Gardening

Gardening IS broken in the game. Ever since the first CL patch I've noticed that if it's Spring in your game, weeds and bugs will spawn multiple times a day on every plant, and even on World plants, the latter of which is irritating, since your Sims don't have any options to remove those.

If it's any other season than Spring, then they don't spawn at all, so as far as a player will be concerned, those problems aren't occurring.

The weeds/bugs problem during spring occurs even if the plant is sheltered, which is completely absurd. One of the whole points of greenhouses in real life is the ability to prevent pests.

I finally got to a point where I went through every plant XML file and completely removed the option for bugs to spawn. Unfortunately, I can't figure out what XML (or what point in the Plants XMLs) controls weeds, so those still spawn incessantly. The fact that they spawn even on world plants, which my Sims can't do anything about, means that during the entirety of spring, every world plant has weeds choking its roots for the entire season.

Upshot is that I've decided not to do any gardening for any Sim at all anymore, because I don't want my blood pressure and stress levels to continue going up from it. This means that I will never use the Simple Living challenge trait, because I can't. Not until gardening isn't so completely broken.

I'm not surprised to hear that the bunnies/birds only deal with pests on the CL patches. That's also absurd, but it's in tune with EA's typical assertiveness that we MUST always use the latest of ANYTHING if we want anything to get done. I have CL, but I'm not about to allow them to browbeat me into submission in that manner.

I hadn't thought of using Florilorial to clear out pests, but it's a good idea. @bshag4lv, thank you for that idea; now to just determine the range of that spell, and at least my spellcasters can go back to gardening.

It just sucks no matter which way you slice it. My 100 baby matriarch makes her money from gardening. I'm scared to even open that file. But it sounds like it doesn't even matter. *sigh*

Not sure if this will be of much help but it's something that's helped my gardening

My plants will occasionally revert to dirt but they do become bushes and trees later in the morning to early afternoon unless they went out of season. The lower the quality of my plant the more often they get weeds, bugs and revert or just suddenly start to die.

I shift + click my plants that give the most issues be it weeds or bugs or near death and click set stage and set it to ready to evolve and then evolve it as normal. That saves every plant except the super dead ones.

Rabbits and birds help as does a sim who can just tend garden. If my plants aren't evolving quickly with a level 10 Gardner on great soil I shift click them along to avoid the problems and it usually solves the revert to dirt. At least for me this has worked and my gardens are all producing well in every world now.

Tip: Give your Sims "likes Gardening" and perhaps gardening related traits for a boost. (Or even an aspiration and/or gardening career work from home) I find they autonomously do TOO much gardening. Which is ok, though I'm often cancelling "talk to plant" when there is nothing else to do in the garden, heh heh!

The only thing I've noticed they don't do autonomously is fertilize plants. I always have to get them to do that manually. (Also "Evolve" a plant.)

"MiaSkywalker;c-17962951" wrote:
I finally got to a point where I went through every plant XML file and completely removed the option for bugs to spawn. Unfortunately, I can't figure out what XML (or what point in the Plants XMLs) controls weeds, so those still spawn incessantly. The fact that they spawn even on world plants, which my Sims can't do anything about, means that during the entirety of spring, every world plant has weeds choking its roots for the entire season.

It's actually much easier. You just have to set the decay value in the weed and infestation commodity to 0. That will stop weeds and spring bugs from spawning. You can have a look at my gardeningfix mod for reference (though that does not disable weeds and infestation, but only reduces it by 50 %). It's in the Misc Mods category:
https://deichschafblog.de/bienchen/sonstige-mods-misc-mods/

@MiaSkywalker, in the spellcaster perks is a perk that casters can throw a spell further distances, Spectral Reach, I think. That way they can floralorial from anywhere on the lot.

@83bienchen:
I have a bunch of your mods - I may even have that one. Thanks for the link; I'll definitely look at it!

That's actually the commodity I was looking for in the XML tunings, and was unable to figure out. There were a lot to go through, and I couldn't figure out specifically what XML to change.


@bshag4lv:
Ah, all my spellcasters take that, but I hadn't considered it. Does florolorial then do only a single plant at a time, or does it do a range of plants? With my money trees, I tend to not space the trees apart, but put them all in a clump with two planter-spaces empty for the Sim to reach the center tree, and then do a Super Sell on all 23 trees in the clump. So my Sims don't really have direct access to any of the trees not on the edges of that clump, and therefore can't directly de-weed or de-bug the inner trees. I frankly never considered Florolorial as a solution (never used it, for some reason), but it's something to consider. Especially if it works in an area of effect, and not just on a single tree.

Gives me even more of a reason for my main Sims to be spellcasters, not that I ever needed an excuse to make them so. :p.

Hi Mia, floralorial only works on one plant at a time, but if the plant needs watering, weeding and bug spraying, floralorial will take care of all three...I can't have a garden without it. Even if your trees are in the interior, as long as you can click on part of it, they can spell the plant. :)

"SheriSim57;c-17961332" wrote:
My high level gardeners have plants reverting to dirt piles all the time. Sometimes after going into CAS from a mirror, sometimes after returning from a lot, sometimes after fertilizing a plant, sometimes after harvesting a plant, sometimes upon changing seasons. Different things seem to affect my plants into reverting into dirt, and this is in a sheltered greenhouse, I don’t think tree’s are ever supposed to revert to dirt, but mine do. It is a problem the dev’s have said is fixed, but for many of us it’s not. And I have never used mods or CC in my sims4 game (but do own all the packs ). So yeah, it’s a known problem. And in my game it is actually game breaking for many sims in my rotation. Plants reverting to dirt has been going on for quite awhile in my game. Probably the most game breaking bug ever in my game.

There is a discussion called:
Plants are still reverting. :(
A few pages down, in this discussion area

Mine did this last night. I thought Patchy did something. Will they grow back? I have finished most of my gardening aspirations, so for me, not hugely game breaking.

I am seriously thinking of uninstalling seasons, because it's making the granite falls aspiration almost impossible.