Plant Growth

[Lyrrad]

Inspired in part by the thread on the impact of weeds, I decided to try and figure out plant growth.  After a couple simweeks I have made some rather unexpected discoveries regarding the growth of plants and thought I would share them here.

Not so unexpected each plant has a growth rate.  Each day that value is added to the growth of the plant.  When the growth of the plant reaches 100 the plant moves onto the next stage and the growth is reset to 0.  Anything over 100 is lost.  When a plant has a negative growth rate it is marked at Wilting.

Watering:
Plants have three states of watered; wet, neutral and dry.  Each plant has its own growth rate for each stage.  See the chart below for growth rates.

Plant	Wet	Neutral	Dry
Apple	100	55	-20
Bell Pepper	40	-15	-60
Burger Plant	75	30	-20
Cheese	75	30	-20
Cherry	40	5	-30
Death Flower	35	5	-20
Egg	75	30	-20
Flame Fruit	40	45	0
Garlic	40	5	-25
Grape(Avornalino)	50	5	-40
Grape(Cherimola)	90	5	-40
Grape(Cranerlet Nuala)	40	-10	-40
Grape(Gralladina Fran)	40	-10	-40
Grape(Meloire)	50	5	-40
Grape(Normal)	90	5	-40
Grape(Renoit)	90	5	-40
Lettuce	100	40	-40
Life Fruit	40	-15	-50
Lime	50	5	-30
Money Tree	40	-20	-50
Omni	50	25	-30
Onion	50	25	-15
Plasma Fruit	35	5	-20
Plum	50	5	-40
Pomelo	40	5	-40
Pomagrante	50	5	-30
Potato	50	25	-15
Steak Plant	75	30	-20
Tomato	100	50	-30
Watermelon	50	-10	-60

Fertilizer:
Fertilizer adds to the growth rate based on its strength:
Nice: 5 – 9.9
Great: 10 – 14.9
Excellent: 15 – 19.9
Outstanding: 20 – 55

I was able to get up to +55 with a very perfect life fruit.

Weeds:
The effect of weeds on plant growth is to halve the growth rate after the water state and fertilizer have been accounted for.  Interestingly enough, it will also halve the rate at which the plant wilts at.

[Metropolis Man]

Excellent data, Lyrrad. This pretty much tells me that leaving sprinklers on 24/7 is a good thing.

[Lyrrad]

I usually upgrade my sprinklers with Automatic watering since the constant sprinklers would start to annoy me and the only time watered state matters is at 5 am when all the growth calculations are made.

I think the main thing that I took away from researching all this is that the best fertilizer is rarely the best choice.  You get the same growth rate for a life fruit plant using an outstanding or perfect apple as you do from a perfect life fruit, at a fraction the cost.  I also found that flame fruits growing faster when neutral interesting, but I don't think the boost is really enough to make it worthwhile trying to treat them differently when it comes to watering.

[Metropolis Man]

I think the main thing that I took away from researching all this is that the best fertilizer is rarely the best choice.  You get the same growth rate for a life fruit plant using an outstanding or perfect apple as you do from a perfect life fruit, at a fraction the cost.

That I find hard to believe based on the fact that Apples are Grade 5 and Life Fruits are Grade 25...

http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Gardening_(The_Sims_3)#Fertilizer

[Carl]

I experienced Similar results as to fertilizer. I just use garlic now, and I think when I revamped the fertilizer page I mention that.

Too bad the 40-45 difference on flame fruit probably won't make it produce faster. That could have changed things up a bit.

[Lyrrad]

Life fruits are definitely a stronger fertilizer, however,  in the majority of cases most of the difference is lost in the overrun.  A life fruit which grows at the rate of 40 by itself will take 3 turns to grow with a waste of 20.  I fertilized one life plant(LP1) with a perfect apple giving it a growth rate of 51, I fertilized a second life plant(LP2) with a perfect life fruit and it had a growth rate of 95.  Both grew in two turns, the LP1 had an overrun of 2, and LP2 with an overrun of 90.  Since the overrun of one stage does not count towards the next stage the extra 44 growth that the life fruit has over the apple is wasted.  So for the plants with a growth rate of 45 or 50 you will get better results out of the perfect life fruit then the perfect apple.