Gardening - can plant quality be cheated?

Several Simmers have perfect garden rooms on the Gallery to download which would be the absolute fastest way. As @Hoverael shared, plants available at the Spice Festival and Romance Festival are supposed to be perfect. They even say they are perfect. But, it's been my experience once your Sim harvests them, they change to normal in their inventory. Perhaps it's a glitch only in my game, but it's been that way for a long, long time and I don't use CC or Mods.

Bees will help your plants evolve on their own if you keep them happy and your Sim can also send them to fertilize close-by plants in your garden. Buying seeds and picking Patchy's pockets for seeds is another way to get rare plants. Or you could graft to get rare plants, but that takes a long, long, LONG time, so it's not the fastest way.

The best fish for fertilizer is sturgeon, tuna, treefish and salmon. But the very best fertilizer is Growfruit. You can buy growfruit at the Ranger Station in Granite Falls if you have Outdoor Retreat. It's the fastest and cheapest way to get it rather than taking your chances with seed packets. Your Sim can fish up Cowberries and Dragonfruit reliably at the fishing spot on the pier in Magnolia Promenade. Again, it's the fastest, most cost effective and easiest way to get those two plants in my opinion.

I've also found that using expensive plants are excellent fertilizer as well, in particular; Bird of Paradise, Lilies and Roses. Anything worth over 15-20 simoleons or more makes my plants ready to evolve almost immediately.

Sage plants grow year round so they are the most desirable plant to grow for grafting. I'd plant a few of them right away as soon as you find them. Hint: It grows in Oasis Springs park. Have your Sim camp out in the park a day or two to give them time to grow. Initial growth shouldn't take any longer than that. I believe they can be found in Starter Herb seed packs too. All plants that have matured are available for harvest after 5 a.m. But you have to be on your home lot or in your home lot neighborhood at that time or they won't produce anything.

Anyway, once your Sage have evolved to Perfect quality, start grafting other plants onto it and you'll be quickly on your way to a Perfect garden. It grows year round and anything grafted onto it will grow year round too as long as it's on the Sage plant. Once you harvest grafted plants from the Sage, make sure it's the right season before planting or build a greenhouse and plant everything in there.

As someone else shared, you can use a cheat to get your plants ready to evolve by turning on testingcheats and then shift clicking on plants. I'm not exactly sure what happens when you do that since I've never tried it myself, but worth a try! :)

I hope this all helps if you want to actually grow them yourself to Perfect. But, if you don't care how they get to Perfect, just download a Perfect Garden room off the Gallery. @mcrudd is one Simmer I know that has all plants in rooms to Perfect quality that are currently available. She's really great about updating whenever a pack introduces more plants. Good luck! <3

EDIT: Forgot to add that you can get produce (seeds) in San Myshuno at produce stands too if you can't find something in season. They don't have everything, but worth a look. There's also plants available from the 'purchase gifts' option on your Sims cell. They're very expensive to get that way, but sometimes worth it to get something you can't find otherwise. I use the gift option for tulips in particular and sometimes Bonsai bush seeds too.

Also, the Ranger Station has other plants besides Growfruit too, such as tomatoes, potatoes, etc. Those can be hard to find sometimes. Especially if you're not in the right season to get them from public gardens.

I found super fertiliser in the debug menu? I think it’s from the secret recipe the hermit gives you in outdoor retreat? I started using that on console as we have no gallery :( I know people save rooms with perfect plants, all the paintings etc..

Also I’ve noticed if you have multiple sims in your household, you can get them to tend garden whilst your off on a seperate lot. When you return the plants are nearly always ready to evolve.

I know of no way to cheat that, but there are ways to get at what you want without cheating that are faster:

If you have city living, wait for the spice festival, there are plants that spawn there with perfect quality, you can take some fruits there. usually you'll find strawberries, sage, parsley and a few others out of season. there is a dragonfruit plant there as well. if that spice festival comes later in the year, that dragonfruit with fruits on them would be a perfect money maker in a sheltered place where you can plant lots of them and make a boat load of §§§.

you can create your own dragon fruits by planting those perfect quality strawberries first and then grafting snapdragons on to them later.

You can also start fishing for medium or large fish, typically you can find a number of salmon on any typical day in the willow creek river behind bargain bend, singleton streamlet and cabana crick, that is if you are there fishing all day, you don't need any specific bait.

if you got level 10 gardening, get some rare seed packets and grow glowfruit, iti will take a while but when you have a few of them, you can harvest them and simply use them as a reliable fertilizer.

It isn't particulary difficult to get the quality up, but yes, it does take some time. altneratively there should be some creators on the gallery who also have these things, you can download one of theirs, take what you need for your own place and delete their creation afterwards.

One way to get them to better quality faster: If you have a Sim with a Gardening skill 2 and up, turn on testingcheats and you can get the plant to be ready to evolve. That'll speed up the evolution process.
I don't think there's a way to directly change the quality of the plants though.

I haven't found a way to cheat it. But you can save a lot or room with mature plants. So that is one kind of way to cheat up plants.

Also, having Bees (place in the center they will fertilize 5 squares) that are healthy and calm will help your plants mature faster. And waking up Patchy will aid in doing gardening.