Orchards

bossmanslim
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Orchards

Post by bossmanslim »

I have done some orchard work in order to check off the achievements

First of all, the economics on orchards are terrible.
- Plant 350K in orchards, produce 70K in fruit. Payback without equipment is 5 years.
- Equipment costs around 500k, which further pushes out the payback.
- Even with the factories to increase the value of the product, the payback is still probably around 7 years or more

Secondly, it is somewhat boring and all the work has to be done manually.
- Helper will not do anything
- It's not easy in the base game to get straight lines of trees/vines
- Mulch, subsoil, fert, harvest and sleep most of the rest of the year
- It is basically impossible/not worth the time to get the mulching and subsoiling perfect. From a time investment perspective, it is better to just do good enough and cycle the crop faster than to try to do a perfect job.

How I chose to do it which I think is the easiest:
- Need GPS mod, need create fields with subsoiler mod
- There is a 3m subsoiler and 3m mulcher, total HP requirement is 270
- Buy any tractor with front and rear 3 point + PTO, put on standard tires and GPS mod.
- Use subsoiler to create fields with GPS mod. Set GPS width 4.1m. This will create lanes wide enough for 3m equipment to fit down as well as giving lines to plant orchards that are straight.
- Mulcher on the front, subsoiler on the back of the tractor. Perform these operations when needed. This means you have 1 pass per year to maintain the crops with equates to about a 10% yield improvement.
- Use a standard fertilizer spreader that will cover 10 rows of crop at a time rather than 2. It can be mounted on the tractor with the subsoiler, so all the implements can be mounted on 1 tractor at all times.
- Mulch + subsoiler + 2x fertilizer passes = 92-95% yield bonus
- Grape pruning is tight, but can be done. If you want more margin, this is the only place a vineyard tractor may be desired.
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cwattyeso
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Re: Orchards

Post by cwattyeso »

I have to say I'm enjoing the Orchard stuff as a nice break from the normal field/crop cycle of things. However maybe that's because I'm doing it on a very small scale, whereby I only have 20 rows of Grapes and 20 rows of Olives on a field, so I'm not doing acres and acres of the stuff. Yes I find it can be a little bit annoying difficult to work these crops if you are used to using GPS, as when planting and setting up the Orchards there is no way to lock their angle, so they plant in perfect rows of a set angle and direction, which would make it easier then to come along later with GPS if all the rows were running a 0/180 degrees or 90/270 etc.

I do sometimes find some weird things with Olives where it doesn't seem to let me mulch the grass growing around, under and inbetween the rows of trees. Even though the in game help says to mulch and the tutorial in Farming Simulator Academy says to mulch, the mulcher does absolutely nothing for me in regards to the Olive Trees, it does with the Grapes and works as expected with them, but not with the Olives for me and that's on Giants own maps, so shouldn't be a mod issue.

I'm also a bit confused by the instructions again in the help and Academy when it comes to fertilising Grapes and Olives. The Tutorials say: "Instead of fertilizing two times with one growth stage in between, activate the double application rate of the sprayer - this way, you only have to fertilize once."
However it does not seem possible or doesn't appear to be an option to activate double rate on the Mercury 4000L Sprayer that you need for Olives & Grapes. I've driven up and down the rows many times with the game's help window open and do not see any key or button to enable or disable double application rate. I've only ever seen that on the Slurry Spreaders for the regular field fertilising.

I'm also wondering how you acheive the 100% Yield Bonus with Grape and Olive Crops, because I do my sub-soiling/ploughing, I do my fertilsing, I do my mulching, I do my pruning on the grapes and yet every year I seem to only get 98% Bonus. Where is the missing 2%?
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bossmanslim
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Re: Orchards

Post by bossmanslim »

cwattyeso wrote: Fri Apr 01, 2022 6:26 pmI'm also wondering how you acheive the 100% Yield Bonus with Grape and Olive Crops, because I do my sub-soiling/ploughing, I do my fertilsing, I do my mulching, I do my pruning on the grapes and yet every year I seem to only get 98% Bonus. Where is the missing 2%?
I think there has to be no "needs plowed" state in the crop "area" and the full mulching must also be applied. It is basically impossible unless you take a long time to basically "grind" along the collision of the grapes/olives.
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cwattyeso
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Re: Orchards

Post by cwattyeso »

Well what I do on my maps is Plough the field I'm going to be putting Olives or Grapes on. I then lime spread the field, I then go over it with the rock picker to remove the stones that ploughing pulled up. I then roll the field after collecting the stone to remove that status from the field. Finally I place my Grapes or my Olives. Initially after placing them I only add the fertiliser they need. After they have been harvested, that's when I do the first mulching, and then do the first ploughing with the little subsoiler thing, then I do my first fertiliser spraying. Then during the growth period before the next harvest I will add the second fertiliser spraying and mulch the grapes again if the grass has re-grown. As I said above mulching does nothing to the grass on olives for me so I skip that and just subsoil/plough again instead. I also whenever I plough/cultivate always do it with the "Alow Field Creation" option enabled, as that seems to help remove a lot of the grass from between grapes and olives more permanently.
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deerefarm
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Re: Orchards

Post by deerefarm »

cwattyeso wrote: Fri Apr 01, 2022 7:39 pm Well what I do on my maps is Plough the field I'm going to be putting Olives or Grapes on. I then lime spread the field, I then go over it with the rock picker to remove the stones that ploughing pulled up. I then roll the field after collecting the stone to remove that status from the field. Finally I place my Grapes or my Olives. Initially after placing them I only add the fertiliser they need. After they have been harvested, that's when I do the first mulching, and then do the first ploughing with the little subsoiler thing, then I do my first fertiliser spraying. Then during the growth period before the next harvest I will add the second fertiliser spraying and mulch the grapes again if the grass has re-grown. As I said above mulching does nothing to the grass on olives for me so I skip that and just subsoil/plough again instead. I also whenever I plough/cultivate always do it with the "Alow Field Creation" option enabled, as that seems to help remove a lot of the grass from between grapes and olives more permanently.
Do you actually get a 100 Yield bonus? I find I'm stuck at 98% no matter what I do with mulching on either grapes or olives? Plowing and fertilizing get's me to 98%, but muching does nothing.
I just had a thought, looking at another grape field I have which is at 100%, I mulched it before I plowed and limed it, then planted the grapes and the muchling has carried through, even though I've used the mini-mulcher on the other fields it doesn't add that mulched state, at least for me.
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raran
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Re: Orchards

Post by raran »

I place my orchards on 100% grassfields and get 100% yield bonus when mulching etc.The profitability is horrible but don't forget that real vineyards make wine out of them which kinda ups the revenue.

But then again, it can also cost you a 1000 or more to paint a little patch of grass... :confusednew:

Placing of the vines is rather simple once you get the first line in straight so i'm not sure what's going on there, if you keep going from the last point there's almost no way to go wrong with that placement. With grapes the stick will appear at the right moment and with olives the little dot is green.
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cwattyeso
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Re: Orchards

Post by cwattyeso »

deerefarm wrote: Sat Apr 02, 2022 2:38 am
raran wrote: Sat Apr 02, 2022 7:32 am
I wonder if that's the case then why I'm stuck on 98% because typically so far when I've placed Grapes or Olives in games its on field the AI has harvested and cultivated or fields that have never had any crops grown on them, so therefore there hasn't been any mulching done before I come along and plough, lime, stone remove, roll and finally put down my orchards. I'll have to do a test where I try to make an Orchard on a field where I have had a crop and then mulch the field before doing the other prep work and see if that accounts for my missing 2%

As for for the placement of Vines or Trees Raran, I was speaking more of being able to look the orientation/rotation so that when dragging and placing your vines or trees they stay locked on soil angle. So for example I want to plant my Grapes so they run perfectly from East to West on a field, I'd make sure I was lined up on a heading of 270 degrees and then go across the field to the opposite end and hope I was still on 270 degrees when I got to the other end to get a perfect straight line. Sadly with controller or even mouse I can't find a way to guarantee I don't veer off course and there is no way to look placement or only allow movement along a grid or something. So often what I find when I have dragged and dropped my grapes or olives is that at the start of the rows they may be at a heading of 270 degrees, but then at the opposite end of the field they could be 267 degrees or 274 degrees which means the rows have gone offline, and this causes the problem when you then try to use GPS to assist your work.

However I have just seen today the Courseplay team has released a new update and now Courseplay apparently has the ability to do Grape and Olive work, so will have to look into and try testing that.
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Rasping rabbit
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Re: Orchards

Post by Rasping rabbit »

cwattyeso wrote: Sat Apr 02, 2022 7:38 pm
Use a small plough and make a straight line on the ground? Or paint a texture using the smallest square. When you place the olives/grapes they replace the ground texture anyway so painting a line wouldn’t cause a problem.
Schwiti
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Re: Orchards

Post by Schwiti »

You could also checkout courseplay, as they now support vine fieldwork from version 7.0.1.9 onwards :)
It's important that the field is created in a grid with the snapping positions, which bassicly means that all rows are seperate by the same distance and are homogen.
raran
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Re: Orchards

Post by raran »

Also there's a helper grip mod around, have tested it a bit and the angle snapping is somewhat problematic on some maps but it helps alot with placing stuff ocd proof.
Faukjstdye
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Re: Orchards

Post by Faukjstdye »

Absolutely easiest way to make straight line orchards.
Put down the shortest length of grape vine next to where you want your long line. MAKE SURE THAT SHORT LINE IS STRAIGHT. Then your main line clicks to that short line and you can go clear across a map with your long line. I know because I tested it out of curiosity.
For example. Put the short line down then put next line to the right of it. Now no matter how far you go it will never go crooked to the left, to the right definately goes crooked. Once you have your field, destroy the short line if you want. Also works with olives.
Me, I put down my pilot vine then make six rows. Slap down another pilot vine the 7th row then make 12 rows. One more pilot row then another 6 rows. Destroy all pilot vines. Now I have 2 roads. I use the modded Amazon ZG-TS from FiB7 to fertilize everthing in 2 passes.
LittleWatt
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Re: Orchards

Post by LittleWatt »

I actually love the orchard/vineyard work. I have huge fields for both on a couple different maps. I generally get 90k liters of grapes and 120k liters of olives. The fields are both around 5h/a. It does take time though. But pruning and the first fertilizer stage for grapes can be done in the winter. Then March is mulching for grapes. Blah, blah, blah…right. I do use some mods to help. Cheap grapes/olives is a must for anything huge. Even with that mod I spent over 100k on grapes/olives. I also use a single pass/single implement machine for mulching. (Quick tip: you don’t need to mulch perfectly; one pass down each row is all. One pass every other row for fertilizer.) I’ve never had any trouble making straight rows as long as one row is straight. Plant grass, cut, mulch. You get a clear line between field grass as meadow grass. Place your row.

Yeah, it’s time consuming, and occasionally frustrating, but I find grapes/olives to be quite relaxing. It took a while to iron out the wrinkles, but now I’m totally confident in the fence crops. Aside from the large upfront investment, both crops are cheap to grow after that.

Some mods I use: Cheap Grapes and Olives, MP 122 Ocea Twin (or buy to pruners and use front and rear linkage, the smaller Valtras are great for this method), Sicma RM Series (1.8 meter).

I have also used slurry spreaders before on small vineyards. I’m going to try a slurry spreader in a truck bed in the next winter. The pickups fit in the rows and the tanks hold more slurry than any available slurry spreader that will actually fit in the row.

The only thing I would love is a compressed air style pruner based off the fertilizer tank. Just blow off the dead leaves. I don’t even care about realism. Although I’m sure something like that exists.
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