[OPEN] Plants shrink after harvesting/ Turns into harvestable

[Yaanika]

@Neutrobyte I thought it was related to eco lifestyle but you don't have eco exp pack.

New test save. Sim day 17. Gardening level 5. Can weed and water before harvesting without the plants reverting into dirt piles. Sage and basil, keep reverting into basil leaves(sage too) but become fully grown and harvestable in the morning(tested 2 mornings). I saved and quit. I'm pretty sure next time I load it up it will go bonkers again. Might be that everything is fine as long as you don't reload the save.

[Yaanika]

Reloaded the second test save. Third morning basil and sage revert into full growth and are harvestable. No other gardening bugs. 

[Psychotps]

@Yaanika

I'm not sure what everyone's seeing. The problem with Sage and Basil is just that those plants are showing the wrong plant "object" when not harvestable. I was able to fix that easily with a simple tuning alteration.

But with the rest of the plants turning into dirt piles, I've NEVER seen that. I use gardening in all of my households. I've been through the gardening tuning files many times. Wrote a number of my own gardening mods and I've never seen that happen. I've done it with ECO and without, with my own gardening mods and without, with the new "tiny living" gardening booster trait, I've never seen it.

If others are seeing it, they're doing something I'm not.

[Raynn0124]

@Psychotps From what I can tell, there's a few different things going on.  Even the "dirt pile" thing seems different for different people.

For myself, I've seen 3 different things:

• Sage/Basil revert to the "seed" model when mature/not-harvestable - tiny tuning fix
• Cow Plant - for me, it reverts to just tiny horns in a pile of dirt (its first stage of growth, I think - I don't play with cows often), but still has all the interactions of a fully grown cow plant (including invisibly eating Sims).  Triggered by using Super-Sell near it; appearance is restored by picking it up in build mode.  Other people seem to be having different issues with them though.
• Other plants (not all at once - usually about 1/3 of a garden; different plants in different households. I haven't figured out a pattern yet, except it always seems to include the coconut tree) revert to a dirt pile.  For me, I usually notice it when I load a lot that I haven't played for a while (I play rotationally, and usually go to a different household than I was playing the previous day - so it could be playing another lot, or it could be closing the game, or something completely different).  It's happened during game-play too, but I don't always notice it right away, so it's just "oh crap, what happened to my garden" rather than "I did this, and that happened."  Some of the plants can be restored by moving in build mode (they don't regrow on their own if left alone; but unlike the cow plant, they don't have the interactions of mature plants).  For others, build mode does nothing, but they regrow on their own.  I haven't been able to reproduce it in test saves either, but it happens fairly often in my main save (which I usually play with MCCC and a few other mods - nothing that "should" affect gardening though, except my sage/basil fix).

@Yaanika I see it with a lot of different households (which makes it even more fun to figure out, right?!).  It's usually when I load a lot I hadn't played for a bit (usually every time I start the game, and maybe a couple more times).  I haven't noticed it being triggered by harvesting/watering/etc, but I always have a gardener, and usually ignore them, so if the greenhouse isn't in view, I don't always notice problems right away.  My household in Evergreen Harbour had it happening a lot a few weeks ago (I haven't played them much since) - they were travelling a lot, and the Eco Footprint kept bouncing between green and neutral.  I'll use them for my primary answers, but I'll try to note if other households that have seen it are different.

1. Spliced plants - one permanent Cow-Seed producer; probably a couple others temporarily.  Most of the other households, none.
2. Recycle lot trait - no
3. Lot trait that is beneficial for gardening - EH is a Micro Home.  Others often have Great Soil.
4. Sim gardening traits - EH is a couple - he's a Botanist (Level 10+30), Super Green Thumb (also Loner, Loves Outdoors, Perfectionist); she has no gardening traits, although she is level 10 Gardening.  Other households, some probably have at least one Green Thumb, and most are level 10 Gardening.  I usually let the gardener do most of the weeding/watering/spraying - my Sims Super-Sell (usually) daily, and sometimes tend on Sunday if it looks bad.  They do sometimes autonomously talk/research/tend (or tell me that "no plants need tending" an hour after the gardener left), and I also have a few clubs that encourage gardening.
5. Sim gardening aspiration and/or gardening aspiration reward trait - Yes - he completed the Botanist Aspiration long before Eco came out.  Other households, not always.
6. Travelling to another world and returning home - Yes
7. Going on a vacation and returning home - The EH household has been to Granite Falls a few times - at least once since Eco came out.  Other households have had issues with no vacations at all.
8. Going to the jungle and returning home. - Not the EH household.  Other households have, but I haven't been paying close enough attention to their greenhouses to notice a correlation.
9. Vertical planters(upgraded or not?) - Yes.  Upgraded in EH; other households are still "working on it."
10. Hydroponic planters - No
11. Windmills, solar panels, water collecting stuff - Solar Panels and Dew Collectors only.
12. Insect farm - Yes, but it hasn't had bugs in it for a while (although when his garden was the worst, I had 4 or 5 with bugs).  Most other lots have none.  EH and a couple of other houses also have bees, but most don't.
13. Researching plants - Only if they do it autonomously (which happens semi-often, along with talking to plants)
14. An active Patchy who comes to life and helps with gardening - Never
15. eco lifestyle - Yes
16. eco lifestyle sim traits - None
17. Green/Modern neighbourhood NAP - Yes, plus Green Gardening.  Every other neighbourhood (mostly in Willow Creek, one in Sulani, one in StrangerVille) has (or intends to eventually have) Green Gardening, Clean Energy, Upcycling, and Eco-Friendly Appliances
18. Green/grass roof - No.  The EH house has a rooftop garden, it's only roofs are glass over fence.  Other houses have proper roofs, a couple have thatch or solar shingles, most just regular shingles.  A lot of my houses, the plants are under glass roofs, some on patios and some completely indoors (always "sheltered").  Some houses they're in the basement.

[guberschnitzel]

Product: The Sims 4
Platform:PC
Which language are you playing the game in? English
How often does the bug occur? Often (50% - 99%)
What is your current game version number? 1.64.84.1020
What expansions, game packs, and stuff packs do you have installed? All of them
Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? By gardening
What happens when the bug occurs? All plants, randomly, revert from "harvestable" to "freshly planted", and stay that way most of the time, never sprouting another plant. They just turn into a dirt pile that you can't interact with.
What do you expect to see? A plant being harvested and waiting to be reharvested the next day, staying a fully matured plant.
Have you installed any customization with the game, e.g. Custom Content or Mods? Not now. I've removed them.
Did this issue appear after a specific patch or change you made to your system? Yes
Please describe the patch or change you made. July 08, 2020 patch

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I have nothing to add here other than how it is beyond frustrating to try to cultivate a garden to have it all just disappear for no reason.

[Yaanika]

@Raynn0124 "Other plants (not all at once - usually about 1/3 of a garden;"

For me it's 96% of my garden.
The super sell got me thinking, I mostly super sell.
But yeah the whole thing is so messed up I doubt I could figure it out. Only EA can at this point.

Just like I don't have the cake baking, clay and future cubes, stealing, toilet fires some people don't have problems with gardening.

I'm just very frustrated cause gardening is my fav thing in the sims. I've tried everything, the build mode etc, turning eco stuff off etc, nothing fixes it.

I tested glass roofs too because my plants always had glass roofs. But so far there's no indication that could be the culprit.

I just hope EA won't ignore this whole mess and fix it. Preferably sometime soon.

[EmeraldLaura]

https://answers.ea.com/t5/General-Discussion-Feedback/08-07-20-UPDATE-MEANT-TO-BE-A-JOKE/m-p/9315206...

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[Yaanika]

@EmeraldLaura Permission denied to see this. Was it deleted?

[EmeraldLaura]

@Yaanika i reported my own topic as it was a try to make them see whats going on. i saw impatience coming over this forum today

[Raynn0124]

@Yaanika Hopefully they'll be able to fix it.  Hopefully they'll be able to *find* it (it's so apparently random though).

My gardens are typically about 65 plants (all the edible/useful stuff, no alien/special plants) - the 3 that I actually recorded which plants shrank lost 28, 32, and 47 (so more like 1/2).  Some plants shrank in all 3, others didn't in all 3.. and some shrank in one, but not another.  I only have one of each plant, so I don't know if all of one type would go at the same time.  Most of the time, plants that can be in verticals are, other shrubs are in pots, and trees in square planters (but occasionally I have trees or vertical-capable plants in pots too).

I'm testing a bit more again, and I'm seeing plants revert to dirt piles if I'm on another household when the season changes and they're coming *into* season.  I've gone through 3 season changes so far, and each time almost every (but not all) of the plants coming into season are dirt piles when I go back to the lot.  The first time, they all regrew on their own.  The second time, none of them did.  Putting them into household inventory 2 days later instantly restored some, and the rest started growing after that.

I know there's more going on than just that, because I've seen it with "All Season" plants on my main save too; also when playing one household without switching.  I'm happy I've found at least one (somewhat) predictable trigger though - now maybe someone who knows more about this stuff than me can figure out how to make it not happen (please?).