Never got this one, and I've been farming quite a bit though.

Did you fiddle with the original gene setup you start with ?
You should have a single growth gene with a collector on top and a root on bottom, with a gene for mineral storing on one side and another for energy storing on the other side (I believe seed and core respectively).

If you don't have two seeds and two core, but you put a second growth gene, the intial energy and minerals will be depleted before anything can be grown.

Moreover, the growth gene will only have enough ressources to fully grow two other gene, and you absolutely need at least one collector and one root (putting the seed and core on the two other adjacent tiles is only to be sure only these two are grown first, because the growth gene starts with adjacent tiles from top to bottom, and core and seed tiles are already fully grown when you plant it).

So if you fiddled with it but didn't give it enough ressources, maybe it died out ? Though it never happened to me either, they usually just stay in a frozen state and you can collect them to try to get back some crystals to plant back.

Or a graphism problem ? I had a hard time finding my own plantations at first because for me crystals only appear as tiny dots on the map, which sometimes glow a bit.

Otherwise, that's a shame, I found the farming system quite enjoyable myself, though the tutorial is a bit lacking and I think a proper overlay explaining each gene mechanics when you hover over them in your gene setup view would be a good thing.
It took me a while figuring out that you can exit a gene view by a right click, getting back to your invetory this way.

Gib'.

The gene board? Well that's confusing, because there's no in-depth explaination in the game, so I have no idea how that works.

If what you say in your explain is how this "farming" works, then I'll see what I can do by rearranging the gene board.

But again, in the future, the devs should improve the explaination of how the "farming" system works.

Well, if you have never modified anything in the gene board before, the default configuration is viable. So you might have got a problem of savefile or something instead.

But yes, it took me many tries before finally understanding how the various genes works too. Now my gene-board is full with multiple branches and grows both iron and gold quite fast (I have yet to find genes for other materials, with luck you can get some by actually mining by the way, it's dropped alongside the raw ores sometimes when you mine on asteroids).

Gib'.

This happens if you didn't save after planting them. You need to save then reload.