Gardens?

smithfamily89

Kayso, I have never really gotten into gardening in TS3, but I have always wanted to. Just wanted to see if anyone had and friendly advice to help me get started? Please!

Thanks in advance! & Happy Simming!

muddypaws4167

Make your Sim have the green thumb trait. Also, if your Sim studies handiness enough they can upgrade the sprinkler to auto-water. They might also want to learn to fish so they can catch fish to "fertilize with best fertilizer".Do you have Seasons? Do you play with money cheats? Remember the crops are all dormant in the late fall and throughout winter so you will not have income from harvesting during that time.

stilljustme2

Be careful not to make the garden too big, otherwise it takes all day to take care of it.

Use the sprinklers, and get a Sim up to level 4 Handiness so you can upgrade them to auto-water; they'll water the gardens every day from 4 to 7 am so you don't have to worry about watering -- that saves a lot of time. One sprinkler covers a 5x5 square area, so if you take out one square for the sprinkler itself it covers 24 plants.

I usually plant only one plant in a square, that leaves enough space between plants to harvest without routing errors.

Have a Sim in the household with a good fishing skill, or if you don't mind mods you can get one that makes all fish available for sale at the grocery store -- fish make good fertilizer. You can also build a pond on your property then find spawners in buydebug mode to have fish available right outside your door for fishing.

Give your Sim the Green Thumb trait -- they'll learn Gardening faster -- and save up your points for the Super Green Thumb trait. They'll be able to talk to plants to make them grow better, and can even revive Death Flower plants so you can get more than one harvest from them.

Coffefreak4Life

Garlic is a good fertilizer to start with as it has a great fertilizer rating .

The green thumb trait and super green thumb LTR are musts for any gardener sim

if you want high quality crops fast you can grow them to mature pick them then trash the mature plant and plant what you just picked rinse and repeat . Since green thumbs harvest higher quality crops this is a pretty good strategy for the skill challenge or perfect garden LTW

Getting the collection helper isnt the worst idea either to find those special seeds like life fruit, death blossoms or money trees .

Flashygrrl

If you really want to make it easy and have some simpoints, get the SwiftGro. If you have In The Future all the better because you have the soil rugs and can make a greenhouse without having to buy the whole Stones Throw set and not have to deal with dormancy and the resulting harvest bug.

Snitbaker

Having the gatherer trait seems to help plants skip steps in the quality improvement process.

smithfamily89

muddypaws4167 wrote:

Make your Sim have the green thumb trait. Also, if your Sim studies handiness enough they can upgrade the sprinkler to auto-water. They might also want to learn to fish so they can catch fish to "fertilize with best fertilizer".Do you have Seasons? Do you play with money cheats? Remember the crops are all dormant in the late fall and throughout winter so you will not have income from harvesting during that time.

See I've already made my family & My simself doesn't have the GT trait. Is it still possible to do? No, I don't have seasons. I only have LN WA Supernatural & Generations lol. Where do you take the gardening class at?

Snitbaker

The gardening class is at the grocery store. Also, studying gardening at the library is faster than reading the same books at home.

AquariusMom

Let them have the Loves the Outdoors trait so they'll have the extra moodlet while they're outside tending the garden for hours on end.

sara25141

I also look around and harvest plants growing in the parks and around town to increase my skill before I start a garden of my own.

Mariesalias

The gardening class is at the Science rabbithole. Fishing is at the Grocery.

ShadeDaystar

I've never had any luck telling my Sims to "dispose of all dead plants". They get rid of Barren, Dead, and Dormant plants. So, instead, I go into buy mode and manually delete the barren plants, since those're the only ones that have no chance of continuing to be profitable.

bklienhart

As previously mentioned, don't start too big. A half-dozen plants is plenty to start on.

If you have the multi-tab you can listen to a gardening tabcast to build your skill while doing other stuff.

Garlic does make a good fertilizer, but Life Fruit is the absolute best. It not only has the highest strength, it also speeds up growth.

Having an automatic sprinkler is good, but even without that you can just turn it on and off by clicking on it. You don't need to send a sim over to interact with it.

The Swiftgro Gardening Station should still be available singly from the store w/o having to buy the whole Greenhouse venue.

You should also be able to get the Humble Harvest Stand (vegetable cart) singly as well. That frequently sells fruits you can't get at the Grocery Store, but the stock varies from day to day.

For plants you can, start with store-bought ones instead of seeds. The boughten plants are Nice quality, most seeds are only Normal, so you save one step of quality.

Generally, you plant a Nice fruit, and if you fertilize and take care of it, it grows into a Great plant, that maybe bears Outstanding fruits. Then you take and plant the Outstanding fruit and it makes an Excellent plant, etc. Or is Outstanding better than Excellent? I can never remember. Anyway when the higher quality plants mature and start bearing, don't be afraid to just get rid of the older, low quality plants.

Somebody else mentioned that having a sim "Dispose of Dead Plants" is too much trouble. I second the motion of just going into Build/Buy and deleting plants. You can't delete them if there is still fruit on them so you need to harvest first.

Some plants can only be harvested a limited number of times before they die. Death Flowers, for instance only bloom once. Plasma Fruit, only twice, etc.

Finally, when you are trying to track down the Special plants, a Collection Helper lifetime reward really helps.