It's faster to use little planters like above, though. Where does the seed go? Right in the middle. It always goes right in the middle.

press 'C' to toggle walk before you start planting your crops in rows.

Just need to learn spacing for plants. Carrots can be close while later on crops need more room. Also you can do wooden fence to protect from grey dwarves attacking your plants, no doors or gates. For plains just need earthen walls to keep roaming furling out, wooden fence they destroy really fast. I do not use mods and was doing a ton of seeds of each planting with little to no plant death.

A very simple way (it does need a bit more space to work) and it doesnt need any mods its like this.
1.st make a looooooooooooooooooong field (and be sure you have workbenches araund to prevent monsters from spawning)
Equip the cultivator and carrots.
Now just move back and spam click in line, while slowly going back (side to side holding A/D also works). Be sure you keep your eye on stamina.
I recomend using stamina only food so you can spam-click on ground faster.
You can quite easy plant 500+ seeds and not having to worry abauth any getting rotten.

Also having a field as straight as possible helps a lot, so investing some time mining off bumps on field can help you later.

Downside however, it may not look pretty, but its very effective time/food wise.
I usualy just make a portal somewhere in meadows with straight terrain, mine the side so mobs cant just run into the fields and start planting. Then i return every 2-3 days and start re-seeding again.

Originally posted by stvlepore:

There is no second chance, once you plant them too close you lose them. Same with trees.

True if you've planted two trees (or carrots) close together. But it might also be the case that you're put a tree too close to a rock (that you can get rid of with a pick axe) or maybe you've planted a carrot too close to a fence- you could save those carrots by moving the wall out.

The vanilla solution.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2614598537
Takes up more room, but you are basically drowning in free real estate already.

Hydro,
If all of them are brown, just use the cultivator or hoe to destroy them and start over. Plant only two, and wait 10 seconds. If they stay green, then use that spacing for the rest. If they turn brown, then plant one more a little farther out from the first two, and wait..repeat until they stay green. I did this, and saved myself a lot of seeds early on. In game distance, they need about 3 feet between each carrot. Onions need 2 feet, Barley and Flax need 6 inches...it varies by plant type.

There is no second chance, once you plant them too close you lose them. Same with trees.

I gave knighttemplar1960's post an award because, in my opinion, it makes almost all the points I have discovered for successful farming.

The only thing I can add at the moment is pacing. One can be a good slow farmer. One can be a good fast farmer. Just don't be a half-fast farmer.

I am really hoping for a plough/seeder in Mistlands, fill a hopper with seeds, push it around and it plants at the right interval in a line. Viking age tech.
However, as others have said, click and step works for planting. If you get a not enough room to grow message, that plant is sacrificed. You can also get the message if there is something underneath the soil like a rock or plank of wood. If you plant near something like a cloudberry crop then that can also affect available growing space.

As mentioned above, space your carrots slightly further apart from each other, as well as any rocks, trees, and build structures.
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1621849308235916421/025BD88E6FC67B922E254E743F2A08390D2073F4/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

You need to leave more space in between them when seeding.

AFAIK you just need to wait until one grows to remove it and free up space around its neighbors.

You need to put more space between your carrots. The easiest way to accomplish proper carrot spacing is to download a mod like farm grid.

Mods can help with spacing, but really it's just a matter of getting the rhythm down. Move directly left or right, and slam the carrots down as you go. Leave some extra space in between the rows for slack.

Without mods I use floor tiles around my garden plot to give me an idea of space. The plants don't need a full tile of space to grow. If you plant walking left, right, or backwards, you can get plants too close together. Usually the plants that are too close will die before you can harvest the ones nearby and give the others more room.

To plant successfully every time, without the plants being crowded, plant walking forward. The plant will stay red until it is far enough away from the previous plant to have enough space to grow. If you try to plant before that it will give you a need cultivated ground error (even though the ground is cultivated) or if you are planting at too sharp an angle you will get the blocked error. To make sure the first plant has enough room to grow start a tile away from the front edge and stop planting when you are a tile away from the back edge or any walls you may have built.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2857321032