Autumn planting

[Valor]

I recently tried planting Barley from early Fall to early Dirt and always got message that is too late to plant Barley.

Was autumn planting removed in recent versions?

Also will prepared soil last through winter or will I have to redo it in the spring?

Thank you.

[PALU]

"Autumn" planting is species dependent. Any plant that withers before it's ripe for harvest sprouts anew the next spring (possibly while still covered by snow and with the ground still frozen), but once the time for withering sets in it's too late to sow that plant. Withering time varies significantly between plants, and some have a fairly short window between harvest and withering. The Wiki describes when plants can be sown, sprout, harvested (assuming planted early enough), and wither (as well as flowering for some plants).

The current imperfect model has you prepare the field once and it will then be usable throughout your character's life with no degradation. Real life slash-and-burn farming depletes the soil in a few years (3-5?), at which time the field is abandoned and a new field is prepared. Continued use of the field results in gradually decreasing yields. Also, I expect real life usage to require some kind of soil preparation annually, although that process would differ from the initial one. On top of that, I expect you'd also have to remove weeds during the growing season.

[Valor]

So is there any time window for Barley autumn planning?

[PALU]

Yes.

Planting too late for Barley to be harvested in the autumn will cause it to grow and be possible to harvest the next year. "Proper" autumn planting would mean sowing it as early as possible (may not be feasible every year if the thawing is late, but it always works if it was autumn planted, "properly" or not), harvest it in autumn and promptly thresh it and then plant using the seeds recovered (or use seeds left over from the previous harvest, which allows you to delay the threshing until winter when cold and darkness makes it hard to work away from the homestead). There should be a window of a couple of weeks or so for the most finicky crop (which I think is barley).

I typically harvest what's ripe every day during the ripening period and then immediately sow on the harvested tiles.