More Awesome Than You!

In my current household, in the middle of the winter, four strawberry plant are growing. Despite outside temperature below -50, despite snow covering them, they are thriving. So why bother with building a greenhouse?  :-\ I've never seen hail in my game yet.

Does temperature and winter affect plants at all?

Well, maybe if they have gold badges it doesn't, but my Bronze badged Uni students just lost 8 out of the 12 plants they had over the winter. So, yes, weather does affect them.

If you build a greenhouse, you won't have bugs and if they ever fix THEIR damn bug, won't have to worry about overwatering because of too much rain.  Plus, it makes a good place for plant sims to hang out in the winter.

Temperature has no effect on plants, but being snowed will rapidly reduced their health if they are outdoors. 4 strawberry plants is well within the ability of a decent household staff to maintain in thriving condition (Although why strawberries? They're probably the most useless plant in the game in terms of what can be made with them).

Try doing this with a giant field of them!

If you can't "Talk To", you can still force-raise plant health by overwatering manually. Some research is currently being conducted comparing the relative merits of chain-watering vs. talk to, as I have the suspicious feeling that Talking To is actually slower than drowning-for-health.

That bug is fixed in Awesomeland already. Did you not get it

Strawberry lemonade (2 strawberries, 2 lemons) will give a Sim platinum aspiration.  This is quite useful.  Reducing furious may or may not be useful with strawberry juice.  Personally, I like Sims kicking over my trashcan, as I can compost the contents.

I recently had a dorm where my Sim planted a row of stuff along the side of the dorm, and I laid a row of floor tiles on the second floor above in hopes of protecting them from rain.  I don't think it ever rained while I had this, but at least the plants weren't buried under deep snow.  They did show frost when the rest of the ground was under snow.  Their health went down fast though, faster than I was used to, so this may have hurt more than it helped.  Other plants totally in the open have lost health slower.

Hook

Honestly, I find giant field of plants equally hard to maintain in summer and winter. I've found somewhere that tomatoes are best planted in summer and harvested in autumn, strawberries are best planted in spring and harvested in summer, etc. but does it do any difference?

Speaking of big fields, do you know what 20-tile field of bug-infested tomatoes can do to your computer? Very slowly craaaawl. Better spray as soon as possible.  :)

I wish that temperatures affect various things much more. Plants losing health in winter quicky, so even Sims with golden badge couldn't quite manage that. More differences for outfits, so naked Sim would freeze very rapidly and Sim wearing outerwear would be protected from freezing for a few hours. And why toddlers and babies' temperatures don't change at all? I guess they probably don't have ability to freeze, but let Social Worker snatch them before they do! You would really have to watch your toddlers, so they won't sneak out. It's so easy not to neglect your children now...

Yes, for me the game is far too easy. I'm always looking for a hacks that make it harder.

Not THAT useful. Consider how long it takes to *GET* strawberries and lemons in the first place. You'd get permaplat first anyway!

REDUCING furiousness! The outrage! Besides, kicking a gnome does exactly the same thing and you were gonna do that anyway. Sims kicking the trashcan really is neither good nor bad. Now it's easy to just compost the spilled rubbish...and not bother picking up the can at all. Not even Romulans can capture what has been destroyed.

The different planting/harvesting seasons affect the yield of the plant.  For example, tomatoes harvested in Winter yield 10 per plant.  During Spring and Summer, it's 12 per plant.  During Fall, it's 14 per plant.  As far as I know, it depends on when you harvest them, not when you plant them, that makes the difference.  There seem to be minor variations as well, which may depend on the health of the plant when it was growing.

Before I had a use for the garbage as compost, I'd leave the can on its side.  Now I set it back up so it can be kicked again.  It's hard enough to get enough compost to keep 40 plots fertilized, so every little bit helps.

Hook

The harvest seasons changes the number of vegetables you get (see Hook's example with tomatoes). In my experiments, the planting seasons changes the starting health of the plants (they get a boost in the right season).
Compost versus fertilizer versus nothing play a role on the number of vegetables you get (you get 14 tomatoes in automn with compost, less with fertilizer, even in automn).
It seems to me that compost gives an extra boost to the starting health, but I'm not positive.

The planting season makes a difference in the harvesting season, since they take either 4 or 5 days to mature. If you want to harvest in the peak season, you're best off planting them toward the end of the season before.

*off to scour the hacks dir for the greenhouse fix*  

Problem is you're not notified about when that happens, so it's likely to go funky before you get to it.

An easier, more reliable way of generating mass compost is to get rid of all dishwashers and washable sinks (bathroom sinks are nonwashable if you have the hack for it), forcing them to throw away the dishes and mugs. Then put trashcans out to collect the dishes and coffeemugs. This method generates more than enough garbage to fertilize a fairly large field.

I've gotten rid of the sinks and dishwashers in houses, and it's still not enough.  Maybe if you have a huge family and don't keep leftovers it would be better.

Compost definitely gives a starting boost to plant health over fertilizer.

Hook

Get rid of the beds and make 'em macrocaffeinate for their energy, too. The mugs add a lot of compost also. Baby bottles (set the baby controller to "dispose"), and even sacrificing a plant by planting and then disposing over and over will generate compost as well.

Why would you have "leftovers" at all? Don't prepare meals that are too large to be eaten. Macrotastics computes the optimal meal for eating anyway.

I use strawberry lemonade for sims whose LTWs are to reach the top of a career. That way I don't have to fulfill their infinite useless wants. Especially Pleasure wants.

Would anyone happen to know what plants are harvested best in what season? Taking this into consideration could have a pretty big impact on the output of one of my larger lots that farm.

Here's what I've gleaned from various sources:
Best Planting Times:
Summer: Cucumber, Pole Beans and Tomatoes
Spring: Eggplant, Peppers, Strawberries

Harvest bonus:
Summer: Eggplant, Lemon, Orange, Pepper and Strawberry
Fall: PoleBeans, Tomatoes, Apple and Cucumbers

What, and waste food?  Serving single dishes is inefficient.  Serving a platter only takes 4 units of food, but produces 6 servings.  Even more if more than one Sim is queued up to take the last serving at the same time. :D  Servings will magically appear and the Sims will be able to get a plate from the empty serving platter.

Hook

Eh, that's what the "dish of porkchop MREs" for. Stuff into inventory for optimal auto-access.

Oh, thank you so much. I haven't even seen much talk about when to plant crops aside from a few small things, so this is a big help.

We should have a guide about this stuff in the war room.

Why would you have "leftovers" at all? Don't prepare meals that are too large to be eaten. Macrotastics computes the optimal meal for eating anyway.
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I have my Sims make a full meal, even if they're the only ones eating.  Then I put all the left-overs in the fridge - including half-eaten food (with garden-enhanced food, they're almost always "full" before they finish).  I'll even select "grab plate" and cancel it out when they reach the table before they sit down and have them put away the individual plates (so they don't have to take out the whole platter and let it sit and maybe go bad).

The reason?  This is great for pregnant women and kids (especially).  For mom-to-be, it's always a race to get her fed before she falls asleep in her food (it seems), and left-overs are the quickest thing next to snacks.  And kids can't cook - but they can get a full meal without parental support from left-overs.  Some of the high-end meals - with garden goodness added - are SO enhanced that sims can get THREE half-full-need meals out of a single plate!

The first good harvest will fill up the fridge for almost a life-time.  After that, I have the kids (as they come along) tend until they're gold, and give them part of the harvest so that they have something to start out on.  I haven't had to buy food/refill fridge since I started playing Seasons.  Add a $20 fishing hole on any lot, and you're set for life!

Withacy, I just cook up a couple of platters (using a single click of "make many ...", then turning on power idle after I have sufficient platters made - as queueing up power idle will stop them make any more after the current platter) the first day a sim is pregnant before they bump, and stick them in the sim's inventory.

I use Macrotastics anyway, and macrotastics will handle getting platters out of a household member's inventory, grabbing a plate, and sticking the platter back in.

Seems much easier to me than having to "select "grab plate" and cancel it out when they reach the table before they sit down and have them put away the individual plates", or dealing with left-over menus.

I've found that in a house with a lot of snapdragons, sims don't need to eat that much anyway.  I used to put snapdragons everywhere in a house, and a single platter would last several generations in inventory.  I've since found that just putting snapdragons in the bedrooms, nursery, and near the crafting stations works well for me.

Just wondering if any results have been found... talking to   vs.  chain-watering    -which is faster and/ or more effective?

I love that you can talk a tree/plant into mouthwatering AFTER the fruit has set!  Just one more reason why Sim World is better than Real World.  ;D