Farming in a snow biome

I'm living in a snow biome right now and I found rather difficult farming there. For example sugar cane needs of a block of water. I tried with this approach:

S W S W S
S W S W S
S W S W S
S W S W S

(S = sugar cane, W = water)

But the water keep freezing Even if I put torches all around it. Is there any compact way to force a water block not to freeze?

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7 Answers

Cover the water with wooden slabs. This looks nice, and lets you walk around without stepping on the dirt, e.g. when growing wheat.

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Note that the melting effect of a torch has a limited range:

Torches also melt nearby snow and ice, making them useful to keep skylights from being snowed over and lakes from freezing in snow biomes. The torches will however only melt snow and ice from a radius of 2 blocks from the torch.

It's likely that you are placing your torches around your sugar cane farm, and thus the ice blocks in the middle are too far from the torches to be melted.

As an alternative, glowstone blocks have a slightly wider radius of 3 and could be placed in the air space above the water:

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Based on gnovice's information, you can keep your Sugercane farm layout with a minor change. Replace every 3rd sugarcane block in the center row with a torch. This way, no block of water is more than two squares (three cubes) from the torch.

S W S W S
S W T W S
S W S W S
S W S W S
S W T W S
S W S W S
S W S W S
S W T W S
S W S W S
S W S W S
S W T W S
S W S W S
S W S W S
S W T W S
S W S W S

1

Try putting glowstone under the water. I used this to keep a Venice like water road melted through a snow biome. It seemed like ice no longer even formed.

Use wood and place torches on them next to sugar canes.

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You can put fire around it, torches or glow blocks as the above posts mention.

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If you want to farm here just build a greenhouse out of glass and plant your crops in there!

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