Soil

Plants on a growing medium draw on tracked soil stats. Plain farmland still works, but nobody manages it: growth is a little slower and quality stops at 60 %.

#Tools

#Stats and rules

All stats are 0–100 except pH (4–9).

• N/P/K: each growth stage takes what the plant definition asks for (nutrients in PLANTS.md). A plant whose demand is barely met grows slower; below 25 % it stalls.
• pH decides how much of the N/P/K a plant can use: all of it between 6.0 and 7.0, down to 30 % at 4 or 9.
• Moisture falls a little with every stage and evaporates over time (faster in hot biomes, slower with organic matter). Below 20 plants are drought-stressed. Rain and water buckets refill it; water beyond saturation drains through and flushes salts. The top of the block darkens while it is moist.
• Salinity comes from mineral fertilizer. Above 60 it burns plants. Every point added kills 1.5 points of soil life.
• Soil life drifts toward what the soil supports (organic matter, no salts, sane moisture and pH). It turns organic matter into nitrogen and slowly breaks salts down. No-till beds with good life gain more after every harvest.
• Quality cap: 0.8 + 0.2 × life/100 × (1 − salinity/100) × maturity factor. That is 80 % on a lifeless, salty bed and 90 % on living soil in a bed that never matured (garden bed, pot). Only a mature Raised Bed reaches 100 %: its maturity factor rises from 0.5 to 1 over 5 thriving harvests.
• Lush growth: nitrogen above 40 speeds growth, up to +50 % at 80 (SoilModel.growthBoost). Bagged fertilizer gets a bed there easily; it is also what aphids love.

Soils are updated lazily: elapsed time is applied when the soil is read (its random ticks, plant growth, tools).

#Amendments

Right-clicking a medium with an item applies the item's plantations:soil_amendment data map entry and uses one item. Pack devs add entries in data/<namespace>/data_maps/item/soil_amendment.json; every field is optional:

{
  "values": {
    "minecraft:bone_meal": { "n": 3, "p": 8, "organic": 1 }
  }
}

Fields: n, p, k, organic, life, salinity (−100…100), ph (−5…5), moisture (−100…100).

Items that also have a plantations:dilution entry are concentrates. Their soil_amendment entry is what one diluted watering-can use applies. Poured straight on a bed, a concentrate burns it (see KNF fermented inputs).

#Living soil basics

The slow, self-sustaining side of the soil. It needs no mineral inputs, so no salts build up and soil life grows.

A mulch layer shows on the bed, halves evaporation and smothers three in four weed seeds. It rots into the soil and is gone once organic matter drops below 10. Mulch only goes on garden beds, not pots or trays.

Config: organic.clover (default true) controls the clover seed drops.

With two compost and a worm casting between crops, a depleted bed feeds four crops in a row well, with no salts and growing soil life.

#Indigenous microorganisms (IMO)

The heart of Korean Natural Farming. It catches the local microbes in the wild, multiplies them and brings them into the bed.

1. IMO-1: put an IMO Box on natural ground (dirt, grass, podzol) with leaves within 4 blocks above, and bait it with Steamed Rice (rice from a food mod, or wheat, smoked or cooked on a campfire) or Farmer's Delight's cooked rice. A day later the rice is furred with white mould; an empty hand takes 2 IMO-1 out.
2. IMO-2: IMO-1 and Brown Sugar (smelted sugar cane) ferment in the Fermentation Crock for half a day.
3. IMO-3: craft IMO-2, 4 Wheat Bran and a water bucket into an IMO-3 Pile and place it. Turn it with a shovel 4 times, at least a quarter day apart, then break it for 4 IMO-3.
4. IMO-4: craft IMO-3 with soil from your field (any dirt) into 2 IMO-4. Right-click a bed with it: N +2, P +1, K +1, organic +4, soil life +15, plus the bonus of its microbe profile.

Every step carries the microbe profile of the biome the box stood in (a component, shown in the tooltip). The bed remembers it, and the Soil Probe shows it. Profiles are the datapack registry plantations:microbe_profile: biomes, a priority (the highest match wins), and a bonus amendment.

#KNF fermented inputs

The liquid side of Korean Natural Farming. Each input ferments in the Fermentation Crock, is diluted in the Mixing Barrel and goes on with the watering can (see PROCESSING.md). Each has its own job; the tooltip names it.

• Ingredients: Eggshells are crafted from an egg (#c:eggs) and roasted in a furnace or on a campfire. Charred Bone is a bone (#c:bones) burned the same way. plantations:ohn_herbs takes garlic, ginger and cinnamon from food mods (#c:crops/garlic, #c:crops/ginger, #c:crops/cinnamon), with beetroot as the fallback.
• Containers: the crock gives back buckets on top of itself. A liquid made on vinegar keeps the vinegar's bottle.
• Weed repellents: items in plantations:weed_repellents (OHN) keep weeds off every bed they water for a day (KnfModel.REPELLENT_TICKS).
• Overdose: pouring a concentrate straight on a bed puts half a bottle's nutrients and pH on at once (the pH moves 1.5 at most), kills 20 soil life and adds 4 salts (which kill 6 more). The crop on the bed loses 2 growth stages, and a seedling dies. The bottle comes back.

#Living soil bed

The top of the living-soil tree: a no-till bed that gets better with every crop.

#Raised Bed

Crafted from logs, compost and dirt (2 per craft). It starts richer than a garden bed (organic 45, life 35) and holds half again as much (capacity 1.5).

• No-till maturity: every harvest on a thriving bed (soil life ≥ 40, salinity < 20) matures it one step, up to
  5. Each step lets soil life climb 10 higher (SoilModel.lifeTarget). A fully mature bed with organic matter around 45 or more supports soil life 100, which is a quality cap of 100 %. The same care on a garden bed stops at 90 %. The top shows the stage: young, established (fungal threads, a worm), thriving (a network, worms, clover).
• Salts set it back: every mineral input that adds salts (fertilizer, pH up/down) costs a maturity step, on top of the soil life the salts kill.
• One bed: Raised Beds next to each other share their soil. On each random tick a quarter of the soil-life difference moves to each neighbouring bed, and mycorrhiza spreads through the whole bed.
• The Soil Probe shows the maturity (No-till: 3/5 thriving harvests) and mycorrhiza.

#Bokashi Bucket

A green bucket (a bucket, green dye and a wooden slab).

1. Right-click with eight handfuls of scraps. Unlike the compost bin, every item counts, and food (#c:foods: meat, fish, cooked dishes) goes in too.
2. Seal the full bucket with Bokashi Bran (4 wheat bran + LAB + brown sugar makes 4).
3. Two days later an empty hand takes out 4 Bokashi: N +4, P +3, K +3, organic +6, life +10, pH −0.3.

Hoppers put scraps and bran in from the top and take the bokashi out below.

#Mycorrhizal Inoculant

IMO-4, a sapling and a brown mushroom make 2. Right-click a bed with one to bring in mycorrhizal fungi (life +5). Plants on a mycorrhizal bed reach further for nutrients in lean soil (×1.5) and suffer half the pH lock-out. Salts kill the fungi: above salinity 30 they die, and they won't take in such soil.

#Compost Tea Brewer

A bucket with an air pump (iron, a bucket, a piston, redstone). Put in compost or worm castings (plantations:compost_tea/bases) and brown sugar or sugar (plantations:compost_tea/sugars), and fill it with water.

• The pump aerates with FE (4 FE/t from cables). Without power, sneak-use it with an empty hand to pump by hand (160 FE a stroke). Create rotation follows with the Create compat.
• A batch takes 30 seconds and 1000 mB of water, and brews tea for 8 watering-can uses (32 at most).
• Right-click with a Watering Can to take the tea. Glass bottles in the bottle slot are filled one use each.
• Compost Tea per use: N +1, P +0.5, K +1, life +8.

#Pests

An optional pressure that each tree answers in its own way. Config: pests.enabled (default true); off, no pest ever moves in and existing ones leave.

Pests live on the bed under a crop: any crop (CropBlock or #minecraft:crops) on a garden bed, raised bed, pot or tray, vanilla ones included. They show as particles over the crop, and the Soil Probe names them with their severity (1-3). Each severity step slows growth by a fifth and lowers the quality cap by 10 %.

On each random tick of a bed with a crop:

• The chance is 3 % × how well the conditions suit the pest × monoculture × (1 − resistance).
• Monoculture counts the same crop within two blocks, up to 3× the chance with 16 or more.
• Resistance is the living-soil answer, 95 % at most. Soil life gives up to 60 %, mycorrhiza 15 %, each maturity step 4 %, and each neighbouring bed with mycorrhiza 5 % (the fungal network, up to 4).
• An infestation worsens while its conditions last and dies back once they are gone, faster on resistant soil.
• At severity 2 or more it can jump to a neighbouring bed with the same crop.

#Counters

Pest controls are a data map, plantations:pest_control on items: { "pests": ["aphids"], "days": 3, "life_cost": 0, "quality_cost": 0 }. Using one clears the listed pests from every bed in the 3×3 and keeps them away for days. The tooltip lists what it treats.

Beneficials and jars are used up; right-click the bed or the crop on it. Liquids work through the Watering Can.