After playing with this for a while I realise that using high mining speed shovels to mine a flower often results in dirt blocks being mined in the time it takes me to react to the flower having been collected.. I'm going to change this again.
Let me know if there are other Plants that could use this treatment, Junrall asked here for the rest of the plants to be done and I assumed that meant flowers, but I did not account for the more useful nature of flowers being impacted, as well as the inconvenience I mentioned above. 

I'm conflicted, because I believe that collecting the plant and the roots by digging it up makes sense, maybe I would have to add a right-click function to the shovel to allow it to dig up a plant without the potential to dig the soil afterwards. I might look into that but im yet to code anything beyond pretty basic JSON stuff.. Thanks all for the feedback!

I can appreciate the desire for a config file but I don't know how to do that yet! I will look into it but I cant make any promises! 🖖

this mod would be perfect with some config options and an alternative crafting recipe (plant+knife=grass) so we can still obtain ferns and flowers quickly, say, for alchemy mod. i deleted flower patch to suit my needs for alchemy, but a config option would be even better!

To be honest, after considering the options I've decided that I like the implementation of the shovel to retrieve the plant intact. I may leave it as it is, but you should still be able to use mod version 1.1 if you would like to avoid the change to flowers. 🙂

The_Box
I'm not sure, I'm still very new to modding this game so I'm not sure how that would work. You could continue to use version 1.1, which lacks the change to Flowers and still works with the current game version, but I dont know if the game tries to automatically update the mod or not.. I could probably make bare hands the method for collecting the ferns and flowers instead of a shovel. But I will try looking into how adding a config file for the mod would work.

I could even change just the flowers to be collectable with bare hands while the ferns can just be discarded by digging with the hands. 🤔

Candid Is there any way to add a config file or setting to this?  I love ferns finally being marginally less useless, but the result now is that I have to take extra steps if I want to go out flower picking for my bees.

Happy to help!

Thanks A LOT, i really wanted this.

Candid

Thanks! I figured you were on hiatus... but that was good because it got me off my lazy butt to learn something new!

I like your implementation better as it feels "right" haha

Hi! I have been taking a break from modding, while checking in on the progress of the game now and then, as well as browsing the mods for anything new.

Junrall I saw your mod, Plants to Grass, and the nature and name of it reminded me of my own mod, so I decided to check here just to see your comment!. Congratulations on making your first mod! 😁 I may still make this change you suggest, it is a good addition and I have been considering getting back into modding as well as the game in general!

Thank you to all users of my mods, as small as they may be. You all help me to explore a passion of mine, and I am happy to be helpful. 💚

Any chance of doing this for the rest of the plants?

Thanks!

Fantastic, simple and very much common sense. Without this mod literally the only good thing about ferns is that they don't get covered in snow which lets you harvest them faster to get rid of them as soon as possible. Thank you.

I will look into that. Done!

Is there a chance of making them turn into grass when harvested with Scythe as well?

Happy to help! 👍

Yeeeeeeees, thank you so much for this! I hate having piles of ferns that I have to just throw away, so being able to use them for dried grass is fantastic.