Anyone else finding Oversized Crops WAY too much work?

"Dianesims;c-17991899" wrote:
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.

I've not had the time to befriend any birds yet. Rabbits I have, but I find they do a lousy job. I have four rabbits on weeding duty atm and none of them actually ever do anything. Basically it is quicker to weed myself.
Might be another bug I have with CL to be fair, it is by far the buggiest expansion ever for me, I think I have come across 7-8 serious bugs in 48 hours. I have the latest MCCC and that's the only mod I use, and I refuse to play without it.

Spraying for bugs is the most time consuming activity when caring for the garden, and once I finally befriended the birds in my area, they helped with my gardening from quite a distance. I would definitely make that a priority.

I suggest you work towards a golden chicken who will make your crops perfect/healthy. I just achieved this in week 3 of my rags to ranches save, and I’m able to grow things on a much larger scale (thus far I’ve been very busy maintaining 6 oversized crops and several regular crops). If your oversized crops are healthy then you don’t need to fertilize them.

"Beardedgeek;c-17991804" wrote:

"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.

In my game I get the usual weed/weed area options when there are weeds. Encouraging crop growth raises its health.

I didn't grow many oversized crops, so I'm not an expert on how much time it takes. I play rotationally so the oversized stuff is not really an option, it would take my sim 5-6 years to grow one plot... So, I better stick with the old fashioned single crops :)

I guess it depends how many you have? I'd say at any given time, I have 2-4 oversized plots going. Usually I'm shooting for one oversized for the festival, two normal, and one small. (The normal and small are for some combination of eating, selling, and canning.)

I have found that typically one dose of super vitality fertilizer and one round of encouraging growth is usually sufficient to get an oversized crop. (Although I do also have bees and rabbits most of the time, so that could be a factor as well.) One dose of regular vitality fertilizer will generally make normal sized crops with the oversized seeds. For the ones I want to be small, I don't apply fertilizer or encourage growth, but I do weed and spray for bugs (unless my bird and rabbit helpers get there first).

Long story short, it's not so bad, but having helpers makes things better, and it will obviously depend on how many you have going at one time.

(For what it's worth, my typical small farm/home garden household also has most of the berry bushes, one fruit tree, and 4-6 regular/staple crops. Sometimes also herbs.)

Yes, let's nerf them, like everything else gets nerfed.

Huh, haven't found any difficulty in growing oversized crops. 4 Oversized ones plus 8 other crops, plus two trees it takes over two sims hours to 3 (without any gardening help from animals or using sprinklers)? With my sim having a high gardening skill is definitely takes less time.

I find the livestock to take much longer taking care of than gardening. Usually tend to the animals first then gardening.

Can always just hire a gardener now and again. Or just invite a neighbor, as high chance they're gonna tend your garden for you. Had a Sim's friend that lived in the city visit and after some chatting and leaving her to herself for awhile she decided to go out back to weed some of plants and water them.

Profit get. $$$

Oh, yeah, the other thing about visitors is that if you're living in HoB and have even a low green bar with the villager NPCs, they will visit constantly, and once you invite them in, if you ignore them, they will do tons of gardening for you. After I did the first errand each for Sara and Kim, they started to come over and visit every day, rain or shine.

Honestly, this has been my favorite pack because my sims are so busy all the time. I am literally never bored when I am playing my farming sims.

The only thing I have against oversized plots is a spellcaster's floriloral doesn't work, she has to weed, water and spray for bugs, by hand. :D