How does one grow the most luscious garden?
Gardening in The Sims 4 is an excellent skill to invest your time in. Some people just love the satisfaction of making a lush garden grow, but gardening can also be extremely lucrative, as a career or even just as a hobby. High-quality plants yield huge profits, and if you save up your aspiration points you can also get the money tree and laugh in the face of the classic adage.
At level 3 of the Gardening skill, you unlock the ability to fertilize plants every few days and help them “evolve” and increase their quality faster. Unlike evolving plants, however, fertilizing isn’t just a one-click interaction - you actually get to choose what fertilizer to use, and your choices matter! Let’s take a look at the best fertilizer strategies to set you on the path to earning the most amount of green.
Fish
Fish aren't just for a delicious grilled dinner!
Fishing is the best skill to develop early on, for a variety of reasons. It helps with recipes, it earns simoleons, and most importantly fish are great fertilizer. You can use any fish as fertilizer, but the best fish to use are extremely fresh, and worth about §50-100.
Once your fish get over §100 in value, they are all worth the same in terms of fertilizer quality, so make strategic choices about what to keep and what to sell. Freshness is also extremely important in terms of how effective your fish will be. Even if the selling price is the same, the game will devalue fish for this purpose once the quality goes down. So spend some time stocking up, and then throw some of your fertilizer-worthy fish in the fridge to keep them fresh until you need them.
Produce
Only the best carrots will do for a serious gardener.
Gardening is self-sustaining in that you can use plants to fertilize other plants - how economical! Unfortunately, this isn’t a very efficient approach until you have higher quality produce to use, which is why you should use fish in the beginning (see, there’s a method to this madness).
Like with fish, you can tell how good a plant will be as a fertilizer by checking its selling price, but you don’t have to worry about freshness here so it’s much more direct. Produce worth §20-49 will work as perfectly good fertilizer, but the best fertilizer will come from produce valued over §50. Again, after §50 it’s all the same, so don’t use your high-quality roses for this.
Fungal Infusor Fertilizer
The hermit knows the old secrets for a perfect fertilizer.
If you have the Outdoor Retreat game pack, there is a special fertilizer you can craft called the Fungal Infusion Fertilizer. This is definitely the best fertilizer you can get your hands on, but it takes more work.
To get the recipe, you need to find the secret area in Granite Falls and the Hermit who lives there. Once you become good friends you can ask him to teach you the secret recipe for the Fungal Infusion Fertilizer. You only need level 1 Herbalism to craft this recipe, but you will need to gather:
- 1 Blackberry
- 1 Dusk Spirit
- 2 False Morel
- 3 Morel Mushroom
Once you have all the ingredients you can make this recipe on the stove or grill.
Bees
Remember your bee suit - it's not fun if your bees decide to turn on you.
Bee boxes are essential for making the most out of your fertilizing. When you place a bee box it will fertilize the adjacent five squares in every direction, and this will stack with any fertilizer that you place directly on the plant. Place your boxes strategically to get free extra fertilization for all your crops - ‘bee’ careful not to get stung!
This happens automatically, so you don’t need to make the bees do anything, but you do want to keep them happy with regular interactions.
Fertilizer! Simple, to the point, and invaluable to the budding gardener. Now that you are armed with your best fertilization tips, go forth and grow your best plants! Trust me, your roses will be the talk of the neighborhood.
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