Gardening lets you grow your own crops and flowers on your lot. Plant a seed, keep it watered, and a few days later you can gather produce to cook with, arrange in a vase, or sell to other players.

It's one of the calmer ways to live life in Vitare, and offers you a great way to sell crops and produce to other players!

You need two things, both from the Gardening tab of the build panel.

You can then buy seeds - six kinds are available to you from your very first day: Lettuce, Radish, Tomato, Bell Pepper, Red Flower and White Flower. Everything else unlocks as your Gardening level rises.

Place the planter on your lot, click it, and choose Plant…, then pick a seed to plant it!

Gardening runs from level 0 to level 20. The best way to work on this skill by far is by actually gardening. Watering and gathering both increase your Gardening skill, so simply looking after your crops increases it.

You can also study at a bookshelf, but reading only takes you to level 15. It fills level 15, so the last five levels, and everything they unlock, have to be earned out in the garden.

At level 16 you can buy the Greenhouse!. This 6×8 structure is a proper walk-in building: you can step inside it and place planters, furniture and lighting in there like any other room.

This is a decorative reward and a place to garden in and not give any growth bonus. It's an impressive way to show off your gardening skills!

You need to keep your plants well-watered! Click the planter and choose Water, or Water All from level 7.

Water is measured in real time - not by the game clock. A freshly planted seed starts watered, and from there the water level falls steadily. Most plants take about two real days to run dry from a full watering. The thirstier ones near the top of the skill tree take about one day.

It does not die immediately A dry plant is paused, not lost. You then have a further two full days to water it before it finally wilts. So even the thirstiest crop in the game survives three days of being completely ignored, and the easy ones survive four.

This is to ensure that you are not penalised for real life commitments whilst balancing some challenge with the gardening system.

If a plant does wilt, it cannot be watered to bring it back to life. Choose Remove Plant to clear the slot and start again.

Click the planter and choose Inspect. Every slot tells you where it stands - for example:

Tomato 1  ·  growing   ·  62%  ·  dry in 25h
Tomato 2  ·  DRY, not growing  ·  wilts in 2 days

Yes, but plants and too much water can be both good and bad.

Watering plants that are already 100% watered is already too much for the plant to handle. The excess water in the soil is enough for the plant to effectively drown it. Overwatering causes the plant to wilt and possibly kill it. Fortunately, visitors cannot do this.

Yes - absolutely!

• Lot Owners and Roommates can water your own plants any time, even when they are nearly full. You can also overwater - be careful!
• Visitors can water a plant that has dropped below 85%, so a friend can top up your garden while you are away. They cannot water plants that are already fine, and they cannot gather.

Crops pass through five visible stages and flowers through three. You will see the plant change shape on the planter as it goes.

Growth is measured in real days too and it only counts while the plant has water in it. A plant left dry for a day has not grown that day. It has not lost anything either, it simply picks up where it left off once you water it.

When a plant is ready, the planter menu offers Gather, or Gather All from level 15.

The quality depends on two things: your Gardening skill level and how well that particular plant was looked after across its life. A plant kept watered the whole way through gives better produce than one that spent half its life bone dry.

Produce comes out as standard, fine or excellent, and better tiers could be sold for more if you chose to do so!

Take any crop to a fridge and choose Cook Meal with… to pick which crop to use. Cooking with a crop makes the meal better than cooking without one, and higher-level crops make better meals than beginner ones.

Buy a Flower Vase, place it, click it and choose Arrange Flowers.

Arrangements stay fresh for about three days and then wilt, at which point you can clear the vase and arrange fresh ones.

Produce stalls let you sell what you grow to other players at a price you set yourself.

Place one on your lot, click it, and stock a slot with produce from your inventory and a price you choose. Anyone visiting your lot can buy it, and any lot category can use these - not just shops.