Farming acorns?

[Gus Smedstad]

I've been playing on a Terra asteroid. I've yet to play on an Arboria one.

I've received 3 acorns, and bred a few Pips. I've got a little farm area with the trees and several pips. So far, I've gotten zero additional acorns.

My understanding is that you have to use the Dig tool to "uproot" the branches periodically. I put "uproot" in quotes since you're really just chopping off a branch, not pulling up the entire tree. My understanding is that simply marking branches for auto-harvest doesn't work. A branch only has a chance of generating an acorn the first time it grows, harvesting doesn't reset that, but uprooting it does. Is that known for sure?

I'm asking mostly because I'm not seeing any acorns. If a branch does grow one, a pip has to get it, right? What happens when it does? Does the pip just carry it around forever? Should I be searching the Pips? I don't have any natural dirt tiles in the farm. If they get an acorn, will they plant it in a hydroponic tile?

[Lifegrow]

Let the pips have access to the trees, disable auto harvest for a while - the pips will get you acorns when the branches are full.

[SquirrelTeeth]

I've seen that pips will crawl around on the trees to eat and I think that's when the acorn gets dropped.  I haven't seen the acorn drop, but I have found acorns at the base of trees in my pip stable.  The only time pips will carry a seed is if they have a spot picked out to plant it; if there are no more spots available, they won't touch the seeds.

And yes, I have indeed seen pips plant seeds in farm tiles.  The first time I was playing on a forest biome a pip got into my farm and planted a mirthleaf and an arbor tree where I was about to plant mealwood.  They can also knock seeds out of storage containers.

Verandte and Oasisse also have the 'forest' as the starting biome in addition to Arboria, if you wanted to check them out.

[Gus Smedstad]

2 minutes ago, SquirrelTeeth said:

The only time pips will carry a seed is if they have a spot picked out to plant it; if there are no more spots available, they won't touch the seeds.

And yes, I have indeed seen pips plant seeds in farm tiles. 

Very good to know. That mechanic makes sense; the Pip makes the acorn drop first, and then (maybe) picks it up. I had this idea in my head that the Pip snagged the acorn directly from the tree and then decided what to do with it.