Hey Guys!
Of all skills in Sims 4, Gardening is definitely the deepest.
It's really hands off, so most players will end up using it as a side hobby, at minimum.
We're going to look at gardening in-depth, from beginner topics to the harder stuff like
grafting.
We'll probably even milk Bob Pancakes from a cow plant.
Seasons changes things a bit, but we'll make it clear if a feature requires it.
By the end of this video you'll know just about everything you need to know in order
to evolve perfect plants and graft the rares.
First I want to point out that Gardening is a mental skill, meaning if your Sim's focused
you'll get a boost.
More if you can get them to very focused.
This isn't necessary just to plant them, but it can help if you're going to be researching
plants for several hours.
It's more worth the time then.
While you can plant any produce in your inventory, you can purchase seed packets in buy mode's
outdoor activities.
Hold shift while you're placing them to do several at once.
It doesn't matter how you place these just yet, but they'll be easier to spam open if
you put them in lines.
Because it'll be my Sim's main focus, I am starting a big garden here.
You can get by with as many as you want.
Open the packets and the produce will be put in the inventory of the Sim you're using.
For players with the Seasons expansion, season matters a lot.
It determines if plants will grow and evolve.
Most plants are dormant at least a couple seasons out of the year.
Hover over the plants in the inventory to see when each one will grow.
Players without Seasons don't have to worry about this, because well, there are no seasons.
By the way, if there isn't one listed, either it's supposed to grow all year or Maxis just
forgot (laughs).
Plant availability and weather are the main difference the expansion makes, but Seasons
players also get a couple extra objects like sprinklers, patchy, and the Bee Box.
To make a garden full of life, I'm planting only plants that grow in spring.
To make it worth my while, Seasons are set to four weeks.
Produce is planted by dragging from your inventory to the ground.
Leave a single space between each plant to give them room to grow and provide your Sim
standing room, otherwise when they're planted they will be spread out and drive you nuts
until you fix them.
Something that trips a lot of people up is that 'seed packets' name, produce are seeds
in this game.
You straight up stick a coconut in the ground.
When you're done putting them all where they should be planted, click one and have your
Sim begin planting.
Your Sim will handle everything automatically and if spacing is correct, everything will
be planted exactly where you told them to.
When our garden's ready, everything will need some water.
It's not required straight away, they don't dry out for a while but this is one of the
three things you must take care of regularly to keep plants alive.
Unless it rains, in which case that's taken care of for you.
Plants have a hidden 'health' stat and it begins to drop when conditions are bad, like
when they're all dried out.
Whether you intend to complete it or not, you should switch to the Freelance Botanist
Aspiration when you plant a big garden.
You'll get a lot of free Aspiration points and there's really nothing to lose.
Plants will grow continuously with many taking 48 to 72 hours to finish going through all
the stages.
Produce only spawns once a day though.
If you don't get produce by 5AM, you're getting nothing that day.
The same goes for weeds and bugs though, so 5AM is the magic time that all produce and
pests start to spawn.
There are multiple types of sell orders when you interact with your plants.
"Sell all" will have the Sim go around selling everything, where as "Sell carrots" would
only sell the carrots on that specific plant.
The same goes for harvest.
You can grab what's available on the plant and put it in your inventory, or go around
picking it all up.
Unless you need the plants for something, you're better off not "looting" and instead
selling straight from the vine.
This is a newer feature introduced with the gardening overhaul.
Like me, you probably will not have much work the first morning after planting your garden.
Things get a little better on the second day.
There are a few things that harvestables can be used for other than making money.
There's the ambrosia recipe, which requires you to have a death flower.
Also, the cooking skill will give you better moodlets if you use fresh ingredients.
But the best thing about it is the ability to eat the fruits and veggies directly from
your Sim's inventory.
Not only does it give a quick boost to hunger, it also gives a moodlet to help you turn that
frown around.
There's also an exploit that lets you eat normal, nice, and magnificent quality fruits
to get all 3 buffs.
If you do this, separate out the plants ... make normal apples, nice spinach, and magnificent
pomegranates for example so you know which are which.
You can get +6 happy doing this.
I call it an exploit because like many other buffs, it should probably be mutually exclusive.
So, what can we do when there isn't much work and we ant to gain Gardening XP?
Well, we could read a skill book but we'd be better off using "Research".
Research individual types of plants - there's no limit to how many times you can do it,
although there is a benefit to try to do it to a variety of plants.
When plants have been researched, click your phone then find the notebook tab at the bottom.
This brings up a special notepad that tells you about the various plants.
It gives you their description, season, as well as any grafting combos that involve that
specific plant.
We'll get to grafting.
This example isn't that useful, but when you're researching less common plants like cherries
and snapdragons, you'll learn of pretty useful combinations that can make it easier to finish
the plant list.
The rarer plants are generally worth more and some of them are quite attainable and
make fantastic fertilizer as good as anything else in the game.
Speaking of researching plants, the Sims 4 Discover University brought in a Biology Degree
that can let you skip levels in the Gardener career if you have Seasons too.
It's not necessary but it is worth knowing there's a degree that boosts gardening - in
particular the Career, but they all go together.
Something I highly recommend you do early as a gardener, is at least go about your own
neighborhood and see if you can find any uncommon plants that weren't in seed packets you bought.
This can save you some money though it'll be much easier to afford seed packets later.
Plants like snapdragons, strawberries, and roses make better fertilizer than nothing
and you can of course plant them to get an unlimited supply.
Depending on what packs you have installed, there may be stores you can visit to buy plants
as well.
For instance, dragon fruit are commonly found in the Realm of Magic shops.
Along with watering your garden, you've also got to protect it against the two largest
threats.
Weeds will pop up and, while they're easy to spot they can drop your plant's health
rapidly by taking nutrients from them.
The "Weed all" command will stop them, and it's great because your Sim will automatically
scan for more weeds.
Like watering, it gains an area of effect ability when you level up gardening.
This lets you deal with a much larger garden, as each action by the Sim may effect two or
three plants.
In these cases, it only helps with water and weeds within one square of your target.
They need to be bunched up to be affected by it.
Weeds suck but the nastiest thing to assail a garden are definitely insects.
For one, they can be hard to spot and if you skip a day or two you can find your garden
decimated.
They also take about 10x longer to fix than weeds.
Insects seem to hurt plants much more than weeds do, and can absolutely kill them.
You cannot revive a plant until you've mastered gardening, but when you have you can spend
$100 bucks to bring the plant back to life.
The best thing to do is to do a visual inspection every day around 7am when the sunlight will
help you spot the black menace.
Insects are worst in spring and don't seem to come out in winter very much at all.
In the base game, they're present always.
Next up, let's talk plant quality level.
Plants have five quality levels as can be seen when you hover over them.
They go from normal to nice, excellent, to magnificent, and perfect.
Perfect plants are worth a lot more and give extra boosts when used in cooking recipes.
Plants that are healthy always seem to be marching a little toward evolution, or so
it seems.
When a plant has gained enough experience and is ready to evolve, you just click it
and 'Evolve".
Your Sim does not have to be involved in this process at all.
Being unhealthy can reduce their quality.
You can speed up plant evolution in a couple ways if you have Seasons.
All players have access to fertilizer, but Seasons players get the Bee Box, too.
So let's talk fertilizer first.
You can use plants or fish to fertilize your garden.
When you apply it, it will give the plant experience instantly toward the next quality
level.
You can't fertilize again for several days.
All you need to know is to aim for at least $21 Simoleons for a good fertilizer.
Yes, it's based on the value you see in your inventory.
21 is the 2nd to highest quality fertilizer, and the top is at $50.
Any plant or fish worth that amount.
Beyond that, there is no further benefit so don't waste extremely expensive stuff on fertilizer.
Yes, you're wasting if you throw a $1,000 Simoleon fish in as fertilizer and that frustrates
me, honestly.
So, what I'm doing here is I just picked roses worth over $20 Simoleons, I'm in a new game
so I don't have access to great plants.
I'm going to fertilize the rose bushes with the very roses I just picked.
I'm going to repeat this a few times over the next couple weeks.
They'll be worth $50 and I'm set on fertilizer.
It's that easy.
But, it kind of nerf fishing and made it pointless to seek fertilizer that way.
Let's talk about the Seasons Bertie's Bee Box, which is found under Outdoor Activities.
This thing is a money-maker but you've got to interact with it regularly and keep the
bees healthy and happy or they'll attack you when you're in the surrounding area, which
is your garden while you're working.
Not cool.
Check my beekeeping video for details on all that it does.
In this guide, we're only interested in its passive fertilizer effect.
Having bees is good for plants and anything within 5 large build mode squares will get
this passive effect.
It provides some XP toward evolution every now and then.
You'll see the bees spread out and make a god awful noise in the wide area of effect.
It's great for large gardens, where you can just let it go and focus your fertilizing
efforts on only your best plants.
To be clear, the effect does stack with fertilizer.
Anything inside of this diamond would be impacted by the Bee Box.
So, you can sort of lay these out and do a huge garden with only three or four of them.
It's worth mentioning the honey you get from these will immediately save your Sim or protect
them from extreme heat and cold.. in fact I believe the beekeeper suit does the same.
Now let's talk about grafting, a level 5 gardening ability.
Grafting is a means of combining two plants.
Take cutting from one, graft it to another in hopes of getting a rare spawn from the
combo.
They've gone back and forth on this - it used to be near guaranteed, they broke it and make
it like 1% , but a recent patch has fixed the rare spawn rates to be more reasonable.
In this example, I am taking cutting from strawberry plants to graft to snapdragon in
hopes of getting dragonfruit.
Because of a bug that's been around for like a year, I am taking cutting only one at a
time as the game will use all cuttings on one graft, and the rest just disappear.
Yeah, it really messes with your workflow.
Until it's fixed, patiently go back and forth.
Don't take cutting more than once per day for risk of killing a plant.
Only bother to graft once to each target if you're going for a rare or uncommon spawn.
Otherwise, you can graft multiple types to one plant and get them all to spawn, just
not every day.
You can use grafting to get tons of types on just one plant.
If you're having trouble getting a rare, you can improve your odds by having more host
plants.
If you go to use something like super sell, take a look at the list of what you'll be
selling so that you don't accidentally sell a rare spawn.
It's a great way to look for it.
Since the snapdragons will continue to spawn, even though I'm not getting the rare, I can
plant more of them and continue to graft an extra strawberry off of every bush I have
each day.
It will eventually yield the dragonfruit I'm looking for although you can catch them fishing
- this is just an example.
Sprinklers are another thing that came with Seasons.
It goes without saying, they automatically water your plants.
They'll go off just after the magic hour and anything within the zone will be watered.
You can plan this out so that you don't require as many sprinklers, but all in all it'll only
save you a few hundred.
Early on these rob you of some valuable gardening XP and should only be used to save time later
on - that's just my opinion.
Unlike Sims 3, they auto water without an upgrade but have a pretty small range.
By level 10 Gardening, money-making should not be a problem for you.
Some of your plants should be mid-range and with the super sell ability you can walk to
the middle of your garden and sell a massive chunk with one action.
This gives you a lot more free time.
Consider taking on the gardener career if you have Seasons.
You can work from home, and for that reason it's a high-end money maker.
Overall, stay on top of your garden, watch for opportunities to fertilize around every
four days.
Use 'Tend Garden' to ensure everything is done and secure a good fertilizer early to
make the process smooth.
Before you get Tend Garden at level 7, look for a plant with weeds and use weed all, and
listen for insects and use the spray ability.
As I mentioned, you can purchase uncommon and rare seed packets.
These trivialize finishing the plant list if you don't mind to throw money at it, but
if you're missing one specific thing they can be somewhat frustrating.
Rare packets are $1,000 each.
I recommend at least trying grafting, do it the right way.
though if you find some of the plants frustrating to acquire - go for it.
All in all, buying seed packets sort of takes one more accomplishment away from the player.
A plant list is inappropriate for this video, because there are a few dozen of them.
I'll link to my main plant list in the description.
You can also find all of the grafting combos there.
Something I didn't mention in detail last time I did this video is the cow plant, which
can drain Sims of their essence to give your Sims one very selfish drink.
Plant a cow plant berry to get one of these for each berry.
Their whole thing is, they get hungry.. they're nice when they're well fed, but when they
get hungry they'll offer foolish Sims some cake.
If a Sim 'takes the cake' they'll get gobbled up, draining them of their essence for a couple
days and enabling the cow plant to be milked.
This will give you a drink with essence of whatever emotion the Sim was in at the time..
If a Sim takes the cake while they already have the drained moodlet, they'll die.
If they do, you'll be able to milk the cow plant for an essence that gives life to the
Sim who drinks it.
it functions like ambrosia, putting them back to the start of the current life stage.
I don't think it resurrects ghosts.
Bonsai trees can be cut to gain gardening XP.
You'll find these in activities and skills > creative.
You can pick several sculpture types but they're mostly decorative.
Who needs to hire a gardener when you can have your own straw slave?
Buy Patchy the Straw Man and befriend him by doing tons of socials.
Once you've done so, you'll be able to search his pockets for seeds and get gardening tips
from him.
When these options appear, Patchy will occasionally come to life with his main feature being to
use your computer after he's done watering and weeding your garden, or fertilizing your
wife.
Yes, I've used that joke before.
Maybe someday I'll invent another euphemism for patchy plowing the spouse.
I feel like the last thing people seeing this for the first time might ask is how to make
a greenhouse.
You only 'kind of' make a greenhouse, though it does function as one.
Plants will grow out of season in a greenhouse, just not as well as when they are in-season
and outdoors.
This does let you grow them year round.
You can get a greenhouse effect by using tall windows and the glass roof texture, which
lets light in.
What we do is make a structure with a roof, now we select the roof decoration button and
pick glass as the type of roof.
TYou use the game's various over-sized windows to produce a greenhouse look.
Finally, since you can't stick plants in a hardwood floor you use the planter boxes.
They're found under outdoor activities as well.
When plants are sheltered, they do not evolve as fast but can put out year round.
It's not super useful if you want to make gobs of money at gardening, but it's great
for keeping ingredients year-round.
I announced to the community I was redoing gardneing and Grow Fruit came up, with Findme
Atglen writing in to ask if grow fruit work as well as fish.
It's a really good question because fish used to have a special boost baesd on their size
and grow fruit had a magical doubling effect when used.
It was the best in the game.
I did a test, a perfect grow fruit vs a dragon fruit.
I ran the test for 5 days.
but when the developers made the change to not give fish individual fertilizer values
and instead rely on price alone, it killed growfruit.
Anything magical about it is gone.
Dragonfruit ties it, heck an excellent rose ties it if it's 50 or above.
So hands down if it's $50 simoleons, it's the best in the game now.
I'm not sure about the fungal infusion from herbalism but suspect the same.
I did a quick test, and it was poor results.
When I announced I was redoing gardening, a user named Ashley wrote in hoping I could
help with plant yields.
I hate to say but I cannot.
The yields of each type of plant are set in stone - for instance apples give you 8 while
in season and 5 when sheltered.
So you will generally get less harvestables when a plant is stuck in a greenhouse.
Ok, so this is the third and probably last time I'll do the Gardening skill for Sims
4.
It was great practice to do such a hard one for my 2nd video, but uhh.. yeah it had its
flaws.
I did it again at 24th but now that I've got 100 under my belt and a better workflow, I
figured I could improve it again.
It may not shock you to hear this is the most popular skill in the game, as far as people
looking things up and yeah... first impressions matter.
So hey, if you are a newbie and you like my style, subscribe to my channel, share it with
your friends, put it on reddit, or do the like thing.
Whatever you feel comfortable with.
It really does help me.
Thanks for watching!