@machaira9 wrote:
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:
- Go into build mode.
- 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.
- 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).
- Select the planter box or pot and sell it ('Y' button on Xbox).
- Hit 'Undo' (LT on Xbox).
- 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.
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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
this method is a good workaround. but the bug is still there. i've sent you guys my save hope for a fix soon
