while the colony begins to starve with a lack of cargo.
- Without a active light source, plants don't grow in the soil plots outside during the night time so the compound where the plants are being grown outside will need to be well lit. Rain pouring onto the plants will hydrate it, making a more pressing concern of keeping the weeds/pests at bay and supplying nutrients to the soils for the outside plot (as a few independent lights around the compound will suffice).
Tree Forestry
With the granted space, we can grow certain varieties of trees (for harvesting fruit too, like bananas) by using saplings on a open grass/dirt surface tile with adequate light and no botany tray. Typically trees in three stages, firstly as a sapling, then a small tree before finally becoming a mature tree in which then it will quickly bear a large amount of fruit before being dormant before giving another large cache of fruit in a slow cycle. Certain trees can be harvested don't actually bear fruit but just drop seeds or inedible nuts/cones such as the ones found in the jungle that can be harvested. On the station there's no need to have a tree, but now since the station is surrounded by trees & soils there is more reason, if not just collecting trees for decorative/industrial woodwork use too.
- In a role reversal of current tower caps, trees would take over responsiblity for supplying quantities of wood, and actual tower caps can either be voided, made into a mushroom mutation type breakoff between wood or steelcaps (rather than wood INTO steelcaps) or/and only grow in low light conditions along with a shift in which low light rather than minimum light is required for it to grow.
A selection of thoughts on how to start this cargoless botany on a good foot, in which it will take a bit of time for R&D to wind up a genetics machine and subsequent unbalancing. May have to accept that without workarounds like finding plants as loot/map supplies/mutating from wild plants into earth variants that some plants are ultimately omitted from the scheme.
Most importantly, there are no vendors for seeds, just a creaky dusty cupboard with some basic vegtables & wheat, other foodstuffs around the station can be converted into seeds but inherently beside from about 3 hydroponics trays readymade, botanists have to monitor everything that they are making regularly and remain involved rather than laid back. There is no vulgaris naturally in hydroponics as rule to stall the use of mutating it into Gaia and to stop botanists goofing off while the colony begins to starve with a lack of cargo.
- You must go out into the wild and pick new fruits and vegtables from the enviroment to take into the hydroponics, certain varieties of natural fruit & vegtable (purple carrots) are unappetising, mildly toxic or have little to no nutriment, and as such you will need to mutate these plants into earth varieties (and beyond)EXTREMELY CONCEPTUAL POOR QUALITY NON PLANETSTATION DEV SCREENSHOT OF WHAT IT MIGHT LOOK LIKE WITH MOST OF THE TRAYS OUTSIDE AND A FEW INSIDE.
- Without a active light source, plants don't grow in the soil plots outside during the night time so the compound where the plants are being grown outside will need to be well lit. Rain pouring onto the plants will hydrate it, making a more pressing concern of keeping the weeds/pests at bay and supplying nutrients to the soils for the outside plot (as a few independent lights around the compound will suffice).
Tree Forestry
With the granted space, we can grow certain varieties of trees (for harvesting fruit too, like bananas) by using saplings on a open grass/dirt surface tile with adequate light and no botany tray. Typically trees in three stages, firstly as a sapling, then a small tree before finally becoming a mature tree in which then it will quickly bear a large amount of fruit before being dormant before giving another large cache of fruit in a slow cycle. Certain trees can be harvested don't actually bear fruit but just drop seeds or inedible nuts/cones such as the ones found in the jungle that can be harvested. On the station there's no need to have a tree, but now since the station is surrounded by trees & soils there is more reason, if not just collecting trees for decorative/industrial woodwork use too.
- In a role reversal of current tower caps, trees would take over responsiblity for supplying quantities of wood, and actual tower caps can either be voided, made into a mushroom mutation type breakoff between wood or steelcaps (rather than wood INTO steelcaps) or/and only grow in low light conditions along with a shift in which low light rather than minimum light is required for it to grow.
A selection of thoughts on how to start this cargoless botany on a good foot, in which it will take a bit of time for R&D to wind up a genetics machine and subsequent unbalancing. May have to accept that without workarounds like finding plants as loot/map supplies/mutating from wild plants into earth variants that some plants are ultimately omitted from the scheme.