Sims2: Gardening

Tripp Waddell presides over the cash register while his teenage son Abbott talks to customers about their produce.  There is still a little snow on the ground, but the first few cucumbers and strawberries they started early are already ready, grown in the warmth of the greenhouse.

Tripp has promised his younger child, Ace, that he will inherit the farm and business.  Little does Tripp know that Ace has a life of crime planned, and is already poking around on the internet, claiming to be "looking for a job", but really looking for some trouble to get into.

My Sims invariably find gardening to be fun. Some of my Sims who get non-career Lifetime Aspirations end up with ways of earning money that I assign to them randomly; Tripp was one of those, who rolled to sell vegetables for a living.  Veggies can be sold right off the plant, but they can also be harvested, kept in inventory, and sold to customers.  This allows my Sims to put them for sale at whatever markup they want, where selling off the plant is a fixed amount.  I did this with Tripp because he has such a nice big backyard, so I knew he would have room to grow the veggies and also sell them.  I haven't gotten around to building him a little shed to sell from yet, but he does have a couple of cold cases, to keep the fruit from going bad.  Tripp doesn't have any fruit trees, but the game also has apple, lemon, and orange trees.

There are three gardening badges Sims can earn, and the kinds of vegetables they can grow increase along with it.  If my Sims don't have money they can't start with a tiny plot and weed, water, and spray for bugs by hand... but money lets them build a greenhouse like Tripp has here to grow all year round, plus a composter to make fertilizer, ladybird houses to keep bugs away, and automatic watering devices.  It's a perfect example of how the game lets new players do things by hand, but those of us who have been playing it a long time can 'set and forget' certain things, rather than always having to do them individually. 

Tripp has four teens at home, and teens can help with the sales - they can work the cash register, sell items to customers, and restock the cases. Children can't do those things, but they *can* work in the garden, so all four are going to leave home (well, except for Ace) with gold gardening badges that they earned as children.

A Sim with the highest level of gardening expertise also has an interaction with plants and trees that is "Talk to", which makes the plant grow better!

All this is separate from shrubs, trees, and flowers grown for decoration, which is a subject for another day.