Gardening and fertilizing

[cyperangel]

Ok, I guess I have a thing for games where I can force some hapless avatar to tend plants for hours on end.
Due to this sadistic streak of mine, I've created a list of all the seeds and what types they are. I have decided to list it here, and ask for help.

Plant name	Common	Uncommon	Rare	Special	Comment
Apple Tree	X				You get this type of seed by learning 1 in gardening skill. Found as seed randomly in parks and woodlands. Can also be harvested from townie gardens
Grapevine	X				Ditto
Lettuce	X				Ditto
Tomato Plant	X				Ditto
Lime Tree		X			Found as seed randomly in parks and woodlands. Can also be harvested from townie gardens
Onion Plant		X			Ditto
Potato Vine		X			Ditto
Watermelon Vine		X			Ditto
Bell Pepper Plant			X		Ditto
Garlic Plant			X		Ditto
Death Flower Plant				X	Ditto. Only found at the graveyeard though.
Flame Fruit Plant				X	Ditto
Life Fruit Plant				X	Found as seed randomly in parks and woodlands
Money Tree				X	Ditto, and drops Money Tree seeds randomly when full grown
Egg Plant				X	*Obtained from an opportunity
Cheese Plant				X	*Obtained from an opportunity
Burger Patty Plant				X	**Obtained from an opportunity
Steak Plant				X	**Obtained from an opportunity
Omni Plant				X	***Obtained from an opportunity

*Gained from opportunity that crops up when you get to high gardening skills, is still random. Opens up for next step in special plants.
**Gained from opportunity that shows up after you learn the egg plant and cheese plant skill. Once done promises to give another oportunity that will open up omni plant.
***Gained from opportunity that shows up after learning the steak and burger patty plant skill. You gain a few seeds and can now order more omni plant seeds via the mailbox.

You can feed the omni plant any veggies, and fish you can find. You can also feed it all books, with the exeption of the magic scroll books that go poof when read. (You can't reproduce the ambrosia recipe this way. Darn it!)
The omni plants looks pretty weird with 4 swordfish growing on it. Always worth a try ;-)

When you plant a plant from a veggie you already know the quality of, the new plant will be one better quality. E.g. Nice garlic planted gives a plant with Very Nice quality.

What I can't figure out, and need some help on, is wtf does fertilizing the plants do? As far as I have been able to determine, it does nothing at all, zip, zilch to the quality of the plant. Could it be that it instead prolongs the life cycle of the plant, or makes it sprout fruit/veggies more often, so you can harvest every day instead of every other or third day?
Any help on this issue is appreciated. Thank you in advance.


/Edit to fix lime seeds, tomatos and typos. Thank you

[Tibbi]

I can't answer your question, but I can add that you can find mystery seeds by rummaging in people's trashcans in the Law Enforcement career.  None of my Sims have gardening ability--so I'm not sure what they do.  I'm working on increasing the gardening, so I'll report back.

[Slymenstra]

**Edited to remove misinformation from the Prima Guide of Lies...  Answers later on in the thread found from others delving in the code.

[Insanity Prelude]

You don't get lime seeds for gardening level 1, only apple, grape and lettuce.

[BlueSoup]

You don't get lime seeds for gardening level 1, only apple, grape and lettuce.

And tomatoes.

But the

Rank 1
Cheese, Burger Patty, Egg, Lettuce, Tomato, Onion, Potato, Apple, Lime, Grapes
Anchovy, Goldfish, Alley Catfish

The prima guide seems to have a ton of errors, if it's claiming all those can be planted with only a level 1 gardening skill.

[jello]

Uh, it's ranking the quality of fertilizer.

[Zazazu]

The death flower is also found in the graveyard in Riverview.

Also, it's "potato vine", "watermelon vine", and "opportunity". Good reference!

[Czezechael]

All right, so as I was going to mention prior to my connection dropping its load and taking the whole ship with it:

Quality of fertiliser has an impact on how well it works for improving quality of end-result harvestables.  I've been regularly using perfect apples for fertiliser on first-generation plants and have been winding up with outstanding or perfect harvests as, I'm assuming, a result.

So if you've been cultivating perfect fruit from lower tiers, you may want to give this a go before you start shoving vampire fish into the soil.

[Slymenstra]

The guide says nothing about quality of the fertilizer, which to my thinking would be a huge factor.  But then it *is* the guide which is usually not accurate.  Then the green thumb trait might play a part. 

I started doing a whole bunch of testing but got really bored!  I just shove whatever I have in my pockets on the plants and eventually through planting and replanting higher quality fruit I end up with perfect plants.  Fertilizing with something that is higher quality of the plant definitely helps the fruits quality.

One nice side information I learned.  If you have a stack of seeds in your pocket and want to see if any of them are perfect quality you can click fertilize on a plant, you can see the seed quality there.  I then fertilize with the seeds that are below perfect and I am left with the perfect seeds.  Only works for uncommon and rare I believe.

[Sagana]

I believe fertilizing made my plants grow faster. I had 3 newly planted grapevines and a low level gardener (just got fertilizing). Fertilized the first with an excellent (or whatever the equivalent is for fish) fish, the 2nd with an okay fish, and didn't fertilize the 3rd at all. The first one turned up a harvest quickly, middle one just a day later and the last one it was several days before there was anything to harvest.

[Simgoose]

Not so much a gardening question per say, but is some what to do with food...
How does one mix foods? eg: Apple Cobbler and other wishes sims have. I have no idea.
Some one mentioned it in another thread, but didn't actually say how it was done.

[EdenNintyNine]

Not so much a gardening question per say, but is some what to do with food...
How does one mix foods? eg: Apple Cobbler and other wishes sims have. I have no idea.
Some one mentioned it in another thread, but didn't actually say how it was done.

Just make sure you have apples in the fridge; I find that different foods you can make will randomly select something in your fridge, though I am unsure if it will do the same should your fridge be empty.

On the note of gardening: what are peoples experiences with Death Flowers? I find I get one or two harvests off of them before they die, which strikes me as odd because that is quite short in comparison with other plants.

[BlueSoup]

Death flowers are only supposed to get one harvest, unless your Sim has the green thumb trait (whatever it's actually called), and then they can revive it once more.

[Simgoose]

Death flowers are only supposed to get one harvest, unless your Sim has the green thumb trait (whatever it's actually called), and then they can revive it once more.

Super Green Thumb

Just make sure you have apples in the fridge; I find that different foods you can make will randomly select something in your fridge, though I am unsure if it will do the same should your fridge be empty.

I've brought like 10 each of everything from the shop, and dumped it into my fridge, and still don't see these options.
I thought it was a matter of dropping the foods onto the blender or something... Hmm. Will try again, I guess.

On the note of gardening: what are peoples experiences with Death Flowers? I find I get one or two harvests off of them before they die, which strikes me as odd because that is quite short in comparison with other plants.

What is the purpose of the Death Flower? Can I feed it to my wife? Lulz

[iHateyou]

Simgoose, you don't have an option to select which fruit to use for a recipe that uses generic fruit. It will pick one for you based on what you have and it seems to go in a certain order.  For instance if you have apples, you'll always use apples for pancakes and other recipes. I had some of each fruit in the fridge, and first it used all the apples, then the grapes, then the limes, and then the watermelons. If you are trying to control which fruit you use in a recipe, make sure that fruit is the only fruit in your fridge. Have a different sim pull out all fruit you do not want to use and leave only the thing you do want to use.

[Simgoose]

Simgoose, you don't have an option to select which fruit to use for a recipe that uses generic fruit. It will pick one for you based on what you have and it seems to go in a certain order.  For instance if you have apples, you'll always use apples for pancakes and other recipes. I had some of each fruit in the fridge, and first it used all the apples, then the grapes, then the limes, and then the watermelons. If you are trying to control which fruit you use in a recipe, make sure that fruit is the only fruit in your fridge. Have a different sim pull out all fruit you do not want to use and leave only the thing you do want to use.

Awwww, I'm with you now... Awesome. So it must go in some sort of order. Cheers. Will play around with this later on and see if I can fulfill some of those wishes. Mind you I think I removed them all because I had no idea how to do it! Thanks though.

[EdenNintyNine]

Death flowers are only supposed to get one harvest, unless your Sim has the green thumb trait (whatever it's actually called), and then they can revive it once more.

This is what I noticed happened; though I was unsure why.

Revival also seems to have a 50% success rate, though I've only been given the option to use it on Death Flowers.

[cyperangel]

If you have a Deathflower in your sims inventory when he/she bites the bullet, The Grim Reaper will take the flower instead of your sim, as long as its not biting due to old age.
Basically its a "Don´t die from accidents" free pass.
The Deathfruit plant dies after 1 harvest, but sims with Super Green Thumb can try to revive it. This will only work some of the time, although it enables you to get 2 to 3 harvests in total from the plant, before it either disappears or goes barren.

Life Fruits will give your sim 1 day of life back if eaten.

Having a flame fruit in your inventory can give your sim a happy  moodlet about sitting near a campfire.

Usage of fruit and veggies from the fride goes in alphabetical order, as far as I have noticed. Apples before Grapes before limes etc.

Also, how do I read the list of fertilizers from the prima guide? Should I, to get the best result, always just use angelfish no matter what the quality of the plant?

[Slymenstra]

I did some testing.  My findings are:
Fertilizing with Rank 7 fish (Vampirefish) caused the plant to bear fruit several days earlier than Non fert. plant.
Fertilizing with Rank 7 fish allows you to not need to fertilize as often, compared to fertilizing with an Apple.  Bigger the fish more fertilizer...that is logical.

I found either no difference or just slight difference in the quality of fruit harvested.  I could not tell since it seems random to begin with.  I did not notice an increase of fruit being beared either.

I am testing perfect vampfish to normal vampfish and so far no difference.  My plants have not died yet, so I can not tell how this affects length of crop.

If you want less fertilizer maintenance then go with a bigger fish.

That is my findings.  Again someone who looks at the code would know best.

[simokon]

For what it's worth, I had a sim pull up a box with a death flower in it while fishing in the park.

[MasterDinadan]

I can't answer your question, but I can add that you can find mystery seeds by rummaging in people's trashcans in the Law Enforcement career.  None of my Sims have gardening ability--so I'm not sure what they do.  I'm working on increasing the gardening, so I'll report back.

Mystery seed can also come from exploring the catacombs.  I'm not sure either what it is.  I assumed it just meant that my gardening skill was not high enough to identify it, or maybe you don't know what it is until you plant it.  These are just guesses.

[BlueSoup]

They are always just seeds that are listed in the first post here, in the category (uncommon, rare or special).  They'll never be cheese, egg, steag, burger patty or omni however.  With the exception of the money tree (which you can tell because of the icon that shows up as soon as the mystery seed is in the growing state), you can't really tell what any of them are until they're mature.

[cuthbert]

Not so much a gardening question per say, but is some what to do with food...
How does one mix foods? eg: Apple Cobbler and other wishes sims have. I have no idea.
Some one mentioned it in another thread, but didn't actually say how it was done.

Sims always use up the ingredient in the inventory first. So if you want to make 'Apple Cobbler,' take an apple from the fridge, put the apple in the cook's inventory and then do the cooking.

[ElenaRoan]

Death flowers are only supposed to get one harvest, unless your Sim has the green thumb trait (whatever it's actually called), and then they can revive it once more.

This is what I noticed happened; though I was unsure why.

Revival also seems to have a 50% success rate, though I've only been given the option to use it on Death Flowers.

My sim has the super green thumb trait but hasn't got an option to revive the now dead Death Flower, does it have to be planted after the sim aquires the trait?  Or is there something else I should be clicking on?

[BlueSoup]

It's not super green thumb reward. It's the TRAIT when you first make your Sim (or add it later with Pescado's mod).