Food farming techniques?

With the addition of needing to water your plants, and the watering can being obnoxious, farming has become something of a hassle. The only effective way to water is rainfall anymore, and that means you can't condense your farm, it has to be spread out over half the planet.

Does anyone have suggestions on effective ways to water plants? Post pictures of your farms maybe?

 

Does rainfall even water them anymore?

 

There are three kinds of rain, and the lightest rainfall does not affected tilled soil.

 

I've done some light farming since the patch, I can confirm that rainfall will water tilled soil.
but if I want to plant all the crops, and have space for 10 plants in each plot, I'll need 20 blocks for each plot, with 39 types of plant, that's almost 800 blocks. That's like a third of the surface area of the planet I'm on if I have to lay it out end to end.

 

So don't farm every individual crop? It's really nit necessary to and the only benefits, really, are exploring what food recipes are available and finding the most profitable crop.

 

I'm testing small farm - about 2000 blocks, with mods
Gardenbot
Automatic Irrigator
Perennial Crops





I already love these bots more than tenants!

 

repelled: you call that a small farm?!

 

Here are just four floors!
I have a dream about realy BIG farm where each plant species planted in special soil, has a special lights and surrounded by a special fence etc...
I'm not sure - it's a farm or floran temple

 

Love and worship is not the same.
Btw, temple plants must to grow on the bones...

 

I've been building a factory farm and as you can see the irrigation system in this game right now is pretty repulsive. Observe how the farmland is surrounded by water, yet isn't moistened.

It's more economical to get rid of the water tank completely and let rain do the work. Automated farms are really painful to manage.

 

but, you see, Just slightly above 1/2 a block of water will uproot the plant.

The water below is just part of a runoff system.