Okay, Now I'm Certain.

RiverBlossom

Yep, absolutely positive that all the problems I've been having are in my base game; because no matter the expansion pack, something is always wrong! I bought two residential lots, planted a garden on each of them, sold the property so they would always produce and never wilt or become barren, and for some reason now all the plants on both properties are just not there anymore. WTH is wrong with this game?

suzses

I've had that happen, and I don't think it has anything to do with problems with your game. I think it's in the way you went about planting/selling the properties, or at least that's how it worked out for me. Tell us more about what you did. It sounds like you may have bought them as second (or third) properties and didn't have your sims live in them as a primary residence? Not sure I ever did exactly that (although may have). Are you trying for a high-quality (like perfect plants) garden? or just any old plants? I could make some suggestions either way on how to make it work.

sarabeth2984

I noticed this too, but try checking your house inventory. They were always stuck in there

RiverBlossom

- No, my Sims did not live on these lots. And yes, they were perfect quality. This time around it was easier, as all plants were cultivated by Outstanding or Excellent quality seeds laying around town.
- There were two blackberries, two apples and two tomatoes of perfect quality in the family inventory. Happily I still have perfect fruits and vegetables in their fridge.

suzses

Does "this time around it was easier" mean you tried it again and maybe it worked out OK? If you're still having troubles with it, I would recommend using a different sim outside of your household to do the plantings. With mine, I was saving the lots to my bin, which I'm not sure is necessary for you, but if you can get it/them saved that way successfully with the plants intact, you'll always have them to place down again in the future if needed or wanted.

What I did was move a sim into the property so it was their primary residence, have that sim plant what I wanted, evict them in edit town to the clipboard, and then save the lot. Some things in the game are "attached" to the sim, like paintings they made, for instance, and that seemed to be a factor with the gardens sometimes. By evicting to clipboard, those things are left intact on the lot. So, in your case, if the plants you want to use are on your active household, you could move a sim in with them, put the plants in that sim's personal inventory, use phone or computer to move just that sim to one of your garden lots, plant them, and evict the sim. I'd just use some random sim, and if I had plants that required a certain level of gardening to plant, I'd use MasterController (there may be a way with testingcheatsenabled, too, although I don't know what it is) to give them the needed gardening skill level. When finished, I'd just leave them on the clipboard, which I think is the surest way to make sure things are left behind on the lot. However, if you want that sim available again with the plants on them for some future lot, you could save them as a household to your bin while they still have the plants in inventory.

Auroraskies

I read this about leaving sims on the clipboard and corruption:

Post #42 and #43
http://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=481657&c=0&ht=&page=2&pp=25#startcomment

If it is not correct, then I am sorry.

I have also made a functioning community lot garden:

I took a sim, from my farmsave, that had garden skill 10, as well as every plant (perfect state) in the game (except the ITF flowers) on their home lot.
Put one of each harvested crop + a money tree seed in their personal inventory, saved the sim to library.
In a new save I made a community lot: Small Park; and built and decorated it. Changed it to residential lot.
Imported the gardener, moved them in, planted the seeds. Used buydebug to place ITF flowers. Fertilized with sunrays from the Sunflower using the garden station.
Moved the gardener out to another home lot by way of Edit Town.
Changed the lot assignment of the community garden to Small Park.
Saved to library.
Tested it in another new save. The plants are all there as they were placed, even the ITF flowers.

I saved as, on many important places along the way for backups, and turned off cheats directly when done with them.

The gardener had levelled up through gameplay; but the Multitab 6000 is very useful for levelling up quickly. It can be listened to at the same time as reading the equivalent skill book. The library is a good place to sit and read, it goes faster there; or any community lot with a minimum of 12 book cases. If you give your gardener trait Bookworm (and of course all the traits good for a gardener) it goes even faster.

Level 7 is needed for planting the special plants.

Edit: It costs money to buy lots of course. The gardener were filthy rich; but if they had not been I would have made them rich by way of gameplay in a save on its own and then saved them to library, being so. There is a thread on how to quickly make money in the game here:
https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/956788/what-is-the-most-lucrative-way-to-make-money-in-the-sims3

suzses

I read this about leaving sims on the clipboard and corruption:

Post #42 and #43
http://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=481657&c=0&ht=&page=2&pp=25#startcomment

If it is not correct, then I am sorry.

Per @igazor (who I always believe):

--Evicting resident sims from within Edit Town is fine.

--Using a mod such as NRaas MasterController and its Total Annihilation function is also fine, although Overwatch and ErrorTrap are highly recommended to have as well to clean up any unnecessary residual sim related data on the next loadup.

--Deleting any kind of sim for any reason using testingcheatsenabled shift-click to delete is a big no-no. That function merely deletes a sim's body, but their data and history remain and can corrupt an ongoing game save.

But none of this, however it's done, would affect anything except that ongoing game in particular. The program installs and things like patches don't really care what's going on in your saved games.

From here: https://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/852335/sims-3-moving-or-deleting-pre-made-families-damaging-game

igazor

suzses wrote: »

Per @igazor (who I always believe):

(puts on savvy seller hat) Hey, anyone need a bridge? I got a warehouse full of them for sale, just sign here, pay up, and you can own them all! And getting hungry? The moon is right there up in the sky for grabbing and as we all know, it's made of delicious green cheese!

(I gotta get some new references for things like this, these are all over 50 years old by now...)

Auroraskies

@suzses Yes, thank you. So twallan is wrong?

suzses

Auroraskies wrote: »

@suzses Yes, thank you. So twallan is wrong?

I am not touching that. LOL Twallan is right up there in the always right category with Igazor, so perhaps it depends on the particular situation.

Auroraskies

Hehe. Me neither! I just would not throw the sims out that way.

suzses

Auroraskies wrote: »

Hehe. Me neither! I just would not throw the sims out that way.

Well, for me, it's either a sim I already have binned and so they're still always available to me, or it's a sim I never got invested in to start with.

Auroraskies

If I wanted a sim dead I would kill them in game.

For the OP's issue though this is not relevant; a new save for building the lot in can be made, and then left when the lot itself is saved to library.

RiverBlossom

suzses wrote: »

Does "this time around it was easier" mean you tried it again and maybe it worked out OK? If you're still having troubles with it, I would recommend using a different sim outside of your household to do the plantings. With mine, I was saving the lots to my bin, which I'm not sure is necessary for you, but if you can get it/them saved that way successfully with the plants intact, you'll always have them to place down again in the future if needed or wanted.

What I did was move a sim into the property so it was their primary residence, have that sim plant what I wanted, evict them in edit town to the clipboard, and then save the lot. Some things in the game are "attached" to the sim, like paintings they made, for instance, and that seemed to be a factor with the gardens sometimes. By evicting to clipboard, those things are left intact on the lot. So, in your case, if the plants you want to use are on your active household, you could move a sim in with them, put the plants in that sim's personal inventory, use phone or computer to move just that sim to one of your garden lots, plant them, and evict the sim. I'd just use some random sim, and if I had plants that required a certain level of gardening to plant, I'd use MasterController (there may be a way with testingcheatsenabled, too, although I don't know what it is) to give them the needed gardening skill level. When finished, I'd just leave them on the clipboard, which I think is the surest way to make sure things are left behind on the lot. However, if you want that sim available again with the plants on them for some future lot, you could save them as a household to your bin while they still have the plants in inventory.

I wish that's what I meant, but all I was saying was that this time I did not start from normal quality, so it took much less time. Your answer was very detailed - thanks for the suggestion. I just might have to try that. The funny thing is, I have grown gardens on additionally owned lots before, without any problem. Could this have happened because of how much they traveled?