Please use this thread going forward: Quality of plants not/very slowly progressing/ No evolve | EA Forums - 11945515
@SimGuruNick wrote:I'm not sure this is necessarily a bug, I think it might just be part of the new gardening design. Evolutions have slowed down, as it's now an end-game long-term goal. The Evolve commodity starts at around 50, and evolution is available at 100. Fertilize gives a solid amount of evolve commodity, depending on the quality of fertilizer but it's around 8. So you need to fertilize a plant about 7 times before it's ready to evolve. There are other factors that can affect the evolution rate as well, such as sheltering the plant. Sheltered plants have the benefit of being protected from the seasons but the evolution rate is much slower. Bluebells, for example, evolve 4x slower when sheltered than when not.
I will look into filing an issue regarding the Lessons not explaining all of this thoroughly enough. But if, after reading all of this, you believe that your game is still bugged and your plants just aren't evolving period, I would appreciate a save file to help us investigate. You can find more info for sending me your save in the following link, thanks much! https://answers.ea.com/t5/Bug-Reports/INFORMATION-How-to-Send-User-Files-to-The-Sims-4-Team/m-p/6065302
I'm happy that gardening has been given so much attention, But, what about players who play with more than one household? Or, players who rotate between many household? I don't think the devs have taken rotational players into account. As things stand I would need to play exclusively with my gardening household in order to make any progress on a garden throughout the cycle of seasons.
I play each of my household for one sim week. I have at least two household in each world. But, only three household have gardens. Sorting out the gardens has become a nightmare. Not because of the seasons, but because the underlying mechanics are so unfriendly to rotational play. Even switching to two weeks per gardening household won't really help.
I had to play my gardening Sim Spring to Spring plus Summer and Fall before getting 7 Apples, 2 Cherries and a Pomegranate from my spliced Apple/Cherry/Pomegranate tree. And this was playing exclusively with that household. This was with a pre-patch, per-Seasons garden. Maybe it needed that long to sync up, but even so that's a bit much to expect of us.
Do I think this is a bug? No. I think this is the result of not thinking something all the way through.
If a plant needs to be fertilized SEVEN times before it evolves and a Season lasts seven days and there are five levels of quality and a plant doesn't need fertilizing every day and sheltered plants take longer to evolve, how long will it take a plant (plus they all grow a different rates) to reach the "excellent" quality?
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I am having so many problems with gardening. The plants were progressing nicely for a little while, but not to the point of all of them needing to be evolved. I saved a good amount of money and upgraded my house thinking I could rely on my plants to make the money back. With the growth cycle being so slow I will never get that money back in time to pay my bills for my household. This super slow cycle makes gardening more of a hassle than a fun thing to do in the game. EA, Sims team, please correct this or change it so I can enjoy gardening again.
All plants are evolving, they are just VERY slow if you don't use certain methods. Say for example, if you grow strawberries and use the strawberries to fertilize, it'll take a LONG time to evolve.
Certain things can make them evolve faster, using Fish as fertilizer works better than say using Strawberries, daisies, or snapdragons as fertilizer.
The BEST fertilizer is Grow Fruit. Which you can STILL purchase from the automated supply vendor in Granite Falls. Just go on vacation to Granite Falls for a day (or four and enjoy the scenery) buy a single grow fruit, take it home and grow the Grow-Fruit tree. It will spawn in ALL seasons so you can safely put it outdoors. Pick the fruit and use them as fertilizer.
You can also put down Burtie’s Bee Box nearby. It has a range of a 10x10 grid with the bee box at the center and will fertilize ALL plants within range. The Bee box is great because it STACKS with your regular fertilizer. Between the grow fruit and the bee box, your plants will evolve a LOT faster. However, you will need to Bond with the bees twice a day and periodically Apply Mite Treatments to keep them calm in order for them to keep fertilizing. But there's also the added bonus of harvesting the Honey. You can sell it once every few days for cash and keep some on you to help stave off Freezing to death or Burning to death in the cold/heat.
Plus there is the lot trait "Great Soil" and the aspiration reward store trait "Super Green Thumb" which will both stack with the rest to further increase your plants' growth and evolution rates.
I tried using all four methods once, I haven't use them all together since because it made my plants evolve WAY too fast.
Some of mine have only evolved once even with a gardener there daily they've been through my whole sims life and never gone past nice some of them. The lot has the good soil trait I thought that would help but it's not.
