L4 Settlement - Farm Cylinder - part 2

I did further research on the growing needs of the nut trees and it seems they all have slightly different growing conditions, some like it dry, some like it hot, some like it humid, some need to have an above freezing but below 7c winter. Some grow as high as 40m while others grow only to 10m. So, I have decided to move all of the trees up to the top level of the farm cylinder and to build dividing walls to separate the top level into four individual zones.

Doing this allowed me to rearrange the farms on levels 1-3 and so now I am able to pull back the length of the farm cylinder to 5000m instead of the 5150m I had mentioned in the previous farm post. So dividing 5000m by 4 gives each tree zone a 1250m length and a 15455m dodecagon perimeter to provide 1932 hectares for each of the four planting zones.

I've added a fourth as I have decided to add peanuts into the mix, so the four different zones will have peanuts, almonds, pecans and walnuts. The peanuts will be able to produce within the first season, the walnuts may only be able to produce after 10 years; so not all of these forests will produce nuts immediately. Once they do, however, they will produce a lot.

I learned that some of these trees stop producing nuts, or, have alternating years with low yield and high yield years. For those that stop producing, we can, a few years in advance, prepare seedlings and then when it is time, we can cut down and use as lumber (either for within the settlement, or for export) the wood that has been cut and then plant the seedlings.

So now each zone can have exactly what is needed for whatever is growing in there in terms of soil depth, soil makeup, soil ph, watering schedule, seasonality and diurnal/nocturnal schedule and air humidty and temperature. As much of this will be made automatic but all within a software controller that an assigned Tree Farm Manager will be responsible for. This manager will need to know everything there is to know about growing the four different types and to check in on them periodically. This is not a full time role, however, the person doing this will need to inform the overall farm manager at anytime that a harvest needs to be done and then there will need to be many people that go to do it.

Goat manure and safely heat-composted and aged humanure from the settlement's waste will get mixed in with the asteroid dust and Earth soil that makes up the ground for the trees; though for the peanuts we won't put the humanure since peanuts grow in the ground, they don't get pulled from the trees. In addition to this there will be some fertilizers that will need to be imported from Earth.