Fokian Fool - I find that most often you have to kill a tree and just replant in its place. Either for quests or for altering the types of trees in your home.
I've been working on the badges and seasoning beans is one of them...I've been also working on the chopping tree badges and tending weedy patches badges so I have been using the beans in my backyard and then (after harvesting the new trees) chopping them down, tending the patches and planting all the new beans I've made - rinse and repeat lol - Getting a lot of the "harder to build up" resources stocked up on this way as well :D
I have 3 trees in my yard that I'm happy with. Don't have the heart to kill any of them off. Especially not the wood tree! And I've harvested it successfully more than six times already. :)
If I'm in Jeth. or Ix looking for gas and spice to harvest, and I see someone erm... 'helpful'? has replaced a precious spice or gas tree with a bean tree, or someone's killed a tree and left an empty patch there. I like to replace it with gas or spice straight away, so that hopefully the next game day I'm there again I'll have something useful to harvest.
Rather than find the nearest garden vendor, I just season a bean there and then, plant, pet and carry on looking for more stuff to harvest.
Sure I guess I could just buy a bunch of seasoned beans to carry around with me, but considering I've usually got tons of beans, spices, bubbles and things in my inventory all the time, from harvesting other areas, it seems easier to just season things as and when I need them, rather than going off vendor hunting.
Plus it's cheaper to season one than to buy one. I just have to make sure I have beer and stuff on hand. All the 150's from buying preseasoned beans would soon add up. Especially when people are encouraged to kill trees, find patches and plant and pet seedlings for quests. Not all are fully aware that certain trees can only grow in certain areas, so I spend a fair bit of game time tidying up after them, as do quite a few others.
Yeah, like Ebil said, essentially easier than carrying around a bunch of already seasoned beans just in case you want to plant a certain type of tree whenever you run into a virgin patch.
to me... seasoning is a way to give you a fun quest.
and heres a way you might need seasoning..
lets say your somewhere faaaaaaaaaaar away from a vendor that sells seeds.
and you dont know Teleportation. how are you going to get seeds? easy. season them.
and you can get a badge for seasoning some beans.
hope this helps.
Also, I know I've seasoned various beans in my house because it was easier to tap my backyard inventory of ingredients than to venture out to a vendor....