[NEEDS SAVES] No evolve option (ready to evolve)

@Liteblob Well, I caved and got CoL ... and it's all your fault! ;-)  Half-joking.  So, to clarify, all the plants I've tested so far are newly planted, never sprouted plants.  Once CoL finished downloading and I could get back in the game, I went in and tested these plants again using both plain and mounded garden patches.  Nothing changed.  All the veggies tested had the option to evolve in planted/dirt pile state.  None of the trees had the option, neither did some of the flowers; bluebell, daisy, orchid and rose.  The flowers that did have the option were christmas rose, chrysanthemum, dahlia, begonia and chamomile. 

Since it sort of sounds like the dirt pile bug only involves plants that had sprouted and reverted back to dirt pile, I'm still not convinced this is a bug.  I tried looking for related articles or posts but was unable to find anthing.  I do believe that trees were not meant to evolve while in the planted / dirt pile state while some of the other plants can.  However, the reason for this eludes me.

@Liteblob Apologies for the confusion.  Allow me to rephrase to say that I don't think what you're reporting is the same as the dirt pile bug that crin suggested.  I just think that some newly planted plants (veggies, fruits and some flowers) have the option to evolve while in the planted state, but others (trees and some flowers) do not have that option.  I could be wrong but I don't think that is a bug but just part of the design for some reason.  Perhaps one of the community managers will investigate and let us know if it is by design.

So, I may have stumbled on a solution for this. (Scroll down to 'POSSIBLE SOLUTION' if you don't care about the context and backstory.)

I'm on Xbox Series X playing the base game via Game Pass with no expansions or packs (other than a couple of free cosmetic ones that installed automatically).

Also, my sim is level 10 gardener.

I suddenly had probably around a quarter of my plants (across multiple varieties) either stop growing, stop producing harvestables, revert to planted / ungrown state (pile of dirt), be unable to evolve (health bar shows it's ready, but 'Evolve' interaction missing), and/or be unable to do a lot of standard interactions on grown plants like take a cutting and others (the only options would be things like uproot, talk to plant, and maybe fertilize and one other - but even if I fertilize, it wouldn't have any effect). I'll refer to these plants as the broken ones.

The unbroken ones are, obviously, the ones that are working correctly in all ways. lol

Okay, so this sudden onset of broken plants coincided rather suspiciously with me moving things around on my lot. I used "move lot" to move everything (within the same lot, not moving to a new lot), and then made a bunch of manual tweaks to the placement of planter boxes / pots.

Also note: I'm using planter boxes and planter pots, not bare ground, so I can't speak to how this all might behave or work for other situations.

I seemed to be able to reliably identify broken plants by any of the following:

• Bring up the list of interactions. Broken ones had only a few, while unbroken ones had all of the interactions I'd expect (this was true for full-grown plants, but I think it's also true for earlier growth stages... not certain).
• Move an individual plant from the planter box to another spot (bare ground or same/different planter box). Broken ones would instantly change to a planted/ungrown state (pile of dirt). Unbroken ones would be fine and maintain growth stage / form. (Broken plants maintain stage/form when picked up and placed back where they came from. It has to be a different spot in the grid.)
• Rotate or move the planter box / planter pot. Broken plants would instantly change to a planted/unbroken state (pile of dirt). Unbroken ones would be fine and maintain growth stage / form.

I used the above techniques to identify broken plants, and I started uprooting them and planting new ones (much to my dismay / frustration) when I stumbled on what might be a solution.

I think I read somewhere (I've opened too many threads/links to remember where... hopefully it's not this thread cause then I'd feel dumb and I'm not gonna check as I type this up on mobile 😆) that one possible fix is to move the plants into your home inventory and then back into the grid. I don't think this worked for me, but I may have only tried that fix with a plant that couldn't be weeded... but I'm pretty sure I tried that fix with the evolve issue, too.

POSSIBLE SOLUTION

BUT, while uprooting and re-planting the first few out of maybe a dozen broken plants, I went into build mode to mess with something and accidentally sold a planter that contained some broken plants. When I promptly hit 'Undo' to bring it back, the broken plants were fixed and back to normal, still with their health / proper growth stage.

So this is what I did with the rest of the garden:

1. Go into build mode.
2. Select a planter box or pot, rotate it 90° in-place, and place it back down. This would cause broken plants to immediately revert to planted / ungrown state - piles of dirt.
3. Rotate the planter box or pot back to its original orientation or just hit undo (I doubt this step is necessary, but I was doing it anyway).
4. Select the planter box or pot and sell it ('Y' button on Xbox).
5. Hit 'Undo' (LT on Xbox).
6. The planter box/pot would reappear with all plants in an unbroken state, still with their quality and growth stage in-tact.

This seems to have done the trick. All the previously broken plants had all their interactions back, they looked correct / had proper quality, could be evolved, and would gain health after being fertilized (haven't hit another harvest time yet to confirm that harvestables appear, but I'll be surprised if they don't).

I did not test this method on individual plants, only planter boxes/pots, but that doesn't mean it won't work on bare ground with individual plants, though the process might look a little different (e.g. you probably have to move the plant, not rotate it, to test if it's broken).

It's also possible that step 2 above isn't needed. I just did it to identify broken plants. If the plants in the box/pot weren't broken, I'd just move on to the next box/pot. The magic likely happens specifically due to steps 1, 4, and 5. BUT, I didn't test that.

To give a concrete example, I had a broken apple tree that was showing as just a pile of dirt in the planter pot (it was previously fully grown). I followed the above steps, and as soon as I undid the sale of the planter pot, the tree was instantly there and fully grown and unbroken... no more pile of dirt.

--

I hope this works for some of you! I'll comment again if I learn more about the issue as I go. Please let me know if this works for your situation or if you identify new insights or better ways to fix the plants.

-Mack

@machaira9: OMG, YOU FIXED IT!!!!!!

I had some broken lemon trees. Freshly planted, individual plants on bare ground. I could pretty much do all interactions except evolve. IDK if I planted them in season or if they were dormant right before needing to evolve. All I know is they never sprouted, even when they were in season for days. Anyway, I went into build mode, sold the dirt pile, undid the sale, and it reappeared fully grown. I did that for each broken tree, went back to Live Mode, then was successfully able to evolve my plants.

This was killing me. Thank you so much for finding a way!

So my lemon trees reverted back to dirt piles after becoming infested with bugs. ☹️ I tried the sell/undo solution, and they did not go back to being trees. I'm going to see if they get back to trees after a few Sim days or if they're just too broken to keep bothering with.

move it in Build Mode 

it could go back to normal

(also works for the plants that turns into a spot of dirt, or stop producing harvestable) 

Product: The Sims 4
Platform:Mac
Which language are you playing the game in? English
How often does the bug occur? Every time (100%)
What is your current game version number? 1.97.62.1220
What expansions, game packs, and stuff packs do you have installed? All expansion packs except High School Years and Growing Together., Mochino, Dream Decorator, Desert Luxe, My Wedding Stories (My biggest regret), Incheon, Nifty knitting, realm of magic, jungle adventure, tiny living, parenthood, laundry day, vampires, dine out, Toddler stuff, Kids Room stuff, Holiday
Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? Hover over a plant. It says, "ready to evolve" with the dna on the bar. Click it, and nope. BTW, I did screen captures. BTW, this bug showed up in the really buggy 2 patches ago. (The one that deformed faces).
What happens when the bug occurs? There is no plant to evolve. It's frustrating to monitor the plants.
What do you expect to see? The data correlate to what's going on with the plant.
Have you installed any customization with the game, e.g. Custom Content or Mods? Not now. I've removed them.
Did this issue appear after a specific patch or change you made to your system? Yes
Please describe the patch or change you made. It was 2 patches ago. The one that messed up sim's faces. I've turned mods on and off and still can replicate the bug. Persistent, meaning it's an easy fix.

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OK, Carrot plant needs evolving...

Click it... and....

Gotcha, no it doesn't! Did I fool you? (Yes you did, grumbles). Sometimes the sparkles are hard to decipher which plant it is r it doesn't always sparkle... so I rely on hover to tell me.

As noted, I can replicate it with mods on, mods off, and wasn't there 2 patches ago. Game was fine for me.

BTW, My Wedding Stories was the biggest regret purchase I ever made. So bad I wish I could trade it in for a different pack because it's still so buggy even after mods attempting to fix it.

BTW, with this turning mods on and off, etc I was also able to replicate that (Plants revert to only soil) bug too. Apparently one of my mods fixes that bug (I have a loose guess which one). Gardening just got so much more frustrating and I find it to be one of the most relaxing parts of Sims 4, which is why I play it. TT Please fix it. Gardening bugs stress me out. I've loved gardening in Sims since Sims 2, but especially 3.