Feedback: Updated Gardening System

"EuphorialQueen;c-16657939" wrote:
...One more note: Bird of Paradise is still an issue. When I have been lucky enough to get one it is in plant form. Meaning the full grown plant and not the flower. The plant goes directly to household inventory and never (in my experience) produces the actual flower. I know this issue is in a thread at AnswersHQ so I will be watching for it to be fixed.

This has been my experience as well. I was thrilled when I discovered BOP plants in my Sim's household inventory until after planting them, they never produced any flowers. :( What a shame... I hope they up the percentage to something higher than only a 1% chance for spliced plants to produce rares. It's just not fun gardening for me anymore within the current situation.

According to Carl's latest update on fertiliser, growfruit isn't so great, after all. It's expensive fresh fish, or nothing.

"invisiblgirl;c-16663036" wrote:
According to Carl's latest update on fertiliser, growfruit isn't so great, after all. It's expensive fresh fish, or nothing.

Much respect for Carl's guides as an invaluable resource. His site is my go-to for all things Sims. From my experience fishing was very time consuming. Fish has a limited shelf life and often goes bad before being used. There were also times when fishing was not a viable option.
Since Growfruit can be grown on your home lot I used only two trees as a constant source of fertilizer. :)

I am sadly not a big fan of the new gardening system anymore (if I ever were). I would rather that all plants were out during winter and returned to bloom in spring, during summer and fall. I find it too much of a hassle to try and remember which plants are in season when. Also, seemingly dead plants in full bloom (due to them being in season, but outside spring/summer) make very little sense to me. Actually, I'm beginning to feel there are too many different plants as well. Ultimately, I find I simply liked the old system better.

"EuphorialQueen;c-16663197" wrote:

"invisiblgirl;c-16663036" wrote:
According to Carl's latest update on fertiliser, growfruit isn't so great, after all. It's expensive fresh fish, or nothing.

Much respect for Carl's guides as an invaluable resource. His site is my go-to for all things Sims. From my experience fishing was very time consuming. Fish has a limited shelf life and often goes bad before being used. There were also times when fishing was not a viable option.
Since Growfruit can be grown on your home lot I used only two trees as a constant source of fertilizer. :)

It does take a lot of time - I've got a leisure Sim who loves the outdoors, so I've basically got her fishing full time. When she fishes up a tuna or salmon, it goes into one of the three aquariums I've got for storing them. (It's all about the strawberries. I just need a couple of perfect strawberries and I can finally move the daughter out and start the next generation.)

@Nindigo @invisiblgirl It's all about how we choose to play. Gardening holds a limited attraction for me as does fishing. My Sims garden for two reasons. To produce money making plants and to complete the outdoor related aspirations. That is how I have always played. I used to love being able to graft and actually get new plants. Then I delete the majority of any other plants keeping only a select few (usually spliced) plants in household inventory for future generations. Fishing was a great alternative way for kids to gain mental skill and for all my Sims to catch unique items. Not so much when they get soaked and miserable in the rain or when the water freezes.

Gardening used to be my favorite thing in the game, it isn't anymore. I do like the new gardening system and I don't mind at all that it's harder. What I do have an issue with is the fact that after three months none of my spliced plants have worked. That alone has absolutely ruined gardening for me. And, it seems like EA doesn't even care. I've sent messages, posted bug reports and tweets and have never gotten a response. I feel like they just don't care that they've totally ruined an extremely important function in the game.

I like the new gardening system except the splicing I think is more fustrating than challenging. I rather have it as "splicing failed" instead of doing the action and having to wait and see if it will produce a third and splicing reduces the harvestables which is also more of a frustration

@agustd I agree with you, man. Anything to add more challenge to the gameplay and sims' skill development! If it's easy and fast it gets boring very quickly.

@EuphorialQueen
Thanks for making this topic. See I'm fresh into gardening since I never tried it before getting Seasons... so as I understand it things used to be a little different, and thus some information out there might be out of date.

So I figure I'll ask anyone here instead who can maybe help... how exactly do plants evolve and what exactly do the Green Thumb and Super Green Thumb traits do? I was under the impression that as my gardening skill would go up, and as I water and weed the plants, they would evolve on their own over time. Is that false? To evolve are you required to apply fertilizer over and over as often as it allows? Does talking to plants help them at all? Playing music?

My Sim didn't start with the Green Thumb trait, which I think allows you a (good?) chance at getting higher quality harvests than the actual plant is at. Instead I figured just purchasing the Super Green Thumb reward would be good enough if I ever wanted to get into a little gardening, which apparently raises the quality of anything I plant... except it doesnt? All the things I planted are still normal quality. After about a week of in game time (I play on long if it matters) nothing I'd planted had evolved at all which seemed odd concerning everything else in the sims doesnt take nearly as long to do and my expectations was really just to evolve from normal to fine so I thought that was rather low. It wasnt until I went and changed my lot traits to "Great Soil" that I noticed things start evolving... is that the only way to evolve them within a reasonable amount of time? Also just for information, I have tried using large dog poop for fertilizer and didn't notice any effect despite the item information claiming it was good for fertilizer.

Otherwise, is the information you posted earlier about "sheltered plants" taking longer to evolve still accurate? If so, about how much longer? I was planning on raising some Sage (because it grows all year round) inside a green house in hopes to actually protect it and maybe help it evolve faster, so then I could graft other things to it after it evolved. Speaking of grafts, when I grafted something to my strawberry bush in spring I noticed the plant basically "started over" as a seedling and had to regrow. So if I graft a perfect level trimming to a normal plant, will it be normal, perfect, or somewhere in between? I also heard taking trimmings somehow hurts a plant evolution, is that still true?

Sorry if this is all explained elsewhere, I'm just wanting to make sure I get current information and maybe some tips/tricks to help along the way for a new gardener. I'm a little "green" so to speak, kupo.