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?
Best Answer
From the Terraria wiki page on Trees:
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.