Anyone else finding Oversized Crops WAY too much work?

You could grow one or two as oversized vegetables not the whole garden. I love the way they look in the garden, so detailed and pretty, wish all crops were like that.

In my game, they aren't much work. As soon as you have befriended rabbits and birds they basically do all the work except for watering and fertilizing.

No, not really. I accidentally manage to get a Great Pumpkin. I had my Sim plant the oversized pumpkin seeds. Water all, fertilize using the Vitality fertilizer and then I clicked on the crop at one point and it had 'encourage growth'. I selected that one and my Sim removed all but one of the pumpkins in progress. Voila. The Great Pumpkin was grown.

Here he is so proud of his work, that he used it as an album cover:
https://i.imgur.com/TQJkDeR.jpg

"Beardedgeek;d-994597" wrote:
Basically the title.
The amount of work vs reward for oversized crops is like 17 to 1 or something. It takes me half a day taking care of the oversized crops, I barely have time with my chickens, rabbits and my regular crops.

If I had a cow it would literally be impossible to do anything fun at all. Glad I opted to not have a large animal.

Welcome to farm life in the Sims. ? I believe there are a couple of threads floating around on how to manage it. I have chickens, a cow, a llama, and the new crops and I admit my sim is busy all day.

Once I befriended rabbits to weed and birds to eat bugs, and fertilized a couple time I had plenty of time to have a cow and a llama and a full coop of chickens. Make sure you place your bird and rabbit homes close to the garden patches you want them to help with, then ask for garden help and in about 24 sim hours they take up a large portion of your workload. Patchy from Seasons is a huge help too!

"alexspoom13;c-17991794" wrote:
I'm not sure if it's a mod conflict, but I never have the option to weed the oversized crop patches even if their status is 'sickly'. 9/10 of my large crops just die because the interactions to keep them alive aren't available.

You don't get any option to weed. It's "Encourage Growth" that doubles as weeding. As usual it is never explained anywhere.

I have taken the advice and limited the OS crops to one single pumpkin field. I don't have any birds for bug eating so I have to start every day with spraying for bugs. (I just haven't had time to talk to any birds yet).

It seems to be easier with a higher Gardening Skill. I only do one giant plant at a time. I want more money, so Mavis is busy tending the flowers I'm having her sell at the market. It helps a lot that she only has 2 chickens right now. In fall and winter she'll do a bit more crops, and I also am having her work on her canning and baking.

I like that my sim is busy most days.

"Isharell;c-17991845" wrote:
It seems to be easier with a higher Gardening Skill. I only do one giant plant at a time. I want more money, so Mavis is busy tending the flowers I'm having her sell at the market. It helps a lot that she only has 2 chickens right now. In fall and winter she'll do a bit more crops, and I also am having her work on her canning and baking.

I like that my sim is busy most days.

Yeah, I spent the whole winter making preserves.
Turns out that after you have a mushroom patch of some description you virtually never have to order groceries, since meat substitute is so quick to make.

If you befriend birds and rabbits, they’ll take care of weeding and bugs for you. Also now my sim is better at gardening it’s much faster.
So far, he has 7 or 8 giant crops.