Sims 4 allows Sims to have different skills and abilities in the game. These skills can provide Sims with a new career or a hobby. One of these skills is growing your garden in the Sims 4. Additionally, you can generate revenue from this hobby, to pay your bills in Sims 4, while producing various kinds of plants, fruits, and vegetables for your Sim to consume.
Gardening in Sims 4
Gardening is one of the most flexible skills and a fantastic pastime in the game. With gardening, Sims can earn money or make their ingredients for meals, boosting their quality of life. In this guide, we’ll teach you about fertilizer, evolving plants, quality levels, cuttings and grafts, and how you can grow a big garden at home while still maintaining an active life for your Sim.
There are some traits or aspirations a gardener can have in Sims 4.
- The Loves Outdoors Trait: This will boost happiness in your Sims, which will keep their mood positive when they are outside.
- Genius Trait: This will keep your Sim focused on learning new gardening skills faster and better.
- Freelance Botanist Aspiration: This is a natural choice for aspiration as you can gain Naturalist traits by completing that aspiration goal.
Buying Seeds in Sims 4
There is an easy way to purchase seeds in the Sims 4. Go on the computer, and find the Order Menu in outdoor activities via buy mode.
- Build Mode > Activities > Outdoor Activities
Sims 4 allows players to start both types of gardens, outdoors and indoors. For an indoor garden, you need to purchase Garden Pots. Each pot will cost around $50, and they can only hold a single plant. Another one is Garden Planter Boxes which can hold up to 4 pairs of pants or a single tree which costs about $200.
In the base Sims 4 game, you can choose a limited number of seeds to grow flowers, fruits, herbs, or vegetables in your garden. You’ll get different types of seed packets once you have installed Seasons expansion. Moreover, after acquiring some skills, you can purchase some rare seeds to diversify your gardening.
Planting Seeds in Sims 4
You have to drag the seeds on the ground or Garden pots to plant a sapling. Your Sim can interact with the item and choose the “Plant” command. A point to note here is that the large plants or trees must have enough space to grow, else you’ll receive an error message.
Choose any plant and lay it out however you want, as much you want. Now, your Sim will plant all the seeds in the garden you have in your inventory. After that, you need to keep watering the plants for their betterment. Moreover, you can also look out for weeds by clicking on the plants. Follow these steps, and your plants will yield better quality vegetables and fruits.
At gardening level 7, you can water your plants and remove weeds from them by a single command known as Tend Garden.
Taking Care of Plants
Plants require regular maintenance and the care that usually goes into raising a baby. At 6 am, the game checks whether the plants are watered recently and need another sprinkle of water or if they are spawning weeds. The plants can grow unhappy if they don’t get the proper care.
In Sims 4, plants usually grow to their max six harvestable(depending on each plant type). Fertilizers also provide great help in the process of evolving plants. Here are some tips for taking care of your garden:
- Spraying on Bugs: Bugs can kill plants and infect your garden faster than neglecting your plantations. Use pesticide spray to kill these bugs. You can see these black swarms from a medium distance around the afflicted plant. Bugs can be found eating away the plants, most commonly during the Spring season.
- Fertilizing Plants: Fertilizer is the best way to enrich the quality and boost the growth of the plants. Fishing skills come handly when it comes to gardening. The best fertilizer is Fish in Sims 4. The bigger the fish, the better would be the fertilizer.
- Beekeeping: The bees in your garden will increase the fertility rate of the plants. Keeping the bee box within five squares of the plantation will boost and enrich the plant’s quality. Additionally, you’ll get honey for your efforts, making your Sims happy, and good money after selling it.
Plants can evolve according to their various qualities:
- Normal
- Nice
- Excellent
- Magnificent
- Perfect
Grafting Plants in Sims 4
Grafting allows you to transform one plant into another and unlock new hybrid crops. You can then replant new crops and grow them further without adding grafts. Grafting is a good option for the busy Sims who like to cook their meals with the best ingredients. Remember, grafted plants get 8-10 harvestable out of a plant. This hybrid result is random in grafted plants, so for the best result, use grafting on 2-3 plants.
Grafting can be used for many reasons, and some of them are mentioned below:
- Making Perfect Plants faster: Keep taking care of your plant and gradually let them grow. Click on “Evolve” whenever it comes available, and you can see sparkles on game speed. Later, when you find a rare plant in the wild, take a sample and graft it on your high-quality plant.
- Making a Death Flower: This is also an essential item in Sims 4, as it’s an ingredient in the Ambrosia recipe that can revive dead Sims. To create a Death Flower, you need to graft Cherry to Apple to make Pomegranate. Then, graft Lily to Snapdragon and prepare an Orchid. Finally, graft the Pomegranate to Orchid to prepare Death Flowers.
Patchy Scarecrow
Patchy works as a scarecrow which prevents bugs and insects from infesting the crops. The straw man can be placed anywhere in the garden. Additionally, your Sim can start speaking to him and gain relationship points. Patchy even ensures that your garden will flourish even if your Sim has a busy day or is not in the mood for gardening. You can buy him for $450 in the Build mode of Functions Sort> Activities and Skills> Outdoor Activity Area.
Cow Plants in Sims 4
A unique plant known as the Cow Plant grows from a Cowplant berry. Cow Plants can’t be easily harvested, as it doesn’t display the status of the plant. Feeding, petting, and playing with Cow Plant will enhance your gardening skills.
The Cow Plant needs to be fed every 12 hours. If not provided timely, the plant will offer a cake. Your Sims or the other guest might go for that cake if they are hungry and get eaten by the Cow Plant leading to a slow death. On top of this, the Cow Plant will be dead in the next 8-10 hours and leave a skeleton behind. To avoid this, take care of your Cow Plant with active plants to check up on it.
Seasons for Gardening in Sims 4
The plants also grow depending on the weather conditions in a particular season. However, you can hover your mouse over the plant and monitor its quality and relative situation. Sims can enhance the quality of plants by fulfilling their needs on time, and rain also plays a vital role in the growth of these plants.
Skills To Unlock in Gardening
There are four essential skills to acquire, Planting, Watering, Cutting Weeds, and Harvesting. All these skills are self-explanatory but help your plants to grow better. You can also level up your skills by reading a Gardening Skill book, and with that, you can unlock new abilities.
- Level 2: In this level, your Sim needs to focus on researching gardening (Web>Research Gardening).
- Level 3: The Sim will know how to use fertilizer in plants, which will help them evolve faster.
- In Level 4: Unlocking of Seasonal Fall and Spring plants seed packets. Also, your Sim can now socialize with the plants.
- Level 5: Unlocking Seasonal Winter and Summer plants seed packets in this level. Unlock the abilities of cutting and grafting, which allow you to get unattainable plants.
- Level 6: You will have pleasant conversations about your garden at this level.
- Level 7: Farmer and uncommon seed packages are available for purchase. Sims unlock the “Tend Garden” skill, which allows them to water and weed the garden by clicking on a single plant. It is a big bonus as it can be a hassle to maintain lots of plants and figure out what to water.
- Level 8: Unlocking of Super Sell, by which you can sell your harvest and earn money.
- Level 9: More efficient gardening interaction.
- In level 10, you can purchase rare seed packets for $1000 each.
