Plants disapear

[wombatilim]

I decided to completely reset my game today -- removed the entire Sims 4 folder from Documents, and removed the game and all of the expansions I had installed, then reinstalled just the base game. I just looked over and my basil plant had reverted. I missed the "dirt pile" stage because they grow so quickly, but it was at the first stage of growth when I looked over, and not a fully formed plant like it should have been.

The only options I'd changed in the game were to disable online play (to keep my packs from automatically re-installing themselves) and I disabled the option to allow mods (even though I didn't have any installed) since that had been mentioned earlier in this thread. 

I've sent my Save in.

[MatsuyoRific]

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? PC: 1.72.28.1030
What expansions, game packs, and stuff packs do you have installed? All except Batu and the kits
Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? Play the game with harvestable plants on the home lot. May need to go on vacation, with a sim left at home to take care of the garden.
What happens when the bug occurs? Fully grown plants return to their "Just Planted" state
What do you expect to see? When a plant is fully grown, it should remain fully grown
Have you installed any customization with the game, e.g. Custom Content or Mods? Yes
Did this issue appear after a specific patch or change you made to your system? Yes
Please describe the patch or change you made. It was after the patch update for Snowy Escape

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Sometimes when I'm playing the game, my garden completely resets back to the "Just Planted" state. It only seems to happen at night in game, but not every night. I first started noticing it when I took my Sim on vacation to El Salvador, and left another Sim home to tend to the garden. After returning from vacation, I noticed that there were times when the garden would reset. I'm not sure if the vacation was what caused it or not. I tried planting some new plants in a planter, and they also reset with the rest of the outdoor garden. All of my plants are indoors, and I have yet to test it with outdoor plants.

[BatDood]

Product: The Sims 4
Platform:PC
Which language are you playing the game in? English
How often does the bug occur? Every time (100%)
What is your current game version number? 1.72.28.1030
What expansions, game packs, and stuff packs do you have installed? All except Paranormal and any Kits
Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? Doesn't take much. Play the game and use the Gardening function
What happens when the bug occurs? See my pic below.
What do you expect to see? Oh, I don't know...maybe my harvestables not resorting to dirt piles
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? Neutral/Not Sure 

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I have a sim levelling Gardening.

I've been aware of reports of this issue since the Eco Lifestyle update but so far everything seems to be marked as solved on this forum when there are huge issues still remaining.

Got a couple of planters out back of the house. Everything grows normally. It's on a Tiny Living lot.

The first day that everything was ready to harvest, I had my sim "Harvest All" and this was the result.

PLEASE fix this! I can't believe this has been going on for so long and the Laundry List doesn't include this.

[NamelessWhispers]

Product: The Sims 4
Platform:PC
Which language are you playing the game in? English
How often does the bug occur? Every time (100%)
What is your current game version number? Unsure.  But last updated as of 2021/04/19
What expansions, game packs, and stuff packs do you have installed? Base game, City Living, University, Get Famous, Get to Work, Get Together, Island Living. Seasons, Realm of Magic,  Vampires, Fitness, Romantic Garden, Tiny Living.   Please note I do NOT have ECO living installed.
Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? Have a garden and do gardening.

What happens when the bug occurs? After reading through everyone's comments, I can see this is a major bug that is still ongoing.  But I think I've encountered something different regarding the bug.   My garden is a bunch of planter boxes in a city living apartment.  All plants were sheltered.  The whole thing took place in spring.  I play the game with a very long life, so this was all in same season.

Garden consisted of:  *And yes, this does matter*

First planting (all done in set of queued actions): 

1x Apple tree, 2x cherry tree, 1x Pear tree, 2x strawberries, 1x Rose

Second planting (done immediately after first planting)

1x Banana tree.

Third/fourth planting(done same day as previous two, but not sure if it was one queued set of actions or separate)  

2x parsley and 2x carrots

Fifth planting (a couple days later) 

1x Pomegranate.

Sixth planting (several days later)

2x plasma fruit, 1x wolfsbane, 1x Mosquito trap.

When bug occurred, They were all in bush and tree form. But not all the plants reverted to dirt pile.  Only the stuff planted in the first planting, (1x Apple tree, 2x cherry tree, 1x Pear tree, 2x strawberries, 1x Rose) as well as the two carrots when to dirt.  The rest of the plants remained.in different states.  The parsley shrank back to small budding plant, the Banana tree didn't change at all and is still harvestable, everything from the fifth and sixth planting was still in the same form, but none of those plants had hit maturity yet.

This happened when my character was gardening, and oddly enough the actions that I was doing of spraying for bugs was still queued when it happened and my character still went over to the dirt mound and carried out the action.

  So in some cases, it just reverses some of the growth and not always all of it, and somehow seems to be related to stuff planted at the same time??   It affected only stuff that was fully matured, but banana tree was untouched and parsley only regressed by a stage of growth.  

What do you expect to see? Plants to continue growing and not revert to dirt pile.

Have you installed any customization with the game, e.g. Custom Content or Mods? No.  Game is buggy enough as is  I don't want to make it worse.
Did this issue appear after a specific patch or change you made to your system?   I haven't played Sims 4 in over a year because of random glitches and bugs.  But just recently came back within the last week. The game was fully updated at that time.

If this bug first appeared in a November patch.. it's now mid April, 5 months later... come on EA.. get your act together.

[Wavegirl]

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? 1.72.28.1030
What expansions, game packs, and stuff packs do you have installed? All of them except for 'Journey to Batuu' and 'Paranormal'.
Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? I have a large garden (one copy of almost all the plant species) in the Count's household. All plants are in planter boxes. I think it happens most when I fertilise the plants (mostly with fish, some compost bags). Note that I recently moved into the Count's household and all the plants in my inventory had reset from perfect to normal quality, and I am currently trying to increase them to perfect quality again.
What happens when the bug occurs? The fully grown plants reset to a dirt mound even though they are in season. I've also had some out of season plants grow.
What do you expect to see? I expect to be able to fertilise the plants without them resetting to dirt mounds, and for plants to grow in their listed seasons.
Have you installed any customization with the game, e.g. Custom Content or Mods? Never used.
Did this issue appear after a specific patch or change you made to your system? Neutral/Not Sure 

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I dont have additional information.

[Japanic2012]

This may not be a solution but here's a workaround that allows you to at least getting your harvests on a regular basis.

① Wake up at around 6:00 AM

② First thing, harvest your plants

② Then do the other things like watering, fertilizing and so forth

If you continue to keep this procedure, you pretty much end up with having a yield every day (well, almost). In addition, up to this point, I was able to rank up all plants to perfect quality with the exception of the Cow Plant (which requires grafting if you aim for better quality). At some point however, your plants will evolve back to "dirt" (they are not dead as they keep their quality status and grow again) but just keep doing your routine until EA provides us with a fix. One last thing, when plants are out of season, I usually move them into my inventory for safekeeping.

[Japanic2012]

I was curious and did some testing with plants, leaving them for a whole Sim-week unattended.

① One of my plants turned into a light brownish pile but still with full gardening options intact (Plants01.jpg)

② After 5 days, 2 of my plants turned "dead" but still able to being revived (Plants02.jpg)

    Curiously, they both went "alive" again on Saturday morning 5 AM due to this strange life cycle.

③ After one full week, the only plant being really dead was the Cow Plant (Plants03.jpg)

So, not only turn live plants into "dirt" piles, they apparently regenerate after "death" as well. The most funny thing is, by leaving plants unattended, they are still being harvestable as you can see in Plants03.jpg.

[j3ssential]

Product: The Sims 4
Platform:PC
Which language are you playing the game in? English
How often does the bug occur? Every morning at 7am, near as I can tell.
What is your current game version number? 1.72.28.1030
What expansions, game packs, and stuff packs do you have installed? All Currently Available Packs (Including Seasons, Ecolife)
Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? Plant any item.
What happens when the bug occurs? I have many plants, modded and unmodded, in season and out of season. All of my in-season plants that are unmodded (come from base game or a pack) located out of doors revert to dirt piles at 7am every morning. My indoor (out of season) and modded outdoor plants do not revert. This time I noticed the ground also sort of, glittering? Pulsing sort of sparkly gold lights on all of my dirt (I even tried switching from ground planting to planters, with no luck.) Even cheating them back to "blossoming" stage does not produce harvestables, just a full bush/tree/plant again.

Plants Effected: 30
Plants unaffected: 31 (22 indoors, 9 modded)
Eco footprint: Neutral
Lot Traits: Great Soil, Homey, Fast Internet
What do you expect to see? Plants retaining their growth stage.
Have you installed any customization with the game, e.g. Custom Content or Mods? Yes. These seem to be the only "safe" plants.
Did this issue appear after a specific patch or change you made to your system? No.

[AubreyTW]

I have this issue with plants that are in AND out of season, covered AND uncovered - plants revert back to a dirt pile.

Sometimes this happens with no prompting - my Sim is just walking across the lot and nearly all plants revert to dirt piles. However I see the issue the most soon after I fertilize the affected plant or a different plant. It does not happen every time but it does happen often.

I have a small  (less than 10 second) screen-capture video that I can share on my Dropbox that shows this actually happening if helpful.

Notes:

- Repairing the game does not fix the issue.

- If this happens after I have recently saved, I close without saving and revert back to the previous save. Even if my Sim does the exact same options, the issue doesn't always happen again to that exact plant again but it WILL happen to that plant or some other plant in the future.

- If this happens to a cowplant, resetting the cowplant will fix the issue. This does NOT fix the issue with regular plants. It will grow back on a normal schedule. You can shift-click/cheat the growth stage to maturity and harvestables will produce the next day at 5am in game time

Product: The Sims 4
Platform:PC
Which language are you playing the game in? English
How often does the bug occur? Often but sporadic
What is your current game version number? 1.72.28.1030
What expansions, game packs, and stuff packs do you have installed? All expansion packs, all game packs EXCEPT Journey to Batuu and Vampires, Stuff packs: Paranormal, Tiny Living, Laundry Day, Romantic Garden, Movie Hangout, Cool Kitchen, Perfect Patio, No kits, Free holiday celebration pack
Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? Get some plants - 20+ on my lot - various levels quality, wait until it's time to harvest the plants. Fertilize an unharvested plant. This sometimes produces the error. If it does not, harvest/fertilized other plants. Eventually, you will see the error. Good soil lot trait is currently applied (Not sure if this makes a difference)
What happens when the bug occurs? A single plant or many plants will change from maturity (fully grown and producing harvestables daily) back to the first stage of growth - pile of dirt.
What do you expect to see? The plant growth stage should remain unchanged.
Have you installed any customization with the game, e.g. Custom Content or Mods? Never
Did this issue appear after a specific patch or change you made to your system? Neutral/Not Sure 

[AubreyTW]

@AubreyTW The description says NEEDS SAVES. I can send my save file if helpful.