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Gardening Term Question
iamsweetmystery
Posts: 250 Member
I guess it's a new thing, but I found out that if I Shift+Click a garden plant, I get this huge menu of ways to manipulate them, including advancing their Evolution. That's pretty cool. One thing in that menu I don't get is under the category "Weeds..." It has one Weed State called "Mulched". What is that? I'm not aware of any way to buy mulch or to put mulch on plants. Anyone know what this is about?
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As to your direct question, have you or is it possible to select something from that menu? If so, select Mulched and see what happens. Perhaps, they have come up with a more direct way to fertilize our plants, other than using fish or various other harvested items.
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I don't personally have much trouble getting plants. I usually cheat for money and buy certain things, like seed packets and VoidCritters card packs, in large quantities. If any plants are missing, I usually know where they can be found or, in some cases, how to graft for them. This whole thing with the weeds option is just baffling, though. I've used the Shift+Click menu with my plants (obviously, this needs testingcheats to be on). I used it to evolve all my plants to Perfect status. I have a suspicion that "Mulching" might slow or prevent the appearance of weeds, but I haven't seen any weeds for a while anyway. It's late fall right now in my game and Patchy does a pretty good job at weed control anyway, so if that's what it does, I may not even notice any effect.
In my current family I only have the flowers indoors -- I built a greenhouse/conservatory room for my floral arranging Sim. The veggies, herbs and trees stay outside. (Next time I do a gardening Sim I'll have the garden closer to the house -- my Sim had a hard time during blizzards going out to harvest.)
I wonder if that menu comes up when using a mod like UI Cheats Extension or MCCC (with cheats enabled) but not for the mod-free, which is why players haven't noticed it.
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I'm fairly upset with both myself and the gallery right now. I downloaded a pre-seasons made community garden that I love. Did I save it to my gallery? No, that's why I'm mad- now I can't find it in the regular gallery. Well anyhow. It seems to be all buggy. So there are things in there I want to not die, right? Forbidden fruit tree and all the exotic stuff my sims haven't found yet. I set the lot type to park. And it does seem to register as a garden, because gardener-looking people randomly show up and do things to the plants. For a while I'd have my sims go there and build skill watering things, etc. It would take one sim two days to get it all done, so I did it rotationally. Plants thrived, even if there were a whole lot of bugs around. I made it a cat hangout, the creator was nice enough to have an outdoor kitchen, and a building with bathrooms and a bed downstairs so exhausted or homeless sims can rest and attend to their non-gardening needs. Some sims harvested stuff and planted them elsewhere. It was a nice place.
Now. Here's what happens. Sim goes in with maybe 3 skill in gardening, takes his poor elderly butt four days to get anything done and I had to send him home for fear he would work himself to death. Gets stuck for seven sim hours spraying the same plant for bugs. Tried everything except rebooting the computer to get him to stop. Ugh. Sent a level ten gardener in - before this, a whole section of emotion trees were about to die from lack of water- when she came in, they're fine. She spent a week taking vacation and trying to keep up with reviving all the plants that want to die. I won't let her spray a single thing and won't click "tend garden" either because she'll get stuck spraying for bugs. She also gets stuck on watering. Water two plants and then get in a loop with them; at least that one I'm able to click it off and she'll go about doing something else. She had to pick one of nearly everything so that when it dies, she can replant it, I mean she can revive them but if she doesn't get there in time, it'll just be beyond that state. Things in her yard do not seem to need watering as much, but for plum's sake, many of them are the same plants! What makes them die so fast in that one spot??
And forget planting things outdoors on the ground; they spontaneously move from where you planted them to a spot two squares over, so planting things at night isn't advised 'cause I may not figure out where the dickens they went.
Is anyone else in this boat?! I used to love gardening! If I get Seasons will any of this mess be fixed, or will I want to tear my hair out even more?
If your Sim gets stuck in any kind of animation, this is where testingcheats is a HUGE help. If you turn on testingcheats and Shift+Click the sim, you will see an option "Reset this Object (Debug)". This can fix a number of small problems. Animation sticking, queue items that won't clear, etc.
I didn't know we could do that. I'll have to check it out next time I play.
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Yeah, the game is kinda like that. Some things get half coded in, but might not be fully functional. One function in particular that I can think of, is to do with the beds. There is, actually, coded in game, or was, at least, an interaction to Relax On The Bed, but it wasn't enabled for the menu. A modder saw it in the code, and enabled it when he or she made the All Beds Same Energy Mod. That mod was taken over by a different modder, tho. I forget if the option is still in the menu. When it was though, it totally worked.
In this case, they were probably thinking about being able to mulch plants, but it got lost along the wayside somewhere. Did any visible effects show up if you have tried it? I imagine it does have something to do with the growth of weeds.
@SherryRN, ah, I'm sorry you're having such a time with your garden lot. I'm sure that if you have mods, you've tried removing them, and putting back gradually to test, the process after patches.
I haven't given the new Gardening a good run through since the Patch. I do have some gardens that I have spent a great deal of time establishing, too, and I just want to get a bit up to speed with what I'm doing. My guess would be that maybe your garden is buggy because of the Patch. The Pre-Seasons Patch was just chock full of code changes that can affect the game in random and unexpected ways. Gardening itself had a huge overhaul, as I'm sure you've realized.
I have a similar park lot, which has a Perfect garden with all plants up to the Patch. I'm a bit unsure how to proceed. If the same thing happens to me, I might indeed do as you have said, and pick one of everything to replant from scratch. That may reset the plants if they're bugged? I don't know if they will still be Perfect, since the evolvement cycle has been changed. It does take way less time to evolve now, so that's a plus.
Edit: By taking less time to evolve, I mean the Evolve process itself, not the time it takes for them to be ready to do so. That seems to take a while, but there are less levels, so however that comes out, I'm not sure.
I'm not positive this will fix your Sims getting stuck, tho. That maybe a separate glitch. It seems to be happening with other non-gardening interactions, too, until they find and fix the problem.
One thing that did occur to me to ask. Do you have Get Together expansion? You can make a Gardening Club, and have them gather at the park to take care of the garden together. Just make sure to harvest first if you can and need to. If you don't have GT, you maybe be able to put Sims in a Group, and try it that way. Sometimes even NPCs can be gotten to do things using this, altho they are a bit more stubborn than controlled Sims because of Skill levels, other Needs, etc. Can the other members of your Sims' households help them with the lower skill tasks?
Planting things without the planters, for me, has always acted the way you mention. I think it's because the game is rather picky about placement of the plants because of routing, etc.
I was a bit confused by what you said about the game not thinking your plants are a garden anymore? Are you not able to hire a Gardener, or what made you say this?
If you aren't in a huge hurry to get Seasons, it probably isn't going to help immensely. Most of the gardening changes were in the Patch before the release. So to fix the glitches will also require Patches. It just takes patience to wait for them. One thing Season does have that will help with watering is rain, and sprinklers, too. It does complicate matters as well, tho. You have to have a plan to deal with the coming and going of seasons, and the various accompanying plant cycles. Plants are dormant at certain seasons, active in others, and that requires an adjustment of playing style. Plants don't actually die, tho, unless they're neglected, of course. They just become dormant.
If you have enjoyed gardening, tho, you will probably enjoy making bouquets at the floral station, and the new Career. I myself have loved the Expansion. I think I love the new activities the most, ice and rollerskating, water balloon play, scouting, the calendar for special holidays and events, the decorations etc, etc. And the swing set--I couldn't love such a little thing more. The swing is very well done, with all ages able to participate, and great animations.
I have been using this plant cheats to make these videos faster so I don't have to wait so long for them to grow and instead I can immediately start with fully grown plant and show off the plant care if needed. It is so great that they have put these cheats there.
Let's see if I can reply to all your points... No, I don't have mods. So that was an easy one to not worry about.
The game, for certain sim households with a lot full of planted things, would not allow a gardener to be hired.
I do have the Get Together expansion. And I'm thinking I'll get Seasons in the next few months. I've tried the group thing. People got stuck, and it was not a lot different. More "stuff" did not actually wind up being accomplished.
What I did, was look at it like this. I spent ages on the gallery and never found that lot. Then I took a good look at why it was so challenging. Well, because there were too many of each plant, is why. And since I got it before I got the pet expansion and pack and things, there were plants missing, so a whole small section hadn't had anything in, at all. But still, too many plants. I mean, fifteen apple trees and twelve emotion trees are not really necessary, are they? Two to four of everything else, with trash plants right in the middle, making sims unhappy every time they get near them. Hm.
So I found a garden I liked better, and tried it out in another save, and since more than one sim has picked the dickens out of the one garden, just in case, I'll probably replace it with the smaller one. It has a different feel to it, the plants are a little more spread out, there are quite a few spliced things in there, and there's a big pink tree whose significance escapes me right now, but will be fun to go through the portal thing later on and see what that's about. And I downloaded to my library to make sure I'd got a copy before I got to see if it will be good or weird. And then I got excited and downloaded a garden in a big greenhouse looking thing, and stuck it in the ... not the city living world, but the one with the business lots, and played with it. It's nice. Then just to stay up longer and avoid going to bed for no reason, I started a new sim household, and made her play with plants, and tested the reset business with testing cheats. Turned out I already had it enabled, and it worked well. And even better, she was able to hire a gardener. Interesting. I didn't pay any attention to how well he did, got sleepy and went to bed.
I am wondering, since the one I started playing with at first isn't there, and believe me I looked, maybe it was a buggy thing and isn't there now for a good reason? Anyhow I did go back and fiddle with it, next day, have not removed it yet from the main save, but good grief. It's going to plum in a hand basket. I wonder if making it a cat hangout did something, too? Did the kitties pee ammonia all over the plants and kill them? Does that even happen in this game? I don't think I'll make many places an actual "hangout" now, seeing how they decline to share perfectly fine litterboxes.
I went and did some reading up on Seasons, and I do think I'll enjoy it once I get it. The floral designer career branch looks interesting. And thanks for taking the time to discuss all that with me.
On another side note, I don't know what they did to the plants since Seasons got going, but the yield has been pathetic. It used to be that most plants put out 10 fruit or flowers a day, but now it's down to maybe 3 if I'm lucky. And with most plants going dormant 1/2 - 3/4 of the year and spending a few days regrowing when they come back into season, it cuts yield even farther overall. I'm really disappointed about this. It's making it hard to build up food and flower supplies. It's very frustrating. Unless it's a coding oversight they intend to fix, it just feels like they sabotaged gardening.
Yeah, the Groups don't seem to work as well as the Clubs, for me, anyway. I haven't tried them since the expansion, tho. The spacing of the plants is important as well, as @iamsweetmystery said. And if the Sims in the Group are NPCs they might not have the right Skills, etc. Your idea about whittling the size of the garden down as much as possible is another key to keeping them flourishing. Some of the plants I don't use so much, I have spliced. With the Patch, tho, splicing is way trickier. The Rare plants really live up to their names. It can take forever for a spliced plant to actually produce them. I don't think that's a bug, but Carl's Guide or someone was talking about the chance being set to a super low number value, so I don't know if they will dial that back a bit, or not.
I kinda doubt cats would hurt the garden. It does sound like your new gardens are working all right, so yeah, that one may just be bugged. I'm not sure why you wouldn't be able to hire a gardener, so puzzling.
Yep, I noticed the yield is way less, too. (If you want to have a pretty good look at the new changes to Gardening, James, The Sim Supply on YT is doing a Seasons Let's Play which is showing a lot of them, if you're into that, haha.) I actually think the devs were going for more realism. They figured since the changes had to be made for Seasons, this was a good time for a total overhaul. It never hurts to express your thoughts, tho.
For me, before the changes, you could make a crazy amount of money on Gardening. I just think they felt maybe that was too easy, and indeed, folks had been saying that. I don't mind it being a bit more challenging. It is a royal pain until my Sims get on their feet, if I'm playing without cheats. But after that, I tend to make too much money, if there is such a thing.