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Gardening Essentials? (BG+packs)
LatinaBunny
Posts: 4,666 Member
Hello! 
It has been awhile since I’ve played Sims, and I have bought some new packs recently, so I would like some help or advice on a gameplay aspect.
I have not touched gardening in a long time, and there has been updates and patches since then, and I would like to get my sims to start some gardening alongside their cooking.
What are the various gardening items and gardening and cooking gameplay for the entire game plus packs so far? Which various packs added to/enhanced the gardening and cooking gameplay? (I almost have all of the packs, except for some Stuff packs and the Kits. I recently bought the new one with bunnies and country animals, but haven’t played it yet.)
I am a bit overwhelmed since there has been some patches and updates in the last year or two, and I only just started getting a few plant seeds and did some basic weeding, lol.
Any gardening guides to help as well?
Any help or guidance on where to start would be greatly appreciated! (Can be detailed tips as well.)
It has been awhile since I’ve played Sims, and I have bought some new packs recently, so I would like some help or advice on a gameplay aspect.
I have not touched gardening in a long time, and there has been updates and patches since then, and I would like to get my sims to start some gardening alongside their cooking.
What are the various gardening items and gardening and cooking gameplay for the entire game plus packs so far? Which various packs added to/enhanced the gardening and cooking gameplay? (I almost have all of the packs, except for some Stuff packs and the Kits. I recently bought the new one with bunnies and country animals, but haven’t played it yet.)
I am a bit overwhelmed since there has been some patches and updates in the last year or two, and I only just started getting a few plant seeds and did some basic weeding, lol.
Any gardening guides to help as well?
Any help or guidance on where to start would be greatly appreciated! (Can be detailed tips as well.)
~*~Occult Family Player player~*~
(She/her)
(She/her)
0
Comments
If you like easter eggs/shortcuts, City Living has two festivals that will give you some otherwise hard-to-find seeds, and Realm of Magic has a vendor stall that sells otherwise hard-to-find seeds.
City Living really enhances the cooking gameplay a lot because there are many unlockable recipes from ordering food at the food stalls. Snowy Escape has a few too.
https://simguided.com/guides/sims-4-gardening-and-plant-list/
https://simscommunity.info/2021/07/26/the-sims-4-cottage-living-oversized-crops-guide/
https://www.carls-sims-4-guide.com/skills/gardening/
https://ultimatesimsguides.com/sims-4-gardening/
Ah, I didn't know those other packs had more seeds and recipes! Yes, I have just gotten the new Cottage Living pack recently. Thanks so much!
(She/her)
Ooh!! Yay for guides! I need this! Thank you very much!
(She/her)
(She/her)
Greenhouses in The Sims 4 are just regular rooms! In fact, you don’t even need the Seasons expansion pack to build one. Any enclosed space protected from the elements in the game can function as a greenhouse for your plants but of course, you can make your greenhouses look more like greenhouses with windows and glass roofing.
https://simscommunity.info/2021/11/13/building-greenhouses-in-the-sims-4/
https://simsvip.com/2018/06/20/tutorial-using-glass-roofs-in-the-sims-4/
https://www.ign.com/wikis/the-sims-4/Experimental_Recipes
Ooh! More mysterious/rare/hidden recipes!
If I had my sim own and manage a restaurant, would they be able to have access to these recipes? Or is it only an NPC-led restaurant that has these recipes?
(She/her)
If you like to unlock recipes, there are a few more packs that add food you can unlock by eating them. There are seafood dishes in cats and dogs, selvadora dishes in jungle adventure and batuu recipes in journey to batuu.
A short cut for those who like mods is the cookbook mod by littlemssam to unlock the recipes. This allows you to learn all the recipes of a pack by reading a cookbook.
https://littlemssam.tumblr.com/post/175405693313/cookbooks-this-mod-adds-new-buyable-cookbooks-into
The experimental recipes are on the menu of the chez llama restaurant that comes with the dine out pack. (the restaurant should be in your library if you have the pack) I was able to add the batuu recipes to an unowned restaurant and my sims learned to make them after tasting them in the restaurant. I have never tried on an owned restaurant.
Something else that hasn't been mentioned in this thread but is closely related to cooking and gardening is the simple living lot challenge. You need cottage living for this one. This challenge makes recipes require ingredients to be able to cook them. You need to buy basic ingredients like flour and sugar on the phone or the cottage living market stall and grow your fruit and veggies.
I don’t know about the rest of the packs. I’m curious to know if other packs offer any new plants too. Like Get Together, Get Famous, Discover University, Snowy Escape, and Get Together, or Parenthood. I’d like to know which packs have what plants ( and fish ) myself.
Plants/Harvestables: https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Gardening_(The_Sims_4)#Harvestables
Fish: https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Fishing_(The_Sims_4)#List_of_fish
Food/Gourmet Cooking/Grill (and more) recipes: https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Cooking_(The_Sims_4)#Recipes
Baking recipes: https://sims.fandom.com/wiki/Baking?so=search#Oven.2Ffridge_recipes
The Winters family Tree --- My Mods
That simple living lot challenge sounds pretty awesome! Reminds me of the older Sims gameplay. 🙂👍
Oh, wow! So many places to find for stuff!
Yeah, I think almost every other pack adds recipes, but I don’t know if every pack adds plant seeds or fish or insects, though. I’m sure there has to be an updated list somewhere online (I hope)! 🙂 Oooh! Yes, I need lists! There are just too many plants, fish, and recipes to keep track of, heh! 🙂
I tried googling the canning stuff, so hopefully these two links have everything for the canning basics, if anyone needs them besides me, heh:
https://www.thegamer.com/the-sims-4-cottage-living-guide-canning/amp/
https://simscommunity.info/2021/07/22/the-sims-4-cottage-living-an-introduction-to-canning/
(She/her)
For instance, gnome might spawn seed packs with Seasons, and sims might need to go to vacation destinations go pick other seeds.
A few seeds are available from a vending maching from Island Living.
The cow berry might also be found at the spice festival of City Living.
Yep, that links looks quite accurate and useful.
I love gardening and cooking in Sims games...every household I play ends up with at least a few garden plants even if it is just some tomatoes growing in a pot on the balcony in an apartment in San Myshuno.
I got Cottage Living for Christmas (yay!) and the new lot trait that makes cooking require ingredients is one I will probably turn on in all of my households as well. I have wanted sims to be required to go grocery shopping (or grow/raise their own) since TS4 first came out, and now I can! I love that lot trait.
BTW, no one has mentioned it, but if you're doing gardening don't forget about Flowers and the Flower Arranging table either (added with Seasons). If that's something that might interest you. And also remember the Bee Box, which is useful for improving the quality of nearby plants, and Patchy who is useful for helping with gardening.
Cottage Living also unlocks an easy-plant-upgrade route you could opt for using golden chickens, golden milk or golden egg omelets which let you instant-upgrade plants to perfect with their super-secret golden pulse power. And the rabbits and birds, which respectively help with weeding and bug removal, from Cottage Living are much more helpful than I at first realized. I can't remember the last time my current household had to weed or spray for bugs themselves now that they have many little friends.
The Winters family Tree --- My Mods
About greenhouses. Certain plants will grow only at certain times of the year unless they are sheltered, and in true Sims fashion an unsupported roof just hovering over them counts as shelter. Building a greenhouse just looks better but I don't think it brings any additional gameplay benefit.
Yes! I loved having my sims do cooking (and baking) in the past Sims games, too! I’ve only touched the surface of gardening, but it’s something I want to (excuse the pun, hehe) dig into! 😄👍
Oh!!! Flower Arranging is in Seasons, too? Nice! 😀 I loved doing floral arranging stuff back in… I think Sims 2 or Sims 3, can’t remember which game had that, but I loved that kind of stuff, too! Can’t wait to add that, too! 🤗
Ooh, thanks for letting me know! 😀👍 I’ll be sure to check the festivals more often.
That’s great that making a greenhouse is pretty simple! 🙂👍 I was a little intimidated to get deep into gardening and greenhouses, because I thought it would be a full complicated system to make a greenhouse. Good to hear that it’s not, though! 🤗👍
(She/her)
1) For Overgrown Crops, does it matter which world I can plant them in? Like, can I plant them outside of the Cottage Living world?
2) Can we plant crops and plants in all worlds, like including Island Living and Strangerville (or whatever is the name of the more drier-looking places)? Do rabbits and foxes show up in various worlds besides the Cottage Living one? Can we raise the farm animals in any world?
I plan to have a greenhouse, regardless, but I wanted to know if I can just plant some stuff in any world’s ground.
3) How long would you suggest to make the seasons, so that the plants and crops and flowers have time to grow?
(She/her)
2. Yes, the harvestables from specific worlds can be planted anywhere. Other than oversized, they don't require anything special...you can just plant them on the ground if you don't want to use pots and planters. (BTW, the oversized garden plots can be used to grow other things as well. Up to 4 plants or 1 tree can be planted in one instead of an oversized crop)
3. Personally, I make my seasons 21 days long. I need to use a mod to do this though. The game allows for 7, 14 and 28 without mods. I found the setting for 14 days didn't feel long enough and the setting for 28 felt too long so installed a mod that changes the 28 day setting to 21 days.
Just for growing though, 14 days really is perfect. I like 21 so that I have time for a few more holidays in each season without it feeling like it is "always a holiday".
The Winters family Tree --- My Mods
Thanks so much, @Stormkeep ! 🤗👍 I am so glad that some aspects of a pack are universal, so I can incorporate them into whichever worlds.
One last question: Do rabbits and foxes only show up with the Fox lot trait, or is it when we have Overgrown crops? I would love to see more animals around, for sure! 😀
(She/her)
Rabbits will show up only if the "Tree Stump" object is somewhere on the lot or in the neighborhood in the case of Old New Henford and The Bramblewood of Henford-on-Bagley. If you have a stump actually on your lot they come out even if you don't have a garden. If you befriend the wild ones in the open neighborhood they also will pop in to visit sometimes.
So basically, if you want to see foxes, use the lot trait. If you want to see rabbits, either play in a neighborhood that has the Tree Stumps or visit a neighborhood that does a few times, until you make friends with the rabbits. Once you make friends with a rabbit you unlock the Tree Stump to place on your own lot. I imagine you could also just use the cheatcode to unlock BB items and skip the make-friends-with-rabbits step. But where's the fun in that?
The Winters family Tree --- My Mods
So, check out Henford neighborhood with tree stumps, got it. Thanks, again, @Stormkeep !
(She/her)
What is needed to make the treats to give the farm animals.
https://gamertweak.com/animal-treats-cottage-living-sims-4/
The locations of the new mushrooms in cottage living.
https://gamertweak.com/cottage-living-find-mushrooms/
Guide to canning
https://www.thegamer.com/the-sims-4-cottage-living-guide-canning/
Nice info by simgirl1010 when plants grow in cottage living (they grow all year if planted in a greenhouse)
https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/992318/cottage-living-a-couple-of-related-questions-a-new-question