Gardening Term Question

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.

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.

"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.

@"Livin in Sim" - I did try it. My Money Tree came up in weeds yesterday. The weeds vanished when I used the Mulched option. I don't know much yet beyond that. It may be too soon to tell whether the weeds will come back or not.

Mulch means to grind up. Think of when you cut grass with a lawnmower without using a bag or deflector that spits it out the side, the blades then spend a longer time cutting the grass down to a fine cut or mulch. In the game its basically the term for pulling weeds.

@"Livin in Sim" - Howdy, sorry it took so long to get back to you.
Let's see if I can reply to all your points... No, I don't have mods. So that was an easy one to not worry about.
The game, for certain sim households with a lot full of planted things, would not allow a gardener to be hired.
I do have the Get Together expansion. And I'm thinking I'll get Seasons in the next few months. I've tried the group thing. People got stuck, and it was not a lot different. More "stuff" did not actually wind up being accomplished.

What I did, was look at it like this. I spent ages on the gallery and never found that lot. Then I took a good look at why it was so challenging. Well, because there were too many of each plant, is why. And since I got it before I got the pet expansion and pack and things, there were plants missing, so a whole small section hadn't had anything in, at all. But still, too many plants. I mean, fifteen apple trees and twelve emotion trees are not really necessary, are they? Two to four of everything else, with trash plants right in the middle, making sims unhappy every time they get near them. Hm.

So I found a garden I liked better, and tried it out in another save, and since more than one sim has picked the dickens out of the one garden, just in case, I'll probably replace it with the smaller one. It has a different feel to it, the plants are a little more spread out, there are quite a few spliced things in there, and there's a big pink tree whose significance escapes me right now, but will be fun to go through the portal thing later on and see what that's about. And I downloaded to my library to make sure I'd got a copy before I got to see if it will be good or weird. And then I got excited and downloaded a garden in a big greenhouse looking thing, and stuck it in the ... not the city living world, but the one with the business lots, and played with it. It's nice. Then just to stay up longer and avoid going to bed for no reason, I started a new sim household, and made her play with plants, and tested the reset business with testing cheats. Turned out I already had it enabled, and it worked well. And even better, she was able to hire a gardener. Interesting. I didn't pay any attention to how well he did, got sleepy and went to bed.

I am wondering, since the one I started playing with at first isn't there, and believe me I looked, maybe it was a buggy thing and isn't there now for a good reason? Anyhow I did go back and fiddle with it, next day, have not removed it yet from the main save, but good grief. It's going to plum in a hand basket. I wonder if making it a cat hangout did something, too? Did the kitties pee ammonia all over the plants and kill them? Does that even happen in this game? I don't think I'll make many places an actual "hangout" now, seeing how they decline to share perfectly fine litterboxes.

I went and did some reading up on Seasons, and I do think I'll enjoy it once I get it. The floral designer career branch looks interesting. And thanks for taking the time to discuss all that with me.

SherryRN touched on a good point about gardening. Spacing. I have it down to a specific method at this point, myself. When placing planting boxes, I leave at least one full space on at least 3 sides so the Sim doing the gardening can reach every plant in it, as you can fit up to 4. I don't waste planter boxes on trees or Sixam Mosquito Traps since they need to be placed in the center and require an entire box each. Instead, I just plant those things straight in the ground. I leave at least 2 spaces between trees so the branches don't overlap, allowing clear visibility of the entire plant.
On another side note, I don't know what they did to the plants since Seasons got going, but the yield has been pathetic. It used to be that most plants put out 10 fruit or flowers a day, but now it's down to maybe 3 if I'm lucky. And with most plants going dormant 1/2 - 3/4 of the year and spending a few days regrowing when they come back into season, it cuts yield even farther overall. I'm really disappointed about this. It's making it hard to build up food and flower supplies. It's very frustrating. Unless it's a coding oversight they intend to fix, it just feels like they sabotaged gardening.

I love the idea of a greenhouse! My garden is always huge and I didn't know we could shift+click on plants either. One thing I've found since Seasons, is that unless its winter, it's always raining! I had to turn that off for a while.