Just wondered what people's thoughts were on a number of things:
- is it worth pruning a healthy part of a plant in order to reveal flowers? One example would be on a maple, where one branch obscures another (and how about when one flowering branch covers another flowering one?)

- is it worth pruning pipe cacti into the classic two-armed shape? Anyone noticed an effect on the price they're able to sell for?

Cheers for any advice

I've found that it is worth prunign a plant to reveal flowers, they will sell quicker in the nursery that way. And sometimes, even pruning another flower that is in the way!

HOWEVER, if you haven't upgraded your shears, BE CAREFUL!

Each "healthy" prune will remove some plant health, and it is possible to go to far and kill your plant!

What about time of the pruning? Is it best to prune your plants early when they are small or wait until just before they flower?

It depends on the plant. Some are easier to prune at different times. But mostly I try to check for dead leaves when they are almost ready to flower.

But that doesn't help know which leaves (or other flowers!) might be obscuring flowers that the customers want to see.

That is when I usually prune the dead stuff too. I didn't really know how dead leaf pruning affected the plants.
I do prune healthy leaves after flowering. Just the ones that are in the way of flowers.

I changed the image files so that all the dead leaves are a crimson red so its wayyy easy to see them, and as soon as they change color they get cropped. i dont prune anything else from the plant cause it just makes the health go down.

Do you have the golden pruning shears?

You may want to consider zipping those files and make them available as a mod for other fourm users.

As soon as I read that it was like "Doh, what was good for mushrooms in VV is even better for dead leaves" Thanks so much for the wonderful idea.

sfrose is right this should be available as a mod. I think it turned into a very popular one in VV.

RED DEAD LEAVES MODIFICATION



I may have missed a plant or two.. if so let me know which.

Here are the image files for the dead leaves colored in RED:
http://www.box.net/shared/1l3658uj0t

Here are the original (brownish) dead leaf images:
http://www.box.net/shared/13vj9y1mcx

To use this modification is pretty much the same as for all the Plant Tycoon Modifications. Download the zip file, unzip it, copy all the files to your Plant Tycoon Image directory at:

C:\Program Files\Plant Tycoon\Images

To reverse the modification, download the original brown leaves zip file and copy those files to that same directory.

Since box.net will delete files that have not been accessed recently, download them both so you will have them if you need them in the future.

Another choice instead of downloading the brown leaf file is to make a complete backup of your Image directory (call it Copy of Images or something) and use that to overwrite the red dead leaves in the future if you get tired of them.

I'm not the best at explaining things clearly so if you have any questions you can leave them in a response to this thread (if you don't get an answer in 24 hours or so, send me a PM and call me a slacker )