Gardening Term Question

I didn't even know we could Shift+Click on the plants. :open_mouth: Gardening isn't quite as much fun as it was prior to Seasons, I'm sorry to say. Finding the things I need for my vegetable garden used to come down to scouring the neighborhoods for wild plants that were in need of harvesting and then planting the harvested item. One isn't always lucky to receive the seeds in any given pack. I do enjoy the additional things we can plant, however. But keeping my stuff in the Green House I built means the plants don't need as much attention as before. In some ways it's nice, in other ways, it gives my Sim less to do when the rest of the household is at work or school. Hm. Perhaps, we're both (my Sim and I) neglecting the laundry …

As to your direct question, have you or is it possible to select something from that menu? If so, select Mulched and see what happens. Perhaps, they have come up with a more direct way to fertilize our plants, other than using fish or various other harvested items.

Planting outside is more beneficial with Seasons, as rain will keep your plants watered. One less thing you need to do yourself. Besides, My garden is too big to fit indoors. I have every plant growing in it except the 10 from the National Park and the 3 from Sixam.
I don't personally have much trouble getting plants. I usually cheat for money and buy certain things, like seed packets and VoidCritters card packs, in large quantities. If any plants are missing, I usually know where they can be found or, in some cases, how to graft for them. This whole thing with the weeds option is just baffling, though. I've used the Shift+Click menu with my plants (obviously, this needs testingcheats to be on). I used it to evolve all my plants to Perfect status. I have a suspicion that "Mulching" might slow or prevent the appearance of weeds, but I haven't seen any weeds for a while anyway. It's late fall right now in my game and Patchy does a pretty good job at weed control anyway, so if that's what it does, I may not even notice any effect.

"iamsweetmystery;c-16669897" wrote:
Planting outside is more beneficial with Seasons, as rain will keep your plants watered. One less thing you need to do yourself. Besides, My garden is too big to fit indoors. I have every plant growing in it except the 10 from the National Park and the 3 from Sixam.
I don't personally have much trouble getting plants. I usually cheat for money and buy certain things, like seed packets and VoidCritters card packs, in large quantities. If any plants are missing, I usually know where they can be found or, in some cases, how to graft for them. This whole thing with the weeds option is just baffling, though. I've used the Shift+Click menu with my plants (obviously, this needs testingcheats to be on). I used it to evolve all my plants to Perfect status. I have a suspicion that "Mulching" might slow or prevent the appearance of weeds, but I haven't seen any weeds for a while anyway. It's late fall right now in my game and Patchy does a pretty good job at weed control anyway, so if that's what it does, I may not even notice any effect.

In my current family I only have the flowers indoors -- I built a greenhouse/conservatory room for my floral arranging Sim. The veggies, herbs and trees stay outside. (Next time I do a gardening Sim I'll have the garden closer to the house -- my Sim had a hard time during blizzards going out to harvest.)

I wonder if that menu comes up when using a mod like UI Cheats Extension or MCCC (with cheats enabled) but not for the mod-free, which is why players haven't noticed it.

I don't have any mods. It's a testingcheats thing, just like Shift-Clicking on a Sim to debug them or fix their needs. I think it's something new with Seasons. It wasn't available before, so I think most older players just haven't tried it, with no reason to suspect it would do anything. I only tried it on a whim. I was surprised what I found, myself.

I'm in a weird place with this game right now. I haven't bought seasons yet, but I have patched the patch thing. Okay. So my sims come home from wherever the plum they've gone, the plants they take care of (game suddenly doesn't think it's a garden anymore) all look like they're dripping from a sprinkler. Does this mean that if I had seasons it would have rained and they're getting watered, but I'm just not seeing rain because I didn't buy the pack? It's weird.

I'm fairly upset with both myself and the gallery right now. I downloaded a pre-seasons made community garden that I love. Did I save it to my gallery? No, that's why I'm mad- now I can't find it in the regular gallery. Well anyhow. It seems to be all buggy. So there are things in there I want to not die, right? Forbidden fruit tree and all the exotic stuff my sims haven't found yet. I set the lot type to park. And it does seem to register as a garden, because gardener-looking people randomly show up and do things to the plants. For a while I'd have my sims go there and build skill watering things, etc. It would take one sim two days to get it all done, so I did it rotationally. Plants thrived, even if there were a whole lot of bugs around. I made it a cat hangout, the creator was nice enough to have an outdoor kitchen, and a building with bathrooms and a bed downstairs so exhausted or homeless sims can rest and attend to their non-gardening needs. Some sims harvested stuff and planted them elsewhere. It was a nice place.

Now. Here's what happens. Sim goes in with maybe 3 skill in gardening, takes his poor elderly butt four days to get anything done and I had to send him home for fear he would work himself to death. Gets stuck for seven sim hours spraying the same plant for bugs. Tried everything except rebooting the computer to get him to stop. Ugh. Sent a level ten gardener in - before this, a whole section of emotion trees were about to die from lack of water- when she came in, they're fine. She spent a week taking vacation and trying to keep up with reviving all the plants that want to die. I won't let her spray a single thing and won't click "tend garden" either because she'll get stuck spraying for bugs. She also gets stuck on watering. Water two plants and then get in a loop with them; at least that one I'm able to click it off and she'll go about doing something else. She had to pick one of nearly everything so that when it dies, she can replant it, I mean she can revive them but if she doesn't get there in time, it'll just be beyond that state. Things in her yard do not seem to need watering as much, but for plum's sake, many of them are the same plants! What makes them die so fast in that one spot??

And forget planting things outdoors on the ground; they spontaneously move from where you planted them to a spot two squares over, so planting things at night isn't advised 'cause I may not figure out where the dickens they went.

Is anyone else in this boat?! I used to love gardening! If I get Seasons will any of this mess be fixed, or will I want to tear my hair out even more?

Yes, the game is acting as though your plants have been watered by rain. Weird, but convenient. The same thing happened to me just before I got Seasons.
If your Sim gets stuck in any kind of animation, this is where testingcheats is a HUGE help. If you turn on testingcheats and Shift+Click the sim, you will see an option "Reset this Object (Debug)". This can fix a number of small problems. Animation sticking, queue items that won't clear, etc.

I haven't used testingcheats yet. I will certainly be doing so now that I've been reminded! I like my game and want to be able to play it. Now if I can figure out how to make the thing recognize having fifty-plus plants, in boxes, not in boxes, in pots, etc. all over a yard as a garden, and hire someone, that'd be great. One thing I definitely learned from reading the boards, (besides what motherlode is) is to turn weather effects OFF when I finally purchase Seasons.

"iamsweetmystery;d-946355" wrote:
I guess it's a new thing, but I found out that if I Shift+Click a garden plant, I get this huge menu of ways to manipulate them, including advancing their Evolution. That's pretty cool. One thing in that menu I don't get is under the category "Weeds..." It has one Weed State called "Mulched". What is that? I'm not aware of any way to buy mulch or to put mulch on plants. Anyone know what this is about?

I didn't know we could do that. I'll have to check it out next time I play.

If someone were inclined to turn off only some weather effects, I would certainly recommend lightning. You can select at least weather severity just from the core menu. Severe weather like thunderstorms and blizzards are optional. Lightning has cost me a fortune from having to replace things like outdoor lighting, at least one bee box, and a Patchy the Straw Man. My Sims have also gotten struck a few times, but thanks to a Trait purchased from the Aspiration Rewards, they actually like it. The Storm Chaser Trait gives them positive Moodlets rather than negative (like "That Was Totally Awesome!"). Some mild weather can actually be beneficial and amusing and are worth keeping. For instance, rain waters your plants for you and you can even choose to "Shower in the Rain".

"iamsweetmystery;d-946355" wrote:
I guess it's a new thing, but I found out that if I Shift+Click a garden plant, I get this huge menu of ways to manipulate them, including advancing their Evolution. That's pretty cool. One thing in that menu I don't get is under the category "Weeds..." It has one Weed State called "Mulched". What is that? I'm not aware of any way to buy mulch or to put mulch on plants. Anyone know what this is about?

Yeah, the game is kinda like that. Some things get half coded in, but might not be fully functional. One function in particular that I can think of, is to do with the beds. There is, actually, coded in game, or was, at least, an interaction to Relax On The Bed, but it wasn't enabled for the menu. A modder saw it in the code, and enabled it when he or she made the All Beds Same Energy Mod. That mod was taken over by a different modder, tho. I forget if the option is still in the menu. When it was though, it totally worked.

In this case, they were probably thinking about being able to mulch plants, but it got lost along the wayside somewhere. Did any visible effects show up if you have tried it? I imagine it does have something to do with the growth of weeds.

@SherryRN, ah, I'm sorry you're having such a time with your garden lot. I'm sure that if you have mods, you've tried removing them, and putting back gradually to test, the process after patches.

I haven't given the new Gardening a good run through since the Patch. I do have some gardens that I have spent a great deal of time establishing, too, and I just want to get a bit up to speed with what I'm doing. My guess would be that maybe your garden is buggy because of the Patch. The Pre-Seasons Patch was just chock full of code changes that can affect the game in random and unexpected ways. Gardening itself had a huge overhaul, as I'm sure you've realized.

I have a similar park lot, which has a Perfect garden with all plants up to the Patch. I'm a bit unsure how to proceed. If the same thing happens to me, I might indeed do as you have said, and pick one of everything to replant from scratch. That may reset the plants if they're bugged? I don't know if they will still be Perfect, since the evolvement cycle has been changed. It does take way less time to evolve now, so that's a plus.

Edit: By taking less time to evolve, I mean the Evolve process itself, not the time it takes for them to be ready to do so. That seems to take a while, but there are less levels, so however that comes out, I'm not sure.

I'm not positive this will fix your Sims getting stuck, tho. That maybe a separate glitch. It seems to be happening with other non-gardening interactions, too, until they find and fix the problem.

One thing that did occur to me to ask. Do you have Get Together expansion? You can make a Gardening Club, and have them gather at the park to take care of the garden together. Just make sure to harvest first if you can and need to. If you don't have GT, you maybe be able to put Sims in a Group, and try it that way. Sometimes even NPCs can be gotten to do things using this, altho they are a bit more stubborn than controlled Sims because of Skill levels, other Needs, etc. Can the other members of your Sims' households help them with the lower skill tasks?

Planting things without the planters, for me, has always acted the way you mention. I think it's because the game is rather picky about placement of the plants because of routing, etc.

I was a bit confused by what you said about the game not thinking your plants are a garden anymore? Are you not able to hire a Gardener, or what made you say this?

If you aren't in a huge hurry to get Seasons, it probably isn't going to help immensely. Most of the gardening changes were in the Patch before the release. So to fix the glitches will also require Patches. It just takes patience to wait for them. One thing Season does have that will help with watering is rain, and sprinklers, too. It does complicate matters as well, tho. You have to have a plan to deal with the coming and going of seasons, and the various accompanying plant cycles. Plants are dormant at certain seasons, active in others, and that requires an adjustment of playing style. Plants don't actually die, tho, unless they're neglected, of course. They just become dormant.

If you have enjoyed gardening, tho, you will probably enjoy making bouquets at the floral station, and the new Career. I myself have loved the Expansion. I think I love the new activities the most, ice and rollerskating, water balloon play, scouting, the calendar for special holidays and events, the decorations etc, etc. And the swing set--I couldn't love such a little thing more. The swing is very well done, with all ages able to participate, and great animations.