Seasons: Plant Growth Study

[Hecubus]

A conversation with Pescado led me to study the time it takes for Seasons plants and trees to spawn. The initial results of my study follow.

Lot: residental, 3x3
Residents: 2 female plant sims
Season: Spring (started day 1)
Mod used: Macrotastics...Garden

Note - all times rounded to nearest hour


Orchard Trees

I planted two of each type, a minimum of 5 tiles apart, with a minimum of 5 tiles separating the trees from garden plots, greenhouses, and the residence. All trees were placed at the time of building; approximate time was 8:15am, Sim Time.

I measured the time from 'planting' as well as time from bloom. All trees were Thriving, with no Tend or Spray indicators, at time of harvest.



The results? A tad puzzling. I expected harvesting within an hour (see garden plants below), but not as much as a five-hour swing. Further study will take these same trees into summer and fall.


Garden Plants

Four separate areas were set up - outside, greenhouse with no sunlamps, greenhouse with sunlamps turned off, and greenhouse with sunlamps turned on. The areas were placed a minimum of 2 tiles from each other. Each area contained 12 garden plots - contiguous. Each area contained two of each type of garden plant. Each plot was fertilized with bag fertlizer, but no sprinklers were used (all watering managed by Macro...garden). The two plant sims worked in tandem to plant each variety within a sim hour.  All plants were Thriving, with no Tend or Spray indicators at time of harvest.



There was NO difference in time based on 'setting'...in fact, the spawning occured in random fashion wthin the hour, with no regard to actual order of planting. However, all 12 plants of each type spawned within the hour.

Further study will look at times based on planting at the start of Summer, Fall, and Winter seasons.


Conclusions: It may be possible to create a timer, not unlike the exam/job/birthday timer, to warn the user of harvest times. A determination still must be made on the orchard trees - whether the 5-hour difference was an anomaly or typical, but it appears that even a two-hour warning may be helpful and accurate enough for game play.

Once the time studies are concluded, I'll look at quality variations - sunlamps, drowning v. boring the plants to tears, greenhouses, and fruit decay.

[witch]

That's a really interesting set of results Hecubus, wonder what causes the variances? Excellent for planning ahead in a market garden too, when you have all your results. Do we get pretty graphs at the end? 

[Hecubus]

Yep..pretty charts and graphs, and some 8x10 glossy photos with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back describing each one....

I do think, if nothing else, it will make planning better for both residential and community lots. I'm HOPING that the growth time stays the same in each season...but it is Maxis EA, so anything's possible. If no one makes a timer [/hint], we can at least use the Lot Sync Timer to plan the events.

[Ryslin]

What this is saying to me is something I was already noticing. Either stagger your garden for harvesting purposes , or plant similar duration items together. (Preference)


For some reason in my game, planting 3 orchard trees (one of each kind) nets me twice as many oranges as lemons/apples. Example if I start a lot at last day of spring, planting the trees. I get two harvests of oranges and one harvest of lemons/apples before dormancy. If my trees were indoors I suspect the second day of winter would give me the apples/lemons again. Just a odd pattern I noticed.

[kuronue]

well, how long are seasons? If it takes 3 days and some change for oranges and four and some change for the other two, then in 6 days (2 seasons set to 3 days each) you'd just manage 2 oranges, and one of the other two

[Li'l Brudder]

5 days each.

[kuronue]

wasn't there a way to edit it? Sheesh, it's been way too long since I sat down and played. I might just be recalling lies and propaganda at this point.

[Aggie]

I just did a preliminary test on crops. It took 6 days and 6 hours for 5 plots of eggplants (not in a greenhouse) to go from planted to being harvestable. This was in Summer. I'm willing to test anything else out if anyone's interested.