I really love to create a sim who has a massive garden and partakes in alchemy and wine making; however, with the seasons expansion pack, plants go dormant during... well, it seems like they are dormant constantly, aside from summer. Of course, the lazy game designers forgot they had a greenhouse in the Sims 2 and neglected to put one here. When I tried placing my plants in planters inside, it didn't seem to help...

Any advice? Thank you!

They should actually come out of hibernation when placed in planters inside. If they don't after some time (usually the next day), maybe the Overwatch mod can kick them back to life.

I had someone suggest that I try that mod for other issues I was having; however, the mod kept causing my game to crash, so I had to remove it.

Dumb question: Are you using the right mod for the right patch? Twallan's mods are patch based. If you use the wrong one, they will crash your game. There are exceptions to this rule such as 'nointro'.

I have year round plants for my wine making business without using mods, custom, or store content. You do not even need to use planters if you do not want to.

If you have Into the Future Expansion (ITF) pack there are green rugs that allow you to place plants and trees on them indoors. I build an enclosed glass two story roof top garden on top of my house to accommodate trees and plants. You can use the sky lights that come with ITF for the roof and the ITF wall windows to accomplish this.

Yes. I ensured that I downloaded the mod that fit my version number in the bottom corner of the Sims 3 Game Launcher.

I had the same bug with my plants. Twallan's Tempest helped with that.

For me, they seem to get stuck on dormant after they produce harvestables. So the solution is to set Tempest to 100% chance of killing harvestables. For that, go to the Plants submenu.

You can grow plants indoors on a piece of dirt coloured carpet. Using 'move objects on' you can pick them up and put them indoors into a pretend 'greenhouse'. Or use plants from the Buydebug section. The downside of this is the puddles made when watering as it drives Neat sims bonkers. I know this because I did it in this house I made for MTS nearly five years ago! One of the photos shows plants growing in carpet. No mods, just cheats.