Tips on gardening

[doxxielover]

I am a very bad gardener. It actually failed my dynasty in the first generation. So I need some tips on gardening. If there already is a skill tips thread, someone  please tell me. I am not unsure on wether to make my founder a gardener, fisher, cook, or something else as their supermax. I would love some help.

And not only for the Dynasty but any tips for any skill so I know in the future.

Than you, your knowledge about skilling is greatly appreciated! 

[Vinyl]

Well, there is a certain website with helpful guides out there, lemme see if I can find it... Aha!   

Carl's Gardening guides are pretty awesome.  If you're after immortal dynasty specific gardening tips, I think the best one would be to figure out in advance where the special seed spawners are in a non-dynasty game.  When I play in Sunset Valley or Riverview I don't even need a collector helper at this point, I know a handful of spots where those seeds will spawn and can send sims out to gather heaps of them in advance of having a level 7 gardener.

If gardening is the supermax I like to take a couple of common plants to perfect quality as fast as possible for the perfect produce skill challenge.  Rather than worrying about making everything perfect, just having enough perfect apple trees or perfect tomato plants will do the trick.  Plant and fertilize as good as possible at first (buying garlic from the store works great when nothing else is available).  As soon as the improved harvest is ready plant it and fertilize again.  You could even delete the lesser quality plants to save your gardener time if you like!

Supplement the skill learning rate with some free reading sessions from the gardening books at the library.  And as soon as the gardener is level 7 plant the large special seed collection you've got stockpiled.  After a day or so of growth it's easy to see if the plant will be a tree (money tree), bush (flame fruit), or plant (life fruit, death fruit, plasma).  Feel free to dispose of any special plants you don't want - if you don't want fifty money trees to take care of, you don't have to keep them.

Lastly, sprinklers are your best friend.  Turning one on and leaving it on works if you don't have a sim to upgrade it to auto-water.  Build a fence around the garden and lock it off to all but the gardening sim and you don't have to worry about the rest of the household constantly jumping in it. 

Your founder doesn't have to be a gardener - in fact, none of your immortals have to.  It is a relatively simple skill to supermax (compared to guitar or photography) but your spares, spouses, or helpers could do the gardening instead.  As long as the household grows enough life fruit for regular ambrosia parties and some death flowers in case of accidental death you should be set.

Good luck!

[doxxielover]

Also If you keep replanting how do you reach the top of the gardening profession. The only thing I cant think of is money trees making your profit sky rocket.

I am still on the fence for this skill.

But everything you said makes it seem better, I just might do this.

Have you done an immortal dynasty?

Thank you so much for your help!

[lvrugger]

My current favorite gardening plan:

• Go to the library and read the first gardening skill book to get to 3rd level. You don't gain gardening skill from harvesting unless you have a point already. Optional, use the MultiTab to learn gardening while you do so to speed up the learning curve.
• Go to the grocery store and buy 2 of everything to plant. If you have enough funds, buy lots of the red berry coffee bean. Red berry coffee is a great money maker and grows very quickly.
• Go to alchemy shop to buy anything I didn't get for learning the gardening skill, which means wolfsbane and 4 mushrooms.
• Buy a sprinkler and place in designated gardening area.
• Plant one of everything, starting with coffee beans. If you have all the expansions, you will have achieved the Master Planter challenge already.
• Delete all plants and replant only what you want to grow. This is optional, but it cuts down on weeding since you've got the Master Planter challenge, and it will take less time to garden.

The red berry coffee beans are a great way to make money, and they don't depreciate in inventory like the money bags do. Perfect red berry beans sell for $200, much more at the consignment store with all the challenges done.
I do this with every new game. Gardening is the foundation for most of my games.

[Vinyl]

Better produce is worth more.  So having five perfect apple trees will yield more money than three normal apple trees, one excellent apple tree, and one perfect apple tree.  I have a bad habit of making my garden too large and then the poor gardener has to spend the entire day tending it.  I've learnt it's better for my play style and my sim's happiness to have fewer plants of higher quality than tons of lesser quality ones.

If the gardener has the gatherer trait that will help (more produce per harvest), but it does often cause glitches with the money trees and won't let the gatherer harvest them.   I have done an immortal dynasty (technically twice, but only once officially).  The sim who supermaxed gardening took rock star as a career so she could get as many opportunities as possible, since self-employed careers don't have any unique opportunities attached to them.  Her money trees broke, but she harvested tons of bonus alchemy plants, produce, and life fruit, so to me it worked out better with the gatherer trait.  My gardener was generation four - helpers grew enough life fruit and death flowers as well as improving plant quality in advance so everything she planted was perfect quality.

Just recently I had a sim reach level ten as a self-employed gardener.  She did it with red berry bean bushes.  She had already done all of the consignment skill challenges, had both Entrepenurial Mindset and Professional Simoleon Booster lifetime rewards, and sold all of her produce through the elixir consignment register.  With all of those boosts to sales value and career experience it didn't take that many beans at all (I was shocked how fast she tore through the ranks). 

Also I should mention I've got seasons and played my dynasty in perpetual summer.  That way ponds never froze over and plants never went dormant.  I do like the seasons, but having one season of no fishing/gardening and two seasons with intermittent fishing/gardening was too much wasted skilling time for my tastes. 

If you have an idea in advance of which skills you want to supermax and you're not all that familiar with some of them, it might help a lot to have a practice file.  Don't worry about following dynasty rules, and consider making needs static so the sim can blast through the skill challenges.  You'll probably see that a lot of the skills aren't as tough as they seem, but the ones that are tough to do quickly can be really tough.  (I've never once done the guitar star skill challenge, in all my years of playing this game, and the photography challenges?  Yeesh, that's so many, many strangers' knees your sim has to take pictures of!)

[doxxielover]

Thank You for all your tips!


And yes a practice file is probably what I need to do. I am not very familiar with some skills. Also in a way I want to do cooking as a supermax (I find it easier) but I want everyone to be able to cook.

[Vinyl]

Cooking is almost too easy to reach level 10 - it is pretty much an all or nothing skill.  If you do decide to supermax it be sure to remove any counters in the house outside of the locked kitchen and not place any while building.  I've had sneaky sims make autumn salad on a bathroom counter when I wasn't looking!

[doxxielover]

What do you recommend as gen ones supermax

[Vinyl]

The big four possibilities for founders are generally cooking, painting, fishing, or gardening.  Depending on how many helpers you have in the house your first immortal could supermax any of these.  The helpers would take care of the other skilled requirements.  Technically a dynasty could probably be done without any immortal using any of these skills as a supermax, but that'd take a fair bit of advance planning. 

Cooking and painting are pretty fast to supermax, in case you're worried about the founder growing old too quickly (small paintings make the skill challenges go by even faster).  Cooking combined with reaching the top of the chef career means the career fridge where food never spoils and even babies getting a mood boost by being near it.  A nice thing to have early on - be sure to put the crib in the same room as it if you earn one!

If you push gardening to the second generation or later you could have the helpers refine crops in advance (have a selection of perfect produce ready for the immortal to plant).  I used this technique during the last baby boomer challenge so the child with the Perfect Garden LTW was able to achieve it by planting eight perfect common plants in a single afternoon!

Fishing can also benefit from a bit of postponement.  I like to set up three mini-ponds in the backyard and stock one with alley catfish, one with angelfish, and one with deathfish.  That way the fishersim can catch live bait and fish up deathfish at any time without needing to visit the graveyard.

If there's a skill you're really worried about supermaxing, like gardening, it might be best to make it the founder's skill.  Face it head on, get it out of the way, and then you don't need to worry about it potentially destroying the dynasty in a later generation.

[doxxielover]

Thanks everybody for your tips!!!!

I really didn't know this thread was going to become so informational. Thank you !:)

[Mappin]

I enjoy gardening and love all these tips. One additional small, but time-saving, tip is to never use the Dispose All Dead Plants option. You can help your sim by going to buy mode and deleting the dead plants yourself. I also find myself spending more time than I should in buy mode simply rearranging the plants for efficiency or better design or just for fun.
 
And of course with Dragon Valley, the green dragon speeds up the whole process immensely by harvesting and bumping up the growth stage on each plant.

[Shirin]

In addition to what Vinyl said, don't forget about the Born Salesman/woman trait, and the Suave Seller LTR.

[doxxielover]

To sell at the consignment shop. Ok thanks you guys

[Blue Rose]

If you don't want your sim to be a gardener and just want the life fruit alone, I would have the spouse do the gardening, instead. Easiest, imo, is just handing them the gardening skill books, maybe give them the bookworm and green thumb trait if you have time to give them a Midlife Crisis LTR. If you don't know where most of the special seeds spawn in your area, then get the collecter finder/helper one instead. Only focus on collecting special seeds, unless the gardening skill is something you want to max out.

Once you hit level 7 or so and after a couple days of collecting (I say start the collecting early asap, and just worry about the actual planting a little later but not too late). Plant all of them, and then buy some of the planter bowls early if you have Supernatural. Go to buy mode, move the plants over, and you'll see that some of them won't fit, because those are money trees. This is an easy way to figure out a little early what plants have the highest chance of being life plants. You will also need some death flower bushes, and I believe the green thumb trait comes in handy for this, as you can have a chance at reviving them and getting more produce.

The planter bowls are even extra useful if you have Seasons, as plants have a tendency to go dormant in late Fall, Winter and Early Spring. You can always adjust your seasons to your advantage, but better just to have some of them inside, if you can.

If you have money, go ahead and buy a good amount of lobsters at the supermarket. Lobsters make good temporary fertilizers, and while it won't mean much if you don't have a gardner in your first gen, you can always pass down the higher leveled quality fruit to the immortal you plan to inherit the gardening career/supermax trait. Becareful once you harvest some life fruit, though. They make great fertilizers, and your sim probably will use it automatically if you choose the "fertlize garden with best fertilizers" option, unless you got something of even higher fertilizing strength. So temporarily take away your life fruits from that sim, when you do that.

I had logic as my first gen's supermax skill, but that required a LOT of planning and the spouse pretty much had to do everything. Didn't turn out to bad, considering, though.

[doxxielover]

Wow thank you so much. I really thank you for the tip about planters to figure out money trees.