Gardening Guide

[chellwatt98]

So does anyone know if the Money Tree exist in the Sims 4? It was my retirement fund at level 10 gardening in the Sims 3

[rokrchik]

I never could find the onion plant in Willow Creek but I did find it in Oasis Springs. Ironically, right across the street from where my gardener lives.

The wild onion is located at the Cacti Casa house, on the rock side (versus street side) in the back.

The bug preventing the strawberry-daisy graft is on my last nerve!

Kerry

[Enchanted81]

Hi,

Has anybody figured out how to get the bird of paradise and the bonsai?  I'm going crazy trying to get them.

Currently bugged in game, along with the Dragonfruit.

[Nutella]

Please remember this post is for suggestions and corrections to the Gardening Guide.

If you have questions regarding the gardening skill, please submit a new post in Skills Board. 
If you have questions or issues regarding gameplay or possible bugs, please submit a new post in Miscellaneous Help Board.

[IgnorantBliss]

I have not been keeping tract of exact values, but it seems to me that the longer you wait to harvest a harvestable plant, the more valuable the produce becomes. I let 6 sim days pass between harvestings, and I got blackberries worth 202 simoleons, and plantains worth 100 simoleons.

[Carl]

Thanks. This inspires me to want to do some testing. If I can find a hard line where plants are full value, then I can also determine if fertilizer helps get them there faster!

[IgnorantBliss]

I did a bit of testing. Planted 3 perfect apples by a level 10 gardener with the super green thumb trait. Fertilized them all with the same fertilizer right after planting. When they became harvestable two days later, I had my sim harvest one of the trees that day. The haul was less than 10 apples worth 13 simoleons. The next day she harvested the second tree, this time with 10 apples, again 13 simoleons in value. The third day she harvested the last tree, again 10 apples, but this time worth 23 simoleons a piece.

But what's strange is that the value of the harvestables keeps changing while in the inventory. If you sell them one by one, and then check the value of the ones that are left, some of them have changed value after the selling of the others (it seems this only affects harvestables from the same batch). Also, if you leave the harvestables sitting in the inventory for days, at least some of them seem to increase in value by just waiting. I'm one of those people who keep harvestables sitting in inventories, and my sim now has some blackberries that are worth 451 simoleons a piece (those are some steep berries!) I'm pretty sure those are berries that were worth 202 simoleons right after harvesting. There are three of those of the same value. If I take one of the three out of the inventory, the remaining two are now worth almost 500 simoleons a piece. If I leave only one of them in the inventory, it's suddenly worth over 500 simoleons. I'm not sure if this is a bug or a feature.

[Carl]

It's either a bug or they're ripening! Guess it'll take more testing - thanks for sharing your results

[Shillianth]

The change of price is driving me insane, came here to ask whether or not anyone knew why it was happening.. lol... I'll try doing some testing of my own too.. Using different sims to hold on to the produce so as not to get them mixed up. I'll post what I find out if it's worth mentioning

I've been keeping a spreadsheet on Google Documents of what I find out, if anyone is interested -> Link.

I don't think that it's the amount of times that you visit a place that causes things to spawn, I've found that visiting a map on normal speed for 2 of our mins, they start to spawn and then I can go around and start having a look see. Plants have also (so I've noticed) spawned in a few different locations across the map.

As for my question (lol) How can you get someone who isn't a part of your family to eat the cake from the Cow Plant? I don't want to sacrifice any [more] of my sims lol! Will I have to create a random and place them into the family or is it possible for someone walking past to just walk up and take the cake?

Edit: I've some some testing on the increase in the sell price for produce (I've only been using grapes) so far). They appear to be increasing in lots of 26. I'm at my 4th increase so far. 137 > 163 > 189 > 215. They were harvested from a lot that was tended to in the bare minimum. Water and weeding were only done when needed. No fertilizing or talking to. No tending to. Currently have some plants that are being tended ot as often as possible (regardless of whether or not they say they need water / weeding) and the crop is currently worth 59. Going to leave them on the bush for a little while to see whether or not they increase in value too.

[Carl]

I think I'll do gardening testing while I work on writing or another easy skill today. After all, need something to do as the Sim days pass by.

[Carl]

I'm not able to come to anything conclusive about Gardening, Fertilizer, and just what makes these harvestables come out more expensive. I think it's random and buggy at once just buggy. I experience the same thing while selling harvestables in that if I sell them one by one, I can make the prices of others go up. Quite an exploit when you're talking about something like Blackberries with a huge value.

I did testing with Apple trees, knowing they can produce $33 fruit. I harvested one each day, and got $13 apples each time. That is a huge difference in what IgnorantBliss experienced, given the Apples were worth $23 by day 3.

After selling some of my Pomegranate to test the sell-one-at-a-time bug, I saw my apple prices fall. What were once all $13 fruit became a mixture of $13/$7 fruits.

My UFO prices cut in half, all of them. At one point, there were plants worth $408, which became 204 while others went from 120 to 60. This happened a second time when selling some plants.

Given all this, I can't say definitively what is supposed to be happening here. I figured they would come out randomly giving us different prices each harvest, given that no two apples are alike. Instead, we sell them and the prices of others are manipulated. If you sell the highest one you have when doing this one at a time thing, the price goes up on all those of the same value. I got $83 apples exploiting this and could have kept going, they just kept going up $10 each. Sell off all the low ones, then sell the next highest, and so on and so forth and you'll eventually have a massive inventory of ridiculously priced plants.

I am going to file a bug report if it's not already done. I can say that it's not time on the plant that makes it go up, because I had an apple tree going 10 days without harvesting that yielded $7 fruits. I think that selling fruits affects the prices of the ones still on the plant in your lot. Seriously whacked out system here.

Edit: It doesn't matter how the plants leave the inventory - if they are stored in the fridge, sold one by one, used in meals, OR PLANTED they will affect others of the same price. This is why people get wildly different results. When you plant them, you do it one at a time and suddenly see you have $83 apples that are meant to be $13. I now believe my first values are the only values we're meant to have and the plants changing value is just a bug.

[MeestorMark]

Going to add my two cents (observations) about the gardening price. I finally noticed today that if you zoom in to the plant so you can see the harvestable and hover the mouse over one of them, the game tells you how much it is worth before you pick it. So with that new knowledge, today I was testing leaving the harvest on the vine longer to see if the prices went up. Nothing noticeable, no matter how much time I left them there. Until....

I traveled so the game had to do a loading screen. Then when I go back to the home lot, the prices of the harvest still on the vine appears to have increased along the lines of how long I had left them there to continue to ripen.

I didn't cook anything new, sell any singles, do any planting, or other things you say here in the thread that makes them jump in price strangely. Just seems that traveling off the lot and reloading, or loading a save game again, makes them adjust to the time they have been ripening.

Would be cool to see if anyone else can replicate this behavior.

Edit: Some more observations after playing a bit longer today. Might tweak what I was thinking above a little bit. It seems when there are fruits and veggies ready for harvest on the vine, and you leave them there, each time you travel from and back to (or just load a save of) the home lot, the price of the fruit or veggies on the vine goes up. Currently I have, on the vine, U.F.O. worth $792 and blackberries at $363 as of my last save. If I remember right I have apples at $83 as well. The price of things like spinach and basil, or any of the flowers so far don't seem to go through the same increase.

There also doesn't seem to be any amount of time involved before the price goes up. If I travel away, then immediately back to load the home lot, the price increases by the same amount as if I send them dancing all evening, or something similar.

I also noticed, new fruits that pop up after increasing prices by traveling, pop up at the original base. They then seem to increase by the same amount as the others on each trip. So as an example a plant with $300 UFO will generate new UFO at the base of $143 I think it is. Then when you travel, each fruit will go up by $96 from its current price (my memory on the example amounts as I didn't write it down before exiting).

All plants in my testing are perfect plants too, don't know how that affects any of this over other quality levels.

[Carl]

Well, your testing explains how I got some of my harvestables to show higher values although I wasn't using them in another way or planting new versions. Once I had one good plant, I didn't make new ones for my testing. This seems like a bug, as obviously it would be a little ridiculous if it were intended to be this way. It sounds like the jumps they make are based on the original price and replicates what I saw - apples going from $13/23/33/43/.../83+. It sounds like just one more means for the bug to manifest itself. I really do believe our apples are supposed to be $13. It's way more in line with what we see with other skills' potential profits. As it stands, broken gardening is the most profitable skill in the game. I think that the way they wanted us to be able to produce higher profit was to graft slower growing but higher value plants onto the lower value/fast growing plants, and all these strange values are just broken. 

The game in general seems to have trouble remembering things when you travel - from testing cheats, to the type of plant you took cutting from while away from your home neighborhood, but this.. is something else.

[Haka1978]

I not that :

Snapdragon + Lily = Orchid
Basil + Sage = Parsley (Sage + Basil is bugged and the result is bush of Sage with bush of Parsley who growing on lol)

[_Annika_]

Could you make that a little more clear? Is that 'snapdragon cutting' on 'lily plant'? and 'Basil cutting' on 'sage plant'?