How To Streamline Your Plant Care Routine With ChatGPT
Using AI to organize watering, soil, humidity, and light needs for over 40 houseplants. (I don’t have a problem, you have a problem.)
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Oh, look—another ChatGPT article. Yeah, I’ve read a lot of them, too. Here’s what’s different: there are no grand claims here, no elaborate prompts, and the outcomes won’t get you fired or expelled for relying on AI unless you’re literally a botanist or something. In which case, this will be far less useful for you anyway.
I’ve played around with using Bing for research, Notion AI for blog outlines, and asking whatever silly question comes to mind. But then I realized I could probably use ChatGPT to organize my plant care routine.
If you’re normal, you’re probably thinking, “I mean, it’s one plant, Dylan. How much care could it need? Ten minutes?”
Well, I have 40 Plants and Counting (coming soon to TLC). Many plant enthusiasts exceed that number in their collections, but it’s certainly more than any rational person.
Even for someone who loves his plants, it’s hard to remember which require different soil types, which need high humidity, which prefer to dry out between watering, and which like consistent wetness. I’m famously obsessed with finding life hacks for people with ADHD, so add this to my list.
I’ll walk you through how I did this with my plants, why, and how this strategy could be applied to a more typical collection of plants.
Identifying Your Plants
If you call your plants “that pretty one” or “Brenda” and don’t know their actual names, here’s a tip. Use Google Lens, available on Android and iOS. (There are others, but my screenshots are from a Pixel.)
Even with a meh-quality image, if the app has enough to capture the plant’s characteristics, it’s extremely accurate at identifying them.
