Had two fields full of lovely cabbages and one of wheat; as far as I could tell from clicking on the fields and the cabbages themselves, no way to directly ask colonists to harvest them. So I assumed if they were hungry they would eat the food or someone would harvest. Instead, after eating one too many fishpeople steaks, my colonists apparently decided they'd rather eat each other than the food they grew. While amusing, this doesn't seem like a great long-term strategy for the success of my colony. Any idea what I'm missing?
The cabbage looks fully grown when you first plant it, but it doesn't become 'edible' until it changes to a different model (a slightly lighter green), which is when they will start farming it autonomously. That said, the colonists are too lazy to forage wild foods and would rather starve to death than pick lingonberries. Just saying. If your farm is mature (about 3-4 in-game days) and your colonists aren't harvesting it, you might want to check the work crews and make sure someone is actually free to do the farming, instead of standing around doing dud jobs. High class citizens, such as poets, capitalists, and naturalists, will just help out whenever they damn well feel like it. EDIT: Oh, they also won't touch the food if it's too far away.
I don't really use wheat so I can't say how to tell when it's ready, not to mention you have to bake it. For cabbages though, they're ready when they have a light green sphere in the middle of the darker green. At this point colonists will harvest them and place them in a stockpile or drop them at some random place. While in theory, it should go to the kitchen where it gets substantially higher food points, colonists tend to eat the moment food is ready when they're starving for pretty fair reasons which ironically results in them still starving to death because there's not enough nutrition in unboiled cabbage. In short, any time you get the option to take immigrants, opt for getting three. That or go hunting for fish people. Or if you really just like the taste of suspicious pork, you could change the immigrant incoming in its event file to get 5 or 10 fresh bags of me- I mean promising new explorers. Another answer, I build at least 6 cabbage patches and set the kitchen to boil as much of it in to soup as possible. If it can't, oh well, there's more than enough to feed a 30 person colony. Also try foraging for fungi and berries as they make excellent short term food supplies while planted crops grow.
Wheat turns from tiny little spikes of green grass to big tall tufts of golden wheat. Baking it isn't hard, and the nice thing about it is that your colonists don't eat it before it's ready. However, it does take about twice as long as cabbage does to grow. I recommend having at least three ovens/stoves in a kitchen though, and around 4 or more staff working on it. I... I have too much cabbage (350 bushels of it).
I actually enjoy the wheat. Mostly because my colonists won't eat it raw, thus allowing other colonists to Enjoy the Fruits of Labor. Also, I'm sure the food values have an impact (or will eventually). I keep cabbage around as much as I can, but I usually rely on that as a source of grazing for the other colonists, and get SUPER MEGA EXCITED when the colonists start making cabbage stew.
I made 4 ovens and started baking bread. It was enough for 20 people Gabbage is my failsafe option. I imagine that eating only one type of food has negative effect on the mood of people.
Food values do in fact have an impact. I don't remember all the numbers but the general order for food filling-ness is: Cooked food (600 value) will feed one person for one day. Baskets of raw lingenberries are above average, and I think two or three a day will feed one person. Raw stuff like cabbages and the black mushrooms are the worst and 4 of them will feed 1 person for 1 day. All subject to change and balance in the future, of course.
