Stickied for general usefulness until we get a wiki article on gardening.

EDIT 6/12/09: Since I just found out my thread was stickied, I decided to elaborate on the information I provided in it, so I've provided a list of different types of plants that can be planted with each "degree" of plant rarity [Common, Uncommon, Rare, and Special].

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Plant Quality

Degrees of Quality [From Worst to Best] - Horrifying, Putrid, Foul, Bad, Normal, Nice, Very Nice, Great, Excellent, Outstanding, Perfect

The quality of the plants that your sims plant will determine the quality of the food (harvestable) that it produces. For example, a Very Nice Lettuce Vine will produce Very Nice Lettuce.

If your sim has purchased the Lifetime Reward Super Green Thumb, whatever your sim plants will have one level of quality higher than the seed or fruit they planted. For example, if Corey plants a Normal Lettuce Seed, the plant he plants will be a Nice Lettuce Vine

If your sim has the Green Thumb personality trait, then the sim now has an interaction called Talk To Plant which they can use on their plants to increase the quality of their produce.


Icu2Richelo's Tip: To produce a Perfect Quality plant fastest, search around town for higher quality seeds to plant. Then, every harvest, dispose of the plant and plant its produce in its stead. Use this technique every harvest to obtain a Perfect Quality plant. This technique will produce a Perfect plant from a Normal Seed/fruit in just Six harvests!

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Plant Rarity

Degrees of Rarity [From Most Common to Rarest] - Common, Uncommon, Rare, Special

Rarity is paired with quality in terms of how "good" a plant is. For example, a Perfect Quality Special Plant is the most profittable and will yield the most fruit every harvest.


List of Special Plants:

- Money Tree
Description: Bears Money Bags, worth several hundred to several thousand dollars worth of simoleons every harvest
Found: Seeds found around Science Facility, and around more mature Money Trees that will drop seeds

- Life Plant
Description: Bears Life Fruit - Eat one to gain 1 extra day in lifespan, or prepare Ambrosia with Life Fruit and Deathfish and eat to gain several weeks of lifespan
Found: Seeds found around Science Facility

- Death Bush
Description: Bears 1 Death Flower, then dies [Can be revived once if you have the Super Green Thumb Lifetime Reward Having the Death Flower in your inventory will save you from the Grim Reaper if your player should die
Found: Seeds found around Graveyard

- Flame Fruit Vine
Description: Bears Flame Fruit. Having Flame Fruit in inventory will give your sim a moodlet of "Cozy Fire" adding +5 to mood
Found: Plant is found on some neighbor's lots.

- Omni Plant
Description: Feed this plant fruits, fish, and even books and it will grow them once
Found: A Wild Omni Plant can be found at the Science Facility - Refer to the Unlockable Plants section for information about obtaining the ability to plant this


List of Rare Plants:

- Bell Pepper Plant
Description: Bears Bell Peppers.
Found: Bell Pepper plants can be found around the Waterfall

- Garlic Vine
Description: Bears Garlic. Garlic can be used as bait for Vampire Fish
Found: Garlic can be purchased from the grocery store.



List of Uncommon Plants:

- Watermelon Vine
Description: Bears Watermelon. Eating Watermelon during preganancy increases the possibility of the child being Female.
Found: Watermelon can be purchased from the Grocery Store.

- Potatoe Vine
Description: Bears Potatoes. I love potatoes. Enough said.
Found: Potatoes can be purchased from the Grocery Store.

- Onion Vine
Description: Bears Onions.
Found: Onion Plants can be found at the Outstanding Citizen Corp. Warehouse

- Lime Tree
Description: Bears Limes.
Found: Limes can be purchased from the Grocery Store.


List of Common Plants:

- Apple Tree
Description: Bears Apples. Eating Apples during preganancy increases the possibility of the child being Male.
Found: Apples can be purchased from the Grocery Store. Seeds can be found around Central Park.

- Lettuce Vine
Description: Bears Lettuce. Lettuce can be used at bait for Goldfish
Found: Lettuce can be purchased from the Grocery Store. Seeds can be found around Central Park.

- Tomato Plant
Description: Bears Tomatoes.
Found: Tomatoes can be purchased from the Grocery Store. Seeds can be found around Central Park.

- Grape Vine
Description: Bears Grapes.
Found: Grapes can be purchased from the Grocery Store. Seeds can be found around Central Park.

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Fertilizers

Fruits as well as Fish can be used to fertilize your plants. The quality of your fertilizer is important, because a better quality fertilizer will increase the potential of your plants bearing better quality produce.

It is also important to keep this in mind: Plants with higher degrees of rarity require fertilizer of the same degree of rarity. For example, I always fertilize my Life Plant with either a Perfect Life Fruit, or a Perfect Lobster.

- Suggested Fertilizers for Common Plants
Fruit: Any fruit
Fish: Any fish

- Suggested Fertilizers for Uncommon Plants
Fruit: Uncommon Fruit and above
Fish: Rarity level 3 and above [Fish Rarity can be found in your Skill Journal]

- Suggested Fertilizers for Rare Plants
Fruit: Rare Fruit and above
Fish: Rarity level 6 and above [Fish Rarity can be found in your Skill Journal]

- Suggested Fertilizers for Special Plants
Fruit: Special Fruit and above
Fish: Lobster or Vampire Fish

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Unlockable Plants

It's been said that you can plant Eggs and Cheese once you recieve a certain Opportunity. This is helpful, of course, because you no longer have to purchase these from the Grocery Store.
> Once completing the Egg and Cheese Opportunity, you can get another Opportunity to plant meats, such as Steaks, Suasages, and Hamburger Patties. Once completing this Opportunity you are able to order the Omni Plant Seed by mail order.


Other Tips

To keep your gardening sim in a good mood, it's suggested that you upgrade your Home stereo to reroute the speakers through the entire house. This lets your sims hear music no matter where they are on the lot, even when gardening! They'll get a +30 moodlet if it's playing their favorite style of music. It's been said that this also helps plants grow.

Purchasing the sprinkler from the Appliances section in Buy Mode will make watering your plants easier. Much like the sprinkler in the Sims 2, you can water your plants all at once, even when you're away from the house by clicking "Turn On." You can even upgrade the sprinkler if you have a high enough Handling Skill to Water Automatically. This way you'll never have to water your plants again!



Thanks for reading, and if you have any questions, I'll be glad to answer. I'll be updating this list as I continue playing the game if I find any additional information.

Look for my thread about Fishing as well, coming soon!

Flame Fruit Vine can be found on a number of neighbors' lots:
14 Sierra Tango Street
433 SunnySide Blvd

Bell Pepper:
433 SunnySide Blvd
Back of Warehouse Crop.

Watermelon:
Sunny Hill Spring

Onion:
Back of Warehouse Crop.

Garlic:
Back of Warehouse Crop.

If you keep the flame fruit in your sim's inventory they will alway have the fireplace icon moodlet in their moods. Also, if you upgrade their stereo to wired for house then even when they are in their yard they will have the music listening moodlet.

Ooh, I'll be hitting up some of those places. I haven't found any seeds yet, except the ones that appeared when she levelled up once. Or something. I can't remember, but she got a pop-up and then she had lettuce and tomato seeds in her inventory.

You can look for perfect or near perfect seeds all over the town and start with those instead or you can dispose of crop and plant one of the crops you harvested from it in order to improve the quality. Also, if you have green thumb trait, super green thumb reward and level 10 gardening skill then you can talk to the plants and raise their quality, like what they had in Sims 2 about talking to plants.

I'm really curious to figure out what the heck the Death Flower does... If you can only plant it, then it's really pointless... Lol

I talk to my plants all the time and they don't seem to change in quality. Is it just the fruit they bear that receives the higher quality?

Ahh I have a death seed I got from fishing ;-) Sometimes you pull up a box instead of a fish and they have random things in them. Just the name has kept me from wanting to plant it though, heh. There are a lot of 'unknown' seeds around the two ponds in the park.

Yes because the plant and the harvest you get from them can be different. Mine have been recently when I got level 10 gardening on my latest sim who is green thumb trait and has super greenthumb reward. What I've been doing is getting rid of any plant that is not of great or higher value and planting only the higher quality crops. I've been hunting the town for perfect but mostly have only found the rare and uncommon seeds.



Having the death flower in your inventory will save you from the grim reaper if your player should die. I created a perfect death flower from replanting the flower over and over and now keep it in inventory in case I need it.

Such useful information! Thanks!

You're welcome! Luckily I found two more death flower seeds and planted them so I've been working on making them perfect too as backups.

All my death bushes seem to start out perfect. I think it's permanently perfect, because... Well, either you get saved from death or you don't. Lol

Mine wasn't perfect because I had to replant and fertilize it a few times to get it perfect. I wouldn't have bothered to do that if it was perfect already.

Does it also work if your player dies from old age? what about if you have agin on and a sim you are not playing at the moment has it in their inventory. Will the death flower save them as well?

And thank's for the info, I have one and used it to plant another one, but couldn't figure out what it did. I was actually hoping it could be used to poison other sims.

eat the life fruit and your sim will gain some age back....

Hi,

you can try revive the death plant, works about 30-50% of the time, don't know exactly.

Reg, Gonmag

i had my sim eat 1 life fruit and hes 103 now, im wondering if it made him immortal lol. he was 89 days when he ate the fruit.

i cant wait to find out what the omni plant does. i cant do anything with it but its still at the science place.

My sim is growing Eggplant and Cheeseplant. He gained this ability from a skill opportunity at the bistro. Just plant some eggs or cheese and wow! you can grow more eggs and cheese...

What a useful thread... thanks!

I have a stereo next to my garden, playing classical music. When it's time to harvest the leaves are fuller and longer.

Not sure if this is coincedence. At this point, with everything else going on you gotta wonder.

Keeping the sprinker on next to them does this too. I only have had to fertilize them once and they stay in great shape. I too learned early on to ignore the normal quality seeds and go only for the better quality ones when I pick them up and, of course, avoid the "bad" ones! =) I've had a death plant in my inventory a while and didn't know it could save you, that's awesome! I was just waiting to level high enough to plant it!

Wow, I never thought of using a stereo. Thanks for the tip, I'll try it out. What I've been doing now is as soon as I get a harvest from a crop, I'll dispose of the crop and plant one of it's produce. Sometimes I've had a harvest be perfect from a great quality parent. My sim has been fishing alot in his spare time and caught enough perfect fish that I've had him use for the fertilizer so that probably helped with the big jump on quality, too. My new sim has the perfect garden lifetime wish and I already have 4 perfect crops planted right now and I just started with him a few days Sim's time.

The rare plants you want to have for special purposes are the death, life and flame ones. The money ones are good, too. The life plant and the deathfish together make ambrosia that will give your sim longer life. The death flower in your inventory will save you from the grim reaper and the flame one will give your sim a happy moodlet that is like the one got from having a fire in the fireplace but it will go with the sim wherever he is.

Also, I've recently discovered that your Money Tree will increase in quality if you fertilize it with any rare fish (Vampire Fish, Lobster) of a higher quality, and continuously talk to it. This prevents you from having to find another better quality Money Tree Seed. Also, I don't think it will die if you take care of it every time it needs fertilizer. Special plants require the most rare of fish, so make sure you're only fertilizing with something like Vampire Fish or Lobster.

P.S. DO NOT fertilize plants with the Deathfish, for obvious reasons lol

Lol, *taking notes*

wow, thanks for posting info's about the death flower! i was wondering what to do with it
what I really like to do is "stealing" the crops from my neighbours, its fun that you can walk into their garden and harvesting their stuff and after that selling it to the store, tho I get a bad conscience a little bit :P