[Caren Katsmom]

I have flowers on almost every farm. I own the red sprinkler, and have the brown sprinkler just to water flowers. Before the new update, using the brown sprinkler with flowers showing would water all the flowers, but have no effect on the red sprinkler; so I could plant crops on that same farm a short time later, and irrigate them (speed up growth) using the red sprinkler. They worked independently.

This is what I've experienced since the new update:

Watering flowers using the brown sprinkler... The flowers got watered. They were ready to harvest, and displayed as ready to harvest. After watering the flowers only, the RED sprinkler started to display "Mobile Sprinkler - Irrigate again in 20 hours." So did the brown one. The name of the farm, on the farm selector, now included (F,W) -- as if I'd used the red sprinkler to speed up crop growth (but didn't). I harvested the flowers, hid flowers, and closed the game.

Irrigating crops using the red sprinkler... I reloaded the game after hiding flowers and returned to the farm I'd just used the brown sprinkler on (to water flowers). Now BOTH Mobile Sprinklers displayed NO timer message, suggesting that either sprinkler could be used right away, even though I had just used the brown one recently. I planted crops on the farm. I clicked on the red sprinkler, and clicked it on the farm. It irrigated the crops. BUT... only part of the crops displayed the sped-up growth time. I started counting how many of each, and the count kept changing. It seems that the some of the individual crop squares are alternating between full time and half time to grow (display), near the dividing line between the two displays. Overall, it's about half of each -- left side, irrigated and right side, not irrigated. I won't know the end result for a couple of days... whether the display itself is inaccurate, or if half the crops are really not irrigated (not sped up).

This is a mess, so I've called it a Sprinkler Fiasco. I know the development team works hard to fix problems, and I hope they are already working on this very big problem... and it will get fixed quickly.

Edit: I just checked on the new growth of the flowers on the same farm, which was irrigated by the red sprinkler. Interestingly, ALL the flowers are displaying the sped-up growth times -- even though only about half of the crops have been sped up on that same farm. More information for the development team, as they work to fix this problem... By the way, this was all done on my farm 13. My farms are linked, if the team wants to observe the half-irrigated, half-non-irrigated status of the crops.

MORE to share... The "Farm 11 Experience"...

Okay, this farm also has flowers on it. The flowers were unwatered (dry) but ready to harvest, and I had no crops planted yet. This time I planted a 3 day crop before I watered the dry flowers. Then I clicked to show flowers. I have the new display choice checked, to hide non-relevant items when I pick up a tool. So I picked up the brown sprinkler to see if it would hide the crops. NO, it didn't. Both crops and flowers showed. I picked up the red sprinkler. Same thing... both crops and flowers remained visible. So the sprinklers do not have the "hide non-relevant items" feature enabled -- OR all sprinklers are recognizing both crops and flowers as relevant. This could be important. So next, with both crops and flowers showing, I used the BROWN sprinkler. The flowers were watered, showing ready to harvest. The crops were not affected (on display), but the farm name on the farm selector started to include (F,W) again. I had to reload the farm to harvest the flowers, because when I picked up the flower harvester tool, everything (including the flowers) disappeared. Upon reloading the farm, picking up the harvester showed me only the flowers. I harvested the flowers and put the tool down. So then... with harvested (fully watered) flowers showing AND newly-planted crops showing, I picked up the RED sprinkler. It was displaying "Irrigate again in 19 hours" but I ignored that message, and tried to click on my farm without reloading the game this time. Sure enough, the red sprinkler worked... and this time, it irrigated ALL of the crops on farm 11. ALL the flowers also displayed the sped up growth times. Was this due to my displaying BOTH flowers and crops together, when I used the red sprinkler??? I don't know... but I hope the development team can use this information to find out.

"The Farm 10 Experience" -- I duplicated the same process I used on farm 11. I used the brown sprinkler to water the dry flowers on farm 10... reloaded farm 10 so the flower harvester would display the flowers (using the "hide non-relevant items" feature)... harvested the flowers... observed that my farm name on the selector included (F,W) even though I'd only used the brown sprinkler... hid the flowers and reloaded farm 10... planted crops on farm 10... clicked to show flowers again, along with showing crops at the same time... observed the message "Irrigate again in 19 hours" over my red sprinkler, but ignored that message... clicked my red sprinkler on the flowers and crops together. The result was the same as with farm 11. ALL the crops were irrigated (sped up growth) and ALL the flowers were irrigated, too. It appears that the "workaround" for getting all crops to irrigate on a farm that has flowers on it is to SHOW the flowers before you use the red sprinkler to irrigate the crops. If you have an orange (or any color) sprinkler, you might have to show the trees, too, for all crops to become irrigated (sped up). Next I'm going to find out what happens on a farm that has NO flowers on it...

The Farms 15 and 16 Experience.... These farms have NO flowers on them. I planted crops on each farm, and used the red sprinkler to irrigate the crops on them. ALL crops are irrigated (sped up growth). EDIT: NO! I was wrong about this! I reloaded the game a short time ago, and all crops on these two "non-flower" farms have reverted back to the original, non-irrigated times to grow! My red sprinkler will not let me re-irrigate them. So it appears that only farms WITH flowers on them can be successfully irrigated, even partly, right now!

Conclusion: The problems with irrigation (speeding up growth) of crops appears to be directly related to having, or not having flowers on the same farm. Any farm without flowers on it does NOT stay irrigated; all crops revert to non-irrigated time status after reloading the game. All farms that have flowers on them CAN be irrigated (sped-up crop growth with red sprinkler). After using the brown sprinkler to water the flowers, the red sprinkler will always display "Irrigate again in 20 hours (or however many hours)" - but this is just an error in the display. In fact, the red sprinkler CAN be used to irrigate crops. If the red sprinkler is used on crops while flowers are hidden, then only part of the crops will be irrigated (sped up). If the red sprinkler is used on crops with both crops and flowers showing, then ALL the crops will become irrigated (growth sped up). All flowers will have growth sped up, whether showing or not when the red sprinkler is used. After reloading the game several times, the farms that I irrigated (red sprinkler) with flowers showing are still displaying the sped-up growth times on all crops and flowers.

I hope more people post their experiences with watering flowers and irrigating crops, and also what happens to trees (for people who own the orange and newer sprinklers)... because that will help the development team figure out where the problem lies.