Gardening Skill Challenges

[ThePotterPanda]

I finally got the courage to attempt the Immortal Dynasty challenge, and I want my founder to SuperMax gardening, but I've always had trouble with the skill challenges. Does anyone have any tips on how to successfully and efficiently complete them? Thanks 

[ratchie]

I was too scared to attempt the gardening challenges which is why my founder supermaxed cooking. I will be watching with interest to see what tips you get.
Good luck with doing the Dynasty Challenge.

Rachel

[simfulicious]

I know that it says in multiple places to plant your highest quality of each plant and then to delete your old plants.  I don't do that, though.  I make sure that I have one plant going of the highest quality possible, and I keep the old plants because their produce still goes towards sales and the 650 plants harvested.  I get the No Bills Ever reward asap and then put sprinklers everywhere and never turn them off.  I don't want to take time to upgrade sprinklers.

Once I get a perfect plant I separate it from the others and start a separate "perfect" garden of sorts, so I know which plants I have finished.

[sdinger70]

I've only done the challenges a couple of times, both for making nectar, so I always got the Master Farmer first. I would plant about 72 apple trees right off the bat and save the apples for raising nectar skill, so 650 fruits/veggies is a cakewalk that way.

[Lilygirl]

I'm doing a gardening supermax Immortal right now but I haven't even looked at the skill challenges for gardening. The way my Sims garden is this: I find/buy seeds/fruit and plant at least one of each variety. Then once the plants are harvested, I plant the next higher quality fruit. When this new plant reaches maturity, I delete the first plant. This keeps the quality of my garden plants always improving and prevents my garden from continuously expanding. When I remember to, I fertilize, though not consistently.

For example: I would buy and plant a nice apple, tomato, lettuce, and grape. When these plants produce a higher than nice quality fruit (such as very nice), I plant that very nice fruit. Now when this plant produces higher than very nice fruit (such as great), I plant that fruit and delete the nice plant. This way the quality of your plants/fruit is always increasing and you also always have harvest-able plants in your garden, meaning there is always something to do and fertilizer available.

Does that make sense?

[athena]

A few of my Sims are into maximizing their gardening skill, first was because of the quest for growing the plant life for ambrosia. I do not delete old nice plants, because part of the lower level challenges is to be able to harvest a sell a given number of produce regardless of the quality (plus the family needs a little money from the harvest for their household expenses, including travelling to find other species of plants/fruits).
When the nice to great plants die, I just don't replace them.  I separate the excellent and above plants from the mere nice ones, again because there's the famous challenge of delivering 20 excellent produce to the Bistro which earns a Sim a Master Farmer (I think it was) level. My Sim can now grow eggs and cheese after accomplishing that challenge. Then I separate the outstanding and perfect plants so I can watch out for the next challenge which allows the Sim to get the omni seeds from mail. 

[Pam]

What a lot of you are talking about with continuously improving the plant quality and waiting for the opportunities to bring in excellent and outstanding produce are not considered "challenges."  They are opportunities that come to your Sim via the telephone.  If you're thinking in terms of the Immortal Dynasty Challenge, these opportunities are part of the 6 unique opportunities that are required to eat Ambrosia.  

The skill challenges are found in the gardening skill journal and are as follows:

1.  Master Planter - Must have planted 19 types of plants that can be planted in the game.
2.  Botanical Boss - Must have harvested at least 75 perfect fruits and vegetables.
3.  Master Farmer - Must have harvested at least 650 fruits and vegetables.

These skill journal challenges are what must be completed in addition to reaching level 10 in the skill as a requirement for eating Ambrosia.

Increasing the quality of plants is important, of course, but it's also important to just do a lot of harvesting and hunting for seeds.  You can purchase fruits and vegetables from the grocery store to plant, but all of the Special Seeds have to be found.  If you cannot travel for whatever reason and are limited to your home town produce, you'll have to complete the string of challenges for the Omni plant, which will allow you to plant eggs, cheese, steaks, burger patties, and the Omni seeds.

For the Immortal Dynasty Challenge, all of these things are important and have to be done.  The best advice is to start early, have a good sized garden, and tend it every day.  Fertilizer is important as it shortens the growing time and increases the number of fruits produced.   Carl's Guide on fertilizer may be helpful here.

[athena]

I need to clarify, my Sim was level 10 in cooking, level 7 or 8 in fishing, and level 6 or 7 in gardening. He needed to eat ambrosia so he could be an adult forever. So his daughter Sim and himself did some teamwork. His daughter managed to gain a high level in gardening for her to be able to find and plant seeds of the life plant. So her father Sim caught several deathfishes, put them in the ref and maxed his skill in cooking, and he bought a recipe for ambrosia. He waited until his daughter was able to grow a life fruit, and when she harvested , she placed it in the ref and my adult Sim was able to cook ambrosia and eat it. His age as a mature Sim was reset. He didn't even complete any level of the gardening challenges, because his daughter was the one who gardened.