Gardens

[redmare]

How do you start and care for a garden?

[MarianT]

You can go to the Science Building and take a class in gardening. This will put some seeds in your inventory, which you then plant. You can also go to the grocery store and buy some fruits and vegetables, which you will also be able to plant, unless they're uncommon or rare.

There's quite a bit more information here.

[Ricalynn]

Two ways a garden can be started. 

First way is to go to the grocery store in game and buy apples, lettuce, grapes & tomatoes.  These are the only things that can be planted without any gardening skill.   Plant them at home and tend to them every day.   

Second way is to take a gardening class at the science center.  You'll receive some seeds in your inventory.  These can be planted or you can still go to the grocery store and pick up produce.

In order to be able to weed, fertilize and gain access to new plants you'll need higher levels of the gardening skill.    You can get a book at the bookstore or read the skill book at the library to give you some extra levels while you're waiting for the plants to grow.   Common plants, like the ones I gave you examples of, will grow the fastest.   


There are things in the store that will help your garden grow faster.  Unicorns and fairies also have abilities that can help in that department.    I would also suggest reading Carl's Guide to Gardening.


edit: Marian!  you beat me.

[thelittlepakeha]

Cheaper than taking the gardening class is to start by straight out reading the gardening book, especially if you see it in the library or find one at a consignment store for less than the bookstore sells them.

[Wai]

I usually just read the first segment of the book in the library - it's "The watering can chronicals" (or something like that) and is found with the other skill books.  Or even quicker, if you have a tabcast and it is not banned by a challenge game, then listening to the gardening skill gets you started.

[Rainbow Dash]

Another cheap way is to harvest wild plants then plant what you harvest bearing in mind you will only be able to plan the common variety at first. I find it a good way to get started as some wild plants are of nicer quality than what you can buy in the store. 

[Joria]

How do you start and care for a garden?

What they said about reading, taking classes and harvesting to get your initial plants. 

For the caring part of your question what I do is select the area I want to be my 'garden'.  I use the terrain paint to paint the area dirt colored instead of grass.  Sometimes I'll paint in paths for my fruit and veggie beds, sometimes not.  I'm a bit ocd and like things very neat and orderly.  Depending on whether you have acquired seeds or actual fruits and veggies, you can just plant them.  Later on or the next day you will have to water them.  You will not be able to weed them until your skill at gardening gets a bit higher but you can raise the skill by harvesting wild fruit and veggies, gathering seeds and reading the books in the library or by tending your garden and perhaps planting more things.

One thing that was not mentioned is you can use a cheat, buydebug, to obtain already growing plants of all kinds.  Start with "testingcheatsenabled true" and then bring up the cheat menu again and type in "buydebug".  You might have to use "moveobjects on" to plant some of the plants if you have not done it before.  The plants you obtain via buydebug are the lowest quality possible and it seems to me they take longer to reach "perfect" stage than ones planted from seed or fruit, but they are immediately ready for harvest, (if they show themselves as bearing fruit/veggies), so a starving Sim will have food handy right away.

Another way to maintain/take care of your garden, without the new gardening station, is to buy the sprinkler which is found in the buy menu in appliances/miscellaneous.  This can also be used to increase your handiness skill by tinkering with the sprinkler or upgrading it to automatic water.
If your garden is large I recommend overlapping the circles of water a bit to get all the garden watered.  I personally usually just leave the sprinklers on unless I'm playing an environmentally conscious Sim.  For some reason or other the plants never seem to get over watered if you leave the sprinklers on.  Warning!  Sims love to play in the sprinklers and you could have a hard time keeping them out of them.

[Janna]

For just a personal garden, that I just want a few plants, I find seeds or get fruit from the wild or grocery store.

The guide gives a lot of info, but there are tips here that you can find helpful.  One tip is to fence in your garden.  Mainly to keep the zombies (if you have SN) from eating your veggies. They don't eat the fruit from the trees.  Another reason is if you have pets it will keep out the wildlife.  Horses, deer and others will eat the veggies.  Third, I do as Joria and leave the sprinklers on (I have found them in outdoors, click on the grill, then click on the football and you wil find them there) but my sims want to play it all the time; forgetting to eat, sleep or anything else.  So, I put up a fence but no gate until I am ready for them to take care of it.  That means having to go to the buy mode to get a new gate each time you plan to send them to the garden, but for me it was worth it.

If you have WA, you can travel to the other countries and find seeds or get fruit or veggies at the market that can be planted. 

Or, as suggested, use the cheat to get the plants.  I have found that if you fertalize your garden, you will get better quality.  Even with the ones from the cheat, when I gave my plants a high quality fertalizer (garlic, for example) they would go from normal to very nice. 

I am working on a garden to put at the Exchange, or the Swap Shop (I think I have that right) and you could download it and have perfect plants.  If you don't have the expansion packs, I think that section of plants will either just be blank or have something ele planted there, not sure how that works.  I have plants from WA and SN in my garden.  Set up for alchemy and for a nectary along with the regular plants.     

[Wai]

You don't need to keep buying and deleting the gate.  Simply click on the gate and select "lock for all sims" that keeps them out.  Unlock when you want the sims to tend the garden then lock after they are ouside.  If you lock them in they will starve!

The fence, if you have pets, is very specific to keep out wild animals.  Choose "stampede stopper fence" and "country farm gate".

[Joria]

You don't need to keep buying and deleting the gate.  Simply click on the gate and select "lock for all sims" that keeps them out.  Unlock when you want the sims to tend the garden then lock after they are ouside.  If you lock them in they will starve!

The fence, if you have pets, is very specific to keep out wild animals.  Choose "stampede stopper fence" and "country farm gate".

Any fence will work to keep out wild animals as long as you have the fence set to lock and choose the only allow the household or Sim entrance.

[Janna]

It is very helpful to be able to lock out pets, zombies and others from your lot and garden; unfortunately, locking them to others still allows your sims to get into your garden.   Which was where my problem was; keeping my gardening sims out of the sprinklers. To do so I chose to remove the gates as soon as they were finished so they couldn't get in and play with the sprinklers. 
They would go out and play in the sprinklers when they should be eating, sleeping, reading and such.  I had never considered that I could lock them out of it also, that is good to know.

Since I have only been building some gardens to create community gardens I have put my sims on static and not had to worry about their needs.  But to not have to deal with the zombies and them wanting to play in the sprinklers I just took the gates out.  If I build more gardens, I will try just locking everyone out and see how that works. 

Just on a side note, I was wondering how much you can make from a garden.  I took a sim couple and set them on static and let them harvest all of the plants.  They made over 26,000 bucks from the harvesting.  I will admit that I had them on static and they worked all that day and most of that night. This was with every plant and fruit tree (base game, SN, Seasons and WA) and they were all prefect and it was a good size garden.   

[Shirin]

Re sprinklers and sprinkler addicted Sims

There are two ways I handle these lunatics - the first is, put plants on either side of the sprinkler to grow. The other is to box the sprinkler in with its own fence. The first way is less expensive, but they'll complain all the time about a blocked path. The second way doesn't prevent the sprinkler from hitting everything in its path, but is a bit more expensive. I tend to use the glass fence that came with High End Loft Stuff, just because.

[Pam]

Just on a side note, I was wondering how much you can make from a garden.  I took a sim couple and set them on static and let them harvest all of the plants.  They made over 26,000 bucks from the harvesting.  I will admit that I had them on static and they worked all that day and most of that night. This was with every plant and fruit tree (base game, SN, Seasons and WA) and they were all prefect and it was a good size garden.   

If you can get a grove of Money Trees, the money will roll in.  Money Trees are grown from special seeds.

[Janna]

Oh yeah !  Money trees     Nice

One of the things that I hated losing when I had to reinstall my games was losing my first family.  TMainly they were special because they were my first, they were up to sixth generation and they had several money trees.  They were already so rich they didn't need them but I just couldn't resist planting them.  They were the only plants I had.

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I probably planted my garden the hard way,    Since I have only done them for the community gardens that I have been making I left room inbetween all of my plants to put the fruit/veggies of the next stage. 
So, when my nice garlic produced the great ones I could plant in front of it a garlic from it and let it grow while I continued to harvest the nice one.  Gave me some money.  As soon as it started to produce I would pull up the nice one, move that one up and replace it with the next stage.  My OCD I had to have them in stage order, grouping of types (all nectar grapes, all mushrooms, etc) and bush or tall ones in set groups. 
I like the idea of building a fence around the sprinklers, with move objects it would allow for more feedom of placement also.  Sims couldn't play with them, I didn't have to move them when I moved my plants around at times.

If I planted a garden to have for a career I know I would do it totally different than what I do for my community gardens.  Then my focus is on ease of working with plants, planting the next stage and more.  Career I wouldn't care if I could see the sprinklers or not, they would stay on all the time or do the auto.  And plants could be close together.   

Had thought about putting money trees in the community gardens, but didn't.  Hindsight probably should have though.  I think I can still add them, considering that. 

[yruvian]

You could also just raid your first fridge and plant the fruit/veggies in it. (Sometimes fridges are empty, but I've found they aren't most of the time.) Most of my casual gardeners started with the lettuce in the fridge. With a green thumb sim and all expansions installed (+ Monte Vista), I've found that just planting what's in the fridge usually gets you to level 1, when a new influx of seeds appears in your inventory.