I'm creating a greenhouse and haven't seen the answers in the FAQ gardening thread so I figure I'd ask. How many sun lamps do I need for the greenhouse? Do I have to buy a sun lamp for every square of dirt, or does it have a "range" of x by x squares of light that it covers?

Also, I've read somewhere that you don't need Lady Bug Lofts if you have a greenhouse, and then read somewhere else that you need them. I'm confused now - do you need them inside greenhouse or no?

Thanks in advance!

I don't have sunlamps in my greenhouses and they work fine. You need sunlamps to grow things inside, especially plantsims.

You don't need a ladybug house inside a greenhouse. Somehow the bad bugs can't find their way inside.

I don't really get the point of ladybug houses. Is it that they eventually absorb the bugs so you don't have to kill them with poison that is bad for the tree? I always add one if I have trees outside, but it doesn't feel like it decreases the number of bugs I get, but a while back I happened to see what looked like the bugs vanishing into the bug house.

Oh you don't need sun lamps at all if it's a greenhouse? Wow, that would save me a ton of simoleons. Good to know once the greenhouse is built it blocks everything haha.

Thank you; that was very helpful!

Ladybugs eat bad bugs. Irl, gardeners love them for this reason.

If you have enough ladybugs, they will eat the undesirable bugs. It may take a couple of days for them to do the job, unlike pesticide which will kill bugs right away but which also takes away from the health of the plant and, if used often enough, can turn the spraying Sim into a Plantsim. If you've got a big garden plot, you need more ladybug houses, though. It seems to me that one will cover a 3x3 garden plot or two fruit trees close together. But that's just a "seems to me," mind you. I don't really know for sure.

Enough lady bug houses should practically eliminate bugs that need spaying. I'm not how far they are affective too, but I find one either end of a 6x1 long garden beds works well.
I've only occasionally had green houses and simply put down lady bug houses out of habit as I like how they look even if they are not needed.

I see. A few days is too long for me, so I think I'll stick to spraying it and then talking the tree happy =P But it's nice to know how it works at last =)

Pesticide is easier! Unfortunately, some of my farming Sims are organic farmers, which means no pesticide (even if bugs ruin an entire crop) and only compost for fertilizer. So they're stuck with ladybugs. And I only allow Plantsims to talk to plants because otherwise gardening is just way too easy. My dedicated farmers will have a gold badge in about a Sim-week, if not earlier.

I find gardening quite easy even if you don't talk to plants. I pretty much always harvest highest quality crops from plot-plants, and I very very rarely have Sims talk to them. It's the trees that are difficult to me, because there isn't as many opportunities to care for them as there is with other plants. Because I use Paladins produce packer I want my things to be highest quality, otherwise they get a free bonus, so that way they at least have to put in some effort with the trees.

Might go for organic farming in some houses, and have pest control be forbidden. Nice idea =)

I always use ladybug houses. Put them out at the same time you place the trees so they can get on the bugs right away, there's seldom more than a day lag before you can click on the tree without seeing the "spray" interaction. I never understood putting poison on something you planned to eat!

Yep, I only use sun lamps for plantsims. (I find them easy to play with them, and a real challenge without. Luckily I only had one at the start of this BACC, when they were without electricity.)

Gardens that are not in greenhouses (most of them) get ladybug houses. Generally in the middle of garden squares surrounding them.

Wait... If you wanna use a greenhouse during winter, don't you need the sun lamps?

My greenhouses produce year round without sunlamps. They have snow piled halfway up the sides and keep right on going. The whole point of greenhouses is that the glass walls and roof not only admit sunlight, they amplify it and the heat from it. You'd only need sunlamps in greenhouses in winter in areas where the days are too short for the plants you're growing - and the light change between sim winter and summer is not that great.

Thanks Peni! As usual you are super helpful

Now I wont have to spend simoleons on those insanely pricy lamps!

If you WANT to use them, though, I do believe (though I'm not sure; haven't used greenhouses in a long time) that they speed up the harvest, the idea being that they're turned on at night, so that the plants get "double sun," in a sense. But yeah, you pay for that, definitely.

Mostly, I use the sunlamps for Plantsims, not for plants. Especially vampire Plantsims. Hang one over the coffin, turn it on, and the vampPlant survives perfectly well without ever seeing the sun.

The ladybugs don't work anyway. I tried having plants outside and had the area completely surrounded by ladybug houses, and they STILL got bugs and the bugs wouldn't go away without spraying.

They work for me. Perhaps you're too impatient?

They work for me, too. But no matter how many houses you have, they don't prevent or immediately take care of bug invasions. Undesirable bugs will still happen, but if you're patient, the ladybugs will always triumph over the undesirable bugs. At least in my experience. But it can take a day. Or three. So, if you're impatient by all means spray away, but if on the other hand you want to have organic gardeners/farmers who don't pollute their environment, then just wait and it'll work.

That said, I don't think having a ton of ladybug houses speeds up the bug mitigation at all. So, if you have 1 per 3x3 plot (or whatever the optimal ratio is) or a house in every square, the effect is the same. You need just enough for the space. Extras won't do you any good.

As for the sunlamps...I'm now curious as to whether or not you could hang one on nothing outside (maybe using move_objects) and get the benefits without the greenhouse. It'd look ridiculous, but....

I just put everything in a greenhouse because both spray and bugs do a number on plant quality. Isn't it down to horrible condition, if not dead after more than about a day of bugs? Yeah, that's certainly way too long to wait. More than an hour or so is too long the way the game does time.

I've never had bugs kill plants. The only time I've had plants die is on a couple of occasions when I've forgotten that they were on the lot and I didn't have someone water them and it didn't rain. (Rain will water plants outside, but not, I believe, in greenhouses, so if you only use greenhouses you have to be diligent about watering.) I'm not saying that bugs CAN'T kill plants, just that I've never had it happen, likely because I pretty much always use ladybug houses. (IRL, I am vehemently against pesticide use and prefer natural means of pest control like ladybugs. And bats, for mosquitoes. So, I can't bring myself to use it in-game much. ) The ladybugs have always taken care of undesirables before the plant dies so long as the plant is otherwise taken care of. (i.e. watered)

Sometimes, the ladybugs have taken four days or so to "win," so yes, sometimes the plant quality will go down quite far during that time. There's often plenty of time to get it back up before harvest. If not...Oh well, such is life. IMO, anyway. You need to play the game the way you want to play it, of course. But, like I said, I don't like pesticide in real life, and I don't particularly want it in my game, either.

I water them everyday since they're in the greenhouse. I know another thing without a greenhouse is since it rains all the time they end up getting overwatered if outside, too. Plus you can make a greenhouse without a door so the gardener stays out and only works on flowers/shrubs so your sims can build gardening skill and improve the plants more if they're up to at least silver badge.

Rains all the time? Tell that to my farming community that's currently experiencing a drought so they're on water restrictions. Seriously, I have the seasons in that community set as spring-summer-summer-fall, and it rained on the first day of spring. Currently it's almost the end of summer (meaning, the second summer), and it hasn't rained a drop. No rain all growing season, and it's been hot (which means plants need more water), and with water restrictions, they can't water as much (or bathe as much ). So their crops (and their personal relationships ) are suffering.

But no, I know what you mean. Sometimes if I've just watered and then it decides to downpour for a day, the plants will end up overwatered. It doesn't seem to affect them much, though, maybe makes quality go down a little, but once the rain stops and the overwatered state goes away, they bounce back quickly.

In my game it rains pretty much every day in spring and summer, until I get fed up and use the weather machine to force clear skies.

Yes, this is suppose to happen. The idea is to imitate a real organic garden and just like in a real organic they do not always work perfectly. But notice that your fruits in the end is just as good or, not experiment with this, better. Note that I only use lady bug houses on fruit trees. Do not loose patience and spray. Just ignore the bugs.

I asked about houses on MTS long ago and people were so nice to me I made this avatar I have had ever since. See my thread: http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=483276