Farming radius

[atdfbttl15]

I don't know if you realized or not, but trees/wheat/melon etc. wont grow when you are too far from them. Is there a way to change the distance? Or completely deleting it? Because, when you are even something like 64 blocks away they will stop to grow and this is really close, I think.

Thanks for reading

[ViperZeroOne]

They will only grow if someone is standing in the chunk.  Doesn't have to be you, so building your farm in a populated area is a bonus.  As far as I know, there isn't any way to change this.  It's part of Minecraft's core coding.

[atdfbttl15]

So the most efficient farms are 16x16 farms? Btw is there a number or something that shows the borders of the current chunk in F3?

[ViperZeroOne]

I haven't had any problems with 24x24 and 32x32, but I know that people who have had larger farms than that have had growing problems.  My suggestion, keep it as tight as you can and go tall/deep with it.  I actually hid a fairly small auto-farm inside of a tower that's only the dimensions of a Lapis protection stone.

[Xeadin]

The chunks (which are 16x16 spaces from bedrock to sky limit) that you can see normally are the "occupied" chunks, because those are the spaces that you can see. Anything beyond that are considered "unoccupied" until you move toward those spaces. I'm not completely certain on how far you can see, but simply put: whatever you can see are the visible chunk spaces.

[atdfbttl15]

So, correct me if I understood wrong, you can make a long farm but you have to see it in the screen so that plants will grow, right?

[Spamarian]

I didnt know that the visibility level plays role.
My farms so far, grow completely and very fast even if I am not close to them.

[DeeKay]

Moved to SMP Support.

[Smiteme69]

Press f3, a chunk is defined in multiples of 16 so if x=1120 (16 * 70) and z=1552 (16 * 97) then you would be in a corner of a chunk, you would then need to find the other 3 corners by branching out 16 (well 15 tchnically as you are on the 1st square on the 16 chunk)in each direction.

To find where in a chunk you are in the world press f3 and divide your x and z position by 16.

Happy to confuse.

ps. My pumpkin farm is alot bigger than 16 x 16 and they all grow, so it can't be a only grow when stood in a chunk, at least not for me

[Tobs]

Crops grow on loaded chunks (not just the chunks you stand on), any unloaded chunk crops will not grow. You can probably find how far chunks are loaded to on the minecraft wiki.

http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Chunks

In multiplayer mode, a grid with a default radius of 10 (for a total of 21x21 or 441 chunks) is loaded around each player and sent to the player by default, although this radius can be configured to be between 3 and 15, usually only lowered with a poor connection home server. These chunks may have activity (mobs spawning, trees growing, water flowing, dropped items disappearing etc.), while the other world chunks are inactive, stored on your hard drive.

[ViperZeroOne]

Press f3, a chunk is defined in multiples of 16 so if x=1120 (16 * 70) and z=1552 (16 * 97) then you would be in a corner of a chunk, you would then need to find the other 3 corners by branching out 16 (well 15 tchnically as you are on the 1st square on the 16 chunk)in each direction.

To find where in a chunk you are in the world press f3 and divide your x and z position by 16.

Happy to confuse.

ps. My pumpkin farm is alot bigger than 16 x 16 and they all grow, so it can't be a only grow when stood in a chunk, at least not for me

Actually this is how I plan out slime farms.  It's actually not that hard to figure out.