Or you could combine with the Slob trait, so then they don't care if they're clean or not.

I like gardening with my farming sims who are self employed. But for the busy sims with full time jobs, I sometimes used this mod especially if they live on a large lot and have a big garden: http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=459967. Unfortunately, I don't think it's been updated but it might be an option again in the future.

I hate gardening, and I hate fishing. I've tried both, but my GAWD they bore me to tears.

For thoose that feel that tending the garden takes to much of the sims time try this:
http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=358951

Also for thoose that don't know there is a little trick to avoid the need to water the plants, place sprinklers (they're base game and found under the outdoor stuff) in the garden, they have the option to be upgraded to autowater and VOILA, no more booring watering the plants.

Last edited by Belzader : 23rd Apr 2012 at 07:29 PM.

I use Twallan's mod and set it to allow autonomous gardening and push for it so my sims that have gardens will actually do the work while I am not paying attention. I also set the ones who make a living from gardening with traits to allow them to do it faster and enjoy it more.

Otherwise, I would find it boring as well. I don't use cheats though other than to push them to garden because otherwise the challenge is gone for me. I also don't care how perfect the veggies are, just so they can make enough money to live on or grow grapes/fruits for wine. I wish they had flower gardening though since it would be fun to have our sims win prizes for the best gardenia or whatever.

You know, there's suggestion forum on the official Sims3 site, you could make one for that.
Who knows they might like the idea and add to an expansion.

With Auto Sprinklers and the right traits, Gardening only takes a couple of hours. If your sim is not serious about it, then just keep a small amount of plants to tend to.

i made my person a super gardener and the whole front yard was grown plants. it would literally take the girl 17 sim hours to water, fertilize, and weed (essentially "tend") all of the plants. i like the gardening a lot, but not when it consumes my sim's entire life. then, a few hours later, ALL OF THE WEEDS COME BACK AND THE PLANTS WILT AND YOU HAVE TO DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN! weed faster! even adding the sprinkler doesn't really shorten the process.. =P there's my 2 cents about it

I HAET gardening. For me, it's about as interesting as watching grass grow, pun intended

The only thing I like gardening for is planting ONE apple tree outside the front door as a quick food source if I don't want to bother making breakfast in the morning. Keeping ~10 apples (or whatever) in your sim's inventory = invaluable.



Do you mean bless flora? Fauna refers to animals.

Yes. I made a teen and child family. This was before I had ambitions, so the kid couldn't really do anything and she was too busy with homework anyways. The teen had a job after school, so she stayed up very late cleaning and doing homework, oftentimes not finishing it before she was too tired. Then she has to get up early and take a shower, take care of the plants, and then go take a shower again (plants were an extra source of income). She eventually stopped going to school.

Needless to say I deleted the game, and haven't made a gardener since.

This is something that I think TS3 does way better than TS2. I HATED gardening in TS2 and I only did it once to get eggplant juice and then decided it was less hassle for the sims to skill for their points. In TS3, you just tell them to tend their garden, fertilize and you're good to go except for occasionally cleaning out dead plants and replanting.

Maybe you folk are making your gardens too big. Except for nectar making, there is no reason to have a garden with more than 1 of each plant. And really, your sims can get by with only about 8 - 10 plants for all their needs. There's no reason that they need a bunch of the plants around when they are only good for one recipe that you almost never make. And I found that sims don't really really need the bait except on the more rare fish - so you can skip lots of the gardening if you only garden specifically for those hard to find fish.

I think in order to find gardening satisfying, you have to think about why you want the sim to garden. If it's just to max out gardening for a career, perhaps skill books are the way to go. Plan ahead how many plants you actually need and don't go past that. Don't be afraid to dig up plants that you have enough fruit on it to last several generations. ALWAYS get the auto water on your sprinklers unless your garden is really tiny.

The only time I have huge gardens is in the "Nothing is Free" challenge and that's just to get the sim who is trying to max gardening to get the grocery store open is trying to max as soon as possible and there are no skill books available to him. He's got nothing to do except garden all day in the game, and once his gardening is done, he doesn't have any way of gaining skill points he needs so I just made a MASSIVE garden (48 seeds all gathered from collecting and two slots for the auto water sprinkler) for him to work on all day. Once he maxed out gardening, I removed all the plants he didn't need and left his family with a reasonably sized garden. The only reason he gets more seeds to garden is to identify special seeds he hasn't found yet that would be good additions to his garden. (Oh I wish there was a mod to identify mystery seeds)


Edited to add -- heed the words of @Pescado. Slob trait is almost mandatory for gardeners (and inventors) They can garden until they almost pee their pants -- heck -- when I think about it, they are slobs -- they can pee their pants and keep on going -- they're slobs! Another odd trait for massive gardening only -- no sense of humor. Two extra hours of having a blast doing something really boring.

Last edited by kewpie : 26th Apr 2012 at 02:42 PM.

I am glad that I found this thread. I was about to open a new one about gardening.
Gardening is okay...I don't hate it. I just want to be able to garden/tend to flowers and shrubs, too ...and be able to sell them like fruits and veggies...open up your own flower/plant shop. And to be able to plant them anywhere on your lot, instead of having to place them in build/buy. Like in TS2, we had to tend to the shrubbery, or it would over grow(?). I wish we could have this with TS3.
It's not over yet. Maybe they will let us have this feature in EP/SP 50.

Last edited by morphius1 : 27th Apr 2012 at 03:46 PM.

I completely agree, I hate it. My Sim is in the Science career -_____- I just make her read gardening books.

I'm inspired to create a gardening family in Riverview. The whole damfambly will garden. No going off to work, no afterschool activities. Everyone will garden.

I don't like gardening either. I've tried to do a country family that makes a living off the land, but it's really tedious and boring. I don't like fishing either. Since those two go hand in hand, I never get further than being able to plant some garlic. I like the ambition careers where there's action (well as much action we can get with the sims lol), like the architect career, or the ghost buster career. The only "freestyle" career I really like is the band career and the writing career with Twallan's "book" mod.

I once tried to do a game set on the frontier and tried to make it as historically accurate as possible (according to this US History textbook, anyway). The family was sustenance farmers with a small garden only designed to feed themselves. It was still incredibly hard to get them both happy, give them time to do anything else and grow food at the same time. Never again.

The problem with me is that I'm too lazy to make her do even that. I just level her skill up to 10 points with treeag's book of skills

Like the firefighter career? Putting out fires, over and over again...very dull. Honestly, I find most things in Sims 3 dull, mostly because there is no reward for doing well other than a trophy to put on your shelf. I would prefer something more meaningful like a successful business or a little booth where you can sell your vegetables. At least then the hard work would be worth something. Selling everything at the grocery store feels like cheating and cuts out interaction with a customer.

Sadly, it is responses like these above that made EA take out a lot of the challenge from previous Sims 3 series. I guess maybe they were right....Sim players want easy stuff or rpg elements in the game.

Selling at the grocery store is a pain. You need to travel all over the neighbourhood to get there only to stare at a building. And it's no use trying to sell perfect vegetables there, so really, why bother gardening when you could just as well raid the community gardens for fruits and veggies?

You are right. The only reason to try for perfect vegetables is for the lifetime want or one of those silly challenges. I never try for either since any gardening I do is to make and sell vegetables, fruit or wine. If there was some benefit, then it would be worthwhile. Winning nice cash prizes at the fair or being able to set a higher price at your own market stand on your own lot would be much better. EA really needs to enable home businesses, even if they don't do it as in depth as they did in Sims 2. I mean, they have lemonade stands! Can't they extend that to adults and selling things like vegetables and handmade items?

I don't like gardening. My plants always die because I forgot to take care of it.

My first complain about TS3 was, in fact, about how there's no gardener service NPC to tend the plants when you forgot or is not in the mood to do it.

I have 5th generation households with so many money trees (that I can't take on a house move) that it becomes silly to upgrade to a new (bigger) lot cuz the family loses ten of thousands of simoleans. I find gardening a nice past-time for my otherwise bored elders.

I have yet to try gardening. I haven't figured it out yet

Gosh, if there's one thing that i ABSOLUTELY love is gardening. Nearly every sim I create is a Green Thumb! (To each their own, I guess...