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Gardening - what do you plant?

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  • thebriamonthebriamon Posts: 377 Member
    @mw1525 I am super fascinated now at the idea of non rabbit hole restaurants and grocery stores! How do you do this?
  • mw1525mw1525 Posts: 1,214 Member
    @thebriamon - The restaurants & stores are easy to create but take a little effort to maintain. Give me a little time, I will DM you with instructions on how I create and operate these as I do not wish to clutter Turjan's thread when their subject of interest is gardening.
  • PuddinroyPuddinroy Posts: 4,451 Member
    I usually plant anything my sim finds. I love the ITF soil rugs. :)
    :) Smile!

  • IreneSwiftIreneSwift Posts: 6,247 Member
    I don't always send my sims to the future, but if I do, they always harvest the crystal flowers. Once they have a home there, they will grow them there, but they also bring them home and plant them in their present-day garden. Any time I send anyone to the future, they always learn bot building, so they will make good use of them.

    Regarding the UL plants, even if I don't plant all of them, I like to have the gardeners grow plenty of sweetgrass. It's especially helpful for pregnant sims, so they don't spend so much time throwing up. I also grow lots of red berry beans, as a way to help my sims make more money early on. My current sim, while living in IP on a houseboat, grew 2 red berry bean plants in pots on the top deck, along with other plants for her to cook with. Once the red berry beans reached perfect quality, she was selling them at the grocery for $252 each.
  • Nikkei_SimmerNikkei_Simmer Posts: 9,403 Member
    I mostly plant by skill-level. When the sims start out they start out with the base vegetables that they can plant with no skill level: lettuce, tomato, grapes. Then go up from there as they skill up. And I generally don't have any idea of what I'm going to plant unless there's a specific task in mind, such as alchemical ingredients (wolfsbane, red valerian...etc).

    I don't really have a layout planned when I set my sims planting. It's generally a close as possible and five trees/bushes for each fruit, three for each vegetable. Otherwise you end up with a stocked full fridge and then you have to go sell off a lot of your fruits and veggies. I tend to sell the lower end quality vegetables and fruits and keep only the second-highest quality vegetables/fruits as cooking ingredients and the top quality ones go into the next generation of plantings to level up the fruits/veggies to perfect as quickly as possible which generally knocks off The Perfect Garden quickly as it only requires eight or ten different perfect vegetables/fruits to achieve the Lifetime Reward.

    Screenshot-19.jpg
    My gardens generally look like this. Severely disorganized.
    GYZ6Ak9.png
    Always "River McIrish" ...and maybe some Bebe Hart. ~innocent expression~
  • thebriamonthebriamon Posts: 377 Member
    All these pictures and descriptions are giving me great ideas. I have *severely* underutilized the garden in the sims.
  • KevinL5275KevinL5275 Posts: 2,489 Member
    edited November 2020
    I don't really have a layout planned when I set my sims planting. It's generally a close as possible and five trees/bushes for each fruit, three for each vegetable.

    I plant in grids under the Gardening Station, but I don't group them, just where ever there is space, but leaving space between each one.
    I'm a 48 year old married man, with a beautiful wife, a cat, and a simverted personality.My Sims 3 Pictures
  • izecsonizecson Posts: 2,875 Member
    edited November 2020
    I actually do garden for aesthetic purpose primarily but I have been thinking of making my Sim quit his job to focus on gardening for profit, any idea which low level crops that can be sold for decent profit? I harvested very nice quality cabbages apples and tomato 10 of each and it can only be sold for a mere 100 simoleons on the groceries store.
    ihavemultiplegamertags
  • TurjanTurjan Posts: 1,713 Member
    edited November 2020
    @starguru Thanks for the building instructions, and thank you for the link. That's exactly the one I found, too :smile: . Glad you like the roof garden, and I like your Lunar Lakes inspired garden (or is it there?), too.
    Cronor is a cool world, but rather laggy for its small size. Nevertheless, still definitely worth a try.

    @Rhiannon58 That's great you have so much fun with gardening. The wine making is something I still have to try. Not sure whether I have the patience to try all possible combinations (I guess nobody has that :lol: ), but it sounds intriguing.

    @Puddinroy Aren't those ITF rugs a life saver? It's funny that it took TS3 until the last expansion to make inside greenhouses work easily, and you can even make standalone ones with the semi-transparent roofs rugs.

    @IreneSwift Cool how you try everything. Hmm, I read up on sweetgrass, and if I read that correctly, sweetgrass should make stacking the UL herb effects viable. Did you ever try that? If not, I should certainly do. Yes, Red Berry Beans are the best cash crops. Glow Orbs are even more expensive, but they don't grow fast enough.

    @Nikkei_Simmer Yeah, I don't mind if my gardens look a bit unorganized, either. Actually, I like the look if I mix it up. Of course, that means that I usually only have a general idea about how much of which plant I have, but well, it's not that important for me.
    Regarding that water pump, I unfortunately get bugs from it (random single rabbitholes lose menu interactions), so I don't use that one anymore.

    @thebriamon Well, yes, that's exactly where I come from, too. However, it's a severe time investment, especially if you don't play the system.

    @KevinL5275 That's exactly how I do it, too. I later plant into the gaps whatever I think I may need, which causes the look of the garden to change all the time.

    @izecson Funny enough, it's the Red Berry Bean mentioned already by IreneSwift. It's a common plant, but needs UL. However, don't expect miracles regarding initial return of investments. Sell at the consignment store, not at the grocery store. I usually transfer all I harvest to the family inventory via MC and then consign everything from there whenever I get to it. With high consignment and gardening skills, even lettuce and tomatoes sell for a pretty penny.
    ___________________________________________________________________
    Here's what became of Pattina Knack's superfluous basement kitchen. The glow is from the plants, and it's a start.
    mcsT8zR.jpg
    The little seed box on the left is what makes sure that I always keep the best seeds.

  • IreneSwiftIreneSwift Posts: 6,247 Member
    Turjan wrote: »
    @IreneSwift Cool how you try everything. Hmm, I read up on sweetgrass, and if I read that correctly, sweetgrass should make stacking the UL herb effects viable. Did you ever try that? If not, I should certainly do. Yes, Red Berry Beans are the best cash crops. Glow Orbs are even more expensive, but they don't grow fast enough.

    What do you mean by stacking the herb effects? Do you mean using more than one herb at a time, then using sweetgrass to get rid of the nausea? I've tried that. It doesn't work. Even though sweetgrass will relieve nausea from all other causes, if your sim takes it while under the effect of another herb, it will make your sim nauseous instead.
  • TurjanTurjan Posts: 1,713 Member
    @IreneSwift Ah, I see, thanks. Looks as if that means you can only have one herb moodlet altogether, either nauseous or one of the positive effects.
  • KarritzKarritz Posts: 21,908 Member
    edited November 2020
    I thought I ought to add my gardening practices to this thread. I plant it all. I often start a game with the idea of not having a garden this time. That thought doesn't last long. I knew it wouldn't when I first had it but sometimes it is possible to limit the size of my garden by using a small lot. I do prefer 64x64 lots though. I've found even the tractor works as well in the bottom basement as it does at ground level. I'm a bit sad that I can't have a ramp that will let me drive the tractor up and down basement levels though.

    Every so often I scour the internet to see if I can find more mods that will add new types of harvestables to my gardens. Those mods come with recipes too. And often lots of other ingredients that can be purchased from the grocery store.

    Every so often I think I should limit what I plant just so I can actually get some of the benefits the harvestables give to my sims when consumed. So far Ambrosia is about the limit of what I've used them for. Although I've managed to get a few of the badges, such as the badge of a Cinnamon kiss.

    Once my sims have gained level 10 in gardening I hire a gardening service and the mod will do the harvesting for me, at a price, and leave the harvest in the fridge at the end of the day.

    My sims often become wealthy from consigning their harvestables in the Humble Harvest Stands I place at my Stones Throw Greenhouse venue.

    I often suffer from terrible lag due to my sims having inventories full of harvestables. Once the inventories are brought under control the lag is gone - thank goodness.

    Gardening can be very lucrative and I love the look of all the different types of plants, especially when they are ready to harvest.

    EDIT: I never bother with having the best seeds, nor do I generally fertilise anything. My sims just tend their gardens once they are able to do that. I always try to have at least one, but often more than one Sim in my household with the Green Thumb trait as that lets them revive dead plants once they get to level 5 in gardening. Plants die from neglect or from zombie attacks. Green Thumbs can't revive barren plants though.
  • MikezumiMikezumi Posts: 49,697 Member
    I've only added one mod for more recipes and harvestables but only really used it once or twice. I tend to prefer my sims eating their favourite meals and, although the cakes and desserts look delicious, it was only fun (for me, anyway) to try for a little while.
  • MikezumiMikezumi Posts: 49,697 Member
    edited November 2020
    Turjan wrote: »
    @Mikezumi That approach makes sense for your play style. Of course, that also means a few more mods to make sure the sims actually eat the great food you prepare and don't just cook their burnt pancakes on their own or grab a yoghurt, although the fridge stocks their favorite meal. Regarding the opportunity chain, I got once to the patty stage, only for that one to bug out. Not even Marcus got that one down :lol:

    Although my sims have free will for the most part, I am particular about their eating habits. They all eat breakfast and dinner together (Set table and call to meal mod) and, because the meals are perfect quality, they are never hungry so have never autonomously cooked (and/or burned) a meal without direction or helped themselves to a quick meal. The only time I see my sims autonomously grab a meal is when they are at a picnic at the park or attending a party and then I get upset that they get the stuffed moodlet :D

  • Rhiannon58Rhiannon58 Posts: 806 Member
    Turjan wrote: »
    @Rhiannon58 That's great you have so much fun with gardening. The wine making is something I still have to try. Not sure whether I have the patience to try all possible combinations (I guess nobody has that :lol: ), but it sounds intriguing.

    I forgot to mention that for my main gardening Sim, since their garden is so big and the produce keeps getting better and better, I'm super OCD about what they use for cooking. So I regularly go through the fridge and keep only 10 of each item, selling the rest right there in the little "sell" box. This how my Sim reaches level 10 gardening pretty fast.

    Also, I saw in your comment that there are soil rugs? I have the entire TS3 set. What is this soil rug of which you speak?
  • TurjanTurjan Posts: 1,713 Member
    edited November 2020
    @Rhiannon58 You need to have "Into the Future" active. In "Decorations" > "Rugs", at the very end of the list, you find the set of grass rugs that come with ITF. Those rugs allow you to plant everything you like on them as if you were planting on soil.

    If you use Seasons, avoiding winter in greenhouses is only possible if the greenhouse has a solid floor. These rugs allow you to get the ability to freely plant back. Of course, they also work in (bed)rooms, basements, etc. The basement pic a few posts up uses one such rug, the second-largest type. They are pretty neat :smile: .

    ITF also has translucent rugs (put them on flat roof or floor tiles) that allow for light to get through the ceiling, which means you can basically build functional, winter-proof greenhouses that look like greenhouses with ITF alone. For trees you need a bit of height, but you can make the room two stories high or try your luck with friezes. An example how this looks is my Cronor roof garden on the last page (here), which makes use of both types of ITF rugs.
  • bekkasanbekkasan Posts: 10,171 Member

    Most of my sims learn gardening at some point. If poor they start off with a small fenced-in area and grow for food and hunt for seeds to plant that they can sell for money. I use the mod that requires sims to have food in order to cook or buy what they don't have. If well to do or rich they get the garden stations and greenhouses. I use the ITF rugs to grow year round in the greenhouse and color them as soil. I like not having to rely on poor quality products from the store to use in food and alchemy. When they start out learning I do have them water and fertilize the garden without the stations since it helps them skill up. Really rich farming families use the tractor because most of those gardens have been huge. I have not played farmers in a while. My occult sim gets to use his green dragon to help with harvesting now. :grin:
  • TurjanTurjan Posts: 1,713 Member
    edited November 2020
    @bekkasan I still have to try that green dragon. Will be interesting to see what it can do. Same is true for the tractor.

    @Rhiannon58 I just quickly built a greenhouse that doesn't use any store stuff (not 100% sure about the large windows, but you can use others). I wanted to make sure it can accommodate trees.
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    The ITF roof rugs are translucent, but you can still faintly see what's inside.
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    From the inside, they are more see-through. You can see the stars from below.
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    Anyway, this is a possible setup without store items. The floor is free wood tiles, covered with ITF soil rugs. The roofs are flat roof tiles, covered with those ITF translucent rugs.

  • Rhiannon58Rhiannon58 Posts: 806 Member
    @Turjan Thank you for the tips. I do have all expansions and stuff packs as well as the Stones Throw Greenhouse. My biggest garden has a two story greenhouse with two watering stations in it. I will be to so excited to get that special grass so I don't have to knock walls out anymore!
  • stargurustarguru Posts: 2,115 Member
    Turjan wrote: »
    @starguru Thanks for the building instructions, and thank you for the link. That's exactly the one I found, too :smile: . Glad you like the roof garden, and I like your Lunar Lakes inspired garden (or is it there?), too.
    Cronor is a cool world, but rather laggy for its small size. Nevertheless, still definitely worth a try.
    You’re welcome. :) And thanks. Crystal Gardens is in an empty roadless world called Dragonia_E by mammut, which I’ve turned into a fairy realm. Once I had placed the crystal flowers for my fairy bot-builder, I included the LL Tree of Prosperity with its crystal fruits, a large LL crystal rock, and the crystal ball to create a crystal theme, lol. I even went back later and swapped the LL Fantasy Acacia Tree for one of Norn’s crystal trees.

    I love the fantasy and sci-fi creations by Crowkeeper and Norn, so I figured I would probably enjoy Cronor. I’d guess the lag may be because their lots tend to be so full and detailed. Still, it looks pretty awesome and I’m looking forward to playing some futuristic/industrial and bot-heavy households when I get around to it.

    ***

    @izecson - As previously stated, UL red berry beans are the easiest and best cash crop when you’re looking to garden for profit. The seeds are common, grow quickly and the beans can also be bought from the grocery store if you don’t easily find a seed or bean right away. Your initial investment will be very well worth it.

    In addition to other benefits, having the Green Thumb trait and Super Green Thumb LTR will help you get perfect quality plants more quickly which will boost your earnings. Also, the consignment shop is a better place to sell produce (or anything else), rather than at the grocery store or through the inventory. To maximize your profits further, use the Born Salesman/woman trait and the Suave Seller LTR.
  • TurjanTurjan Posts: 1,713 Member
    edited November 2020
    @Mikezumi Haha, yes, I would be afraid that they eat too much if I interfere.

    @Rhiannon58 Have fun with the rugs. Don't forget to put a floor below them if you play with Seasons.

    @starguru I tried Saturenorn once. It's, again, very creative, but I'd like it more if I could have it in green and force the snow via Tempest or constant winter. Eh, I'm not even sure you spoke of it, but I had to think of it when you talked about crystals.
    _________________________________________________________________________
    Okay, I tried the green dragon. I guess that one takes the cake. You level gardening like nothing by just speaking with it, and you even get full skill credit for its harvests. Yikes.

    Anyway, I had Story Progression marry off one of my SV founder's grandsons to someone who was a few days short of elder. I went to Oasis Landing to work on a solution, preferably Ambrosia. Problem: there were just 4 days left. The older spouse had cooking mastered, fishing at level 5 and no gardening at all (the younger one only had cooking and fishing 3). To level fishing took a rather long time, even with the tablet, but for gardening, I used this:
    nYhZeE0.jpg
    The setup is ridiculous. I had the couple look for seeds, and they found 8 special ones between them, with one of them turning out to be a life plant. With that setup, it took about 4 ingame hours from seed to harvest. :lol:
    The gardening station waters, the included composter weeds and fertilizes. The green dragon harvests and fertilizes. Both somehow push the plants to the next stages. Maybe something if you play on super short lifespans.
    Reading the Ambrosia recipe took longer than getting the life fruit (after the seed had been found) :smiley: .
  • bekkasanbekkasan Posts: 10,171 Member
    @Turjan My occult sim, Dedric has the green dragon. He had already mastered gardening when he got the dragon so I didn't realize it would take the gardening skill that fast with the dragon in use. :open_mouth: I guess the kids who need to learn gardening will have to wish for a green dragon. lol :grin:
  • TurjanTurjan Posts: 1,713 Member
    edited November 2020
    @bekkasan Just to claryify: Not the whole 10 levels took only 4 hours; the two needed to be at level 7 to be able to plant special seeds first. However, the ping pong game of the SwiftGro station and the green dragon meant you can harvest every hour (grows faster, but the dragon's harvesting command has a cooldown of, I think, one hour). What still takes time is removing the barren plants and planting new ones, but you have more than enough time for that. Also, you should have at least some fertilizer ready for the composter if you go that fast. However, the "talk to the dragon about gardening" action is spammable.

    With advantages that big, you just have to look past the occasional painful experience :wink: .
    wWMcIpG.jpg
  • boombamboomboombamboom Posts: 52 Member
    > @Turjan said:
    > In this game, I started looking into gardening after I had been playing already for quite some time. Which may be a bit surprising, given I had been playing quite a few sims in the science career, where the gardening skill is one of the metrics for progression. However, I mostly preferred to just read skill books in the library or, later, listening to tabcasts while fishing, cooking or writing a book. This means I had sims who had mastered gardening without ever having harvested or planted anything, let alone weeded, watered or fertilized. However, I started getting interested when it came to making ambrosia, and since then, I've slightly improved in this regard :wink: .
    >
    > Basically, what I'm interested in, how do all of you deal with gardening? Do you do it at all? How do you set it up? And, last not least, what do you plant?
    >
    > To make a start, I just talk about what I do nowadays.* In the beginning, I may just plant whatever I have, but I still often skip this phase by learning gardening theoretically.
    > * Given I use the Seasons EP, I pretty much exclusively plant indoors in whatever setup that is suitable.
    > * I generally do not plant cooking ingredients, with the two big exceptions being flame fruits and life plants. This doesn't mean I never plant garlic, tomatoes or potatoes, but if I do, I use them as fertilizer (garlic) or just sell the stuff. For cooking, I just buy what is buyable.
    > * I have never managed to finish the opportunity chain that leads to omni plants. Nope. I never got past eggs and cheese.
    > * Most of my sims know alchemy, which means those ingredients are a must in that case. The minimum are Wolfsbane, Red Valerian, Spotlight Mushrooms and Red Toadstool for the most useful elixirs, and to a lesser extent the other ingredient plants.
    > * I love the idea of the University Life herbs, and I often plant them, but when it comes to actually using them, I mostly don't do it. Not sure why. The same is true for the coffee beans. I like how the plants look :lol: .
    > * I usually don't plant trees, given I do mostly indoor gardens. The occasional money tree may slip through, but I usually regret it.
    > * I never planted all those different grapes from France. I still have to use that wine maker, as I haven't even tried it. That's still a project for the future, as I tell myself I want to do it, but this hasn't materialized yet.
    >
    > As to the setup, I sometimes just use three plant bowls for life plants, or here what I did directly in the master bedroom of a family in Bridgeport, where someone is watering the plant on the pic:
    > (Image)
    >
    > This here is the same idea, but the garden - on the upper floor no less - is separated from the bedroom. It even has a sprinkler :lol: . The teens can fix the garden before they go to school:
    >
    > I also have used several greenhouses already, often, but not always, in combination with the SwiftGro Gardening Station. My latest attempt includes those sunflowers that produce "sunshine" as fertilizer, and the combination is as close as you can get to "official cheating", it's so good. You have to replant all the time though.
    > (Image)
    >
    > Now, the layout of that garden is not good - it looks like that as it was born from the preexisting garden beds on that Moonlight Falls lot. Turning everything by 90 degrees would help with some of the shortcomings. However, in the end, it works. Still, you are busy all the time, so I finally succumbed and ordered the gardening service from a mod:
    >
    >
    > I'm sure I forgot something, but now I'm interested in hearing how you deal with all of this :smile: .

    Wow!! What a wonderful garden you have.
  • TurjanTurjan Posts: 1,713 Member
    @boombamboom Thank you :smile: .
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    Given my current household was invited by Mortimer Goth to a party at Goth manor, I might as well show that I converted their little garden annex into a real greenhouse, while the house pretty much stayed the same.
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    Of course, this meant closing the soil off for winter.
    o3uZtjX.jpg
    No plants at the moment. I guess I have to fix that :wink: . Anyway, that just as an aside.
    FFsvkD9.jpg
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