I've read in a couple of places that crops die during a toxic fallout. However I'm 3 days into the toxic fallout and the crops seem fine.
Can you grow crops outside during toxic fallouts?
IRL, yes, crops die. In RimWorld, not that I've ever seen; I've maintained outside crops through the entire span of a "toxic fallout" period (by strictly controlling who is outside, and for how long). Rather, any ANIMAL (or human, of course) is slowly poisoned over time, when outdoors.
You (or the posters in question) may be thinking of what happens during "volcanic winter", which greatly slows down (but does not stop) plant growth. I don't think anything prevents both events from firing concurrently, although I could be mistaken, so maybe they were seeing both effects?
Toxic fallout does randomly kill off any plants which aren't under a roof.
Toxic fallout randomly kills plants that are exposed to it. IIRC, each plant has somewhere around a 25-30% chance of dying each day it is exposed. So some plants will die, some will survive.
Get a BIG field of crops all planted around the same time and you'll see the effects more easily.
Yes. They will die. you might get SOME yield if a plant is lucky enough to make it to harvest and get harvested, but you won't get much. In a toxic fallout i had early into my latest game, I lost about 80% of my crops...not all at once...it was a couple plants at a time. I eventually had to turn of sowing in those fields because my grower was getting poisoned significantly faster than his body could work it out.
Unless you're playing tribal, it's not really hard to build a greenhouse and grow inside.
I do hate it when I lose the bulk of my pine tree crops to this.
This is why hunting / harvesting dying animals is extremely important in fallout, the extra meat can help mitigate the risks
I hate toxic fallouts. It just creates so much tedious micro. Basically you are forced to start hunting for animals right away when it happens, but because hunting is so brokenly dangerous right now, you have to draft guys to hunt from a distance...and then you sit out for the next few days and that's it.
I just quickly put a roof over the farm. Doesn't take much. Just some widely placed walls and roof zoning. Then put as many sun lamps as you have power for and maybe a few regular lights to help keep the rest of your plants alive until the toxic event ends. I also make sure to make covered walkways to the farms and between any separate buildings.