Trying to understand seed/crop growing and industries

[Gods and Punks]

I learned that Plump Helmets will run out if you let them be used for food since no seeds are produced when they are cooked; but will I have this same problem with other plants? And if so, how do I set up a sustainable pigtail-to-fabric pipeline?

I'm not finding clear answers on the wiki so I figured I might as well ask.

[kheftel]

Yeah, I don't allow any plants to be cooked that can also be brewed, this way I get the seeds.

[AlP]

Originally posted by Gods and Punks:

And if so, how do I set up a sustainable pigtail-to-fabric pipeline?

That pipeline doesn't cook the plants, it processes pig tails without destroying them.

Only actual cooking destroys seeds, all other tasks are safe.

[Gods and Punks]

Originally posted by kheftel:

Yeah, I don't allow any plants to be cooked that can also be brewed, this way I get the seeds.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. But like,,, do the plants used in spinning thread leave seeds or do I need to worry about bartering for pigtail seeds every season?

[Gods and Punks]

Originally posted by AlP:

Originally posted by Gods and Punks:

And if so, how do I set up a sustainable pigtail-to-fabric pipeline?

That pipeline doesn't cook the plants, it processes pig tails without destroying them.

Only actual cooking destroys seeds, all other tasks are safe.

Oh awesome that's exactly what I needed to know, thank's so much!!

[BonPadre]

For pigtail specifically, the step you probably miss is the < Process plants > in the farmer workshop.
Then you can use those threads to be processed as fabric.

So while indeed very early on it's best to prevent the cooking of your very few underground seeds, don't fret too much what can be cooked from surface plants if you can anyways always get some from the surface.

Also it's really hard to answer your question globally, since there are so many plants in various biomes.

So I will go with a few temperate "easy to understand" plants.
Let's take lettuce as an example.
If you have lettuce on surface, gather some (this applies to any sorts of "easy to understand" plants). When you process them you will get lettuce leaves, as well as lettuce available in your possible "cookable" ingredients. What I then do is < allow to cook lettuce leaves > and then < forbid lettuce > from being cooked. As such, any available lettuce will be first processed to get seeds + leaves.

There are some less obvoious ones I stil need to fiddle with to understand, like the wild carrot plants / carrots seeds.

Now if you really want to understand that quietly and have time to play around all that, I would suggest you to play without agression, so you are surface "somewhat safe" and can fiddle with surface farming.

Also a big big advice. Learn all of the rope reeds ingredients.
Colect some from surface, process plants, this will give you threads. Start a surface farm with newly aquired seeds. You will soon be burried under rope reed threads. and seeds for that matter.
Then you can also brew said rope reeds.
You can mill said rope reeds into slurry for paper making.
And then you get burried in rope reed seeds... fine you can cook them 🤣
Rope reed is totally OP

Hope this helps.