How can I create an efficient tree farm?

Question

I've created a wooden tower with wood platform bridges to find floating islands. As a result, I need a lot of wood and my supply is running low.

I had actually planned for this and created a tree farm, but it isn't very productive. I set it up as follows, which repeats across a leveled "field" wide enough for forty saplings total. I know the torches aren't necessary — I used them as a ruler when laying everything out and left some in for looks.

Unfortunately, this seems to produce about one tree per game week or less, which is painfully slow compared to my needs. My suspicion is that the tall grass which grows constantly is blocking the growth of trees, which I know need some room around them. I try to "weed" the farm pretty regularly, but grass starts regrowing by the time I get from one end to the other.

What can I do differently to make my tree farm more efficient?

Answer 1

From the Terraria wiki page on trees (formatting edited):

"Trees planted by the player can grow to a maximum of 14 tiles high. Saplings have the following requirements to become trees:

1. the sapling's lower tile must have no wall,
2. there must be a tile of grass to the immediate left and immediate right of the grass the sapling is planted on, and
3. there can be no trees less than three tiles away.

So, you can't grow a tree at the edge of a step or cliff, or next to a step or cliff, or at the edge of a patch of grass, even though you can plant acorns there. While trees can, very rarely, grow a distance of three tiles apart (two empty columns between them), they grow much faster at a distance of four tiles apart (with three empty spaces between them). For these reasons, it is recommended to plant acorns every four tiles on a long flat row of surface grass. Tiles more than 14 units above the planted grass do not have any effect on tree growth, so an optimal tree farm can have multiple 15-tile high levels."

You seem to have your acorns spaced correctly, there are no walls, and I assume you have enough head room. Although it's not explicitly mentioned in the wiki, your torches may be keeping the trees from growing. Try removing them. At least some of the acorns should grow to full trees in a matter of minutes.

Answer 2

It is the weeds. If something is beside the sapling it will Not grow.

Here is a picture of the right side of my tree farm (something like this exists in every world I have played in so far).

You can weed, plant and harvest the trees from the lower level. Often when I go through and plant my trees and weed them, I will have a tree fully grown by the time I am done, if not two. This has always exceeded my usage of wood, which can be excessive at times.

It seems giving the grass covered dirt two directions to 'sprout' in (up and down as vines) gives the trees a much better chance. I would NOT recommend doing this to your entire 40 tree area (Thats 480 blocks to dig out or so :)). But give it a try on one section and see if it helps.

Answer 3

I just know from experience that to plant a tree, these requirements must be met:

1.) There must be nothing nearby(you don't need to babysit the trees all the time, just clear the weeds once a game day). 2.) There must be a patches of grass nearby(you don't need to worry about this,since they will grow by themselves). 3.) There must be no wall and the trees must not be underground.

I may not be entirely correct and if you still have difficulty growing trees after meeting these requirements, check this out http://terraria.wikia.com/wiki/Acorn.