My friend Sarah has over 60 houseplants. They all look incredible. Lush, thriving, not a brown leaf in sight.
For years I assumed she just had "the gift." Some people can keep plants alive, some people can't. I was firmly in the second category.
Then I visited her apartment and noticed something on her coffee table: a little notebook filled with dates and plant names. Watering logs. Fertilizing schedules. Notes like "moved to south window, watch for sunburn" and "new leaf coming in, finally!"
"You write everything down?" I asked.
"How else would I remember anything?"
That conversation changed how I think about plant care.
The myth of the green thumb
Here's what I used to believe: good plant parents have an instinct for it. They just know when to water. They sense when something's wrong. It's a gift you either have or you don't.
Here's what I believe now: good plant parents pay attention. They notice things. And most of them, at least the ones I know, keep some kind of record.
The "green thumb" isn't magic. It's observation plus memory. And when you have 10, 20, 60 plants, memory alone isn't enough.
My first attempt at journaling
After that conversation with Sarah, I bought a nice notebook and wrote down every plant I owned. I was going to track everything. This was going to be my transformation into a real plant person.
I lasted about ten days.
The problem was friction. I'd water my plants in the morning before work, and the notebook was in my living room. By the time I got to it, I'd forgotten which plants I'd watered. Or I was running late and figured I'd write it down later. "Later" never happened.
The notebook sat on my shelf for months, the first few pages filled in, the rest blank.
What finally worked
A year later, I tried again. But instead of a notebook, I used an app on my phone.
The difference was huge. My phone is already in my hand half the time. When I watered a plant, I logged it immediately. Two taps, done. No walking to another room, no finding a pen, no "I'll do it later."
The app I use (Beflore, if you're curious) has a widget on my home screen. I don't even have to open the app most of the time. Water the plant, tap the widget, move on.
After the first month, I had actual data. Not guesses. Not "I think I watered this one recently." Real dates I could look back at.
What the journal revealed
Seeing my watering patterns over a few months taught me things I never would have figured out otherwise.
My calathea, the one I kept almost killing, was getting watered every 4-5 days. According to most care guides, that's fine. But when I looked at the timeline, I noticed something: the healthy periods were when I'd gotten busy and watered less frequently. Every time I got attentive and watered more, the plant suffered.
Turns out my apartment is more humid than I realized (bathroom nearby, lots of other plants). My calathea needed water every 7-8 days, not every 4-5. The care guides weren't wrong, they just weren't right for my specific situation.
I only figured that out because I could see the pattern in writing.
The detective work
Last fall, my rubber plant dropped six leaves in two weeks. Panic mode.
Old me would have googled frantically, tried five different fixes at once, and probably made things worse. New me opened my plant journal.
Two weeks before the leaf drop, I'd moved the plant from my bedroom to my living room. A week before, I'd watered it twice (unusual for a rubber plant). The days were getting shorter, which meant less light.
Move + overwatering + less light = stressed plant.
The fix was simple: stop watering so much, give it time to adjust, wait. Six weeks later, new growth appeared.
Without the journal, I would have been guessing. I might have repotted it (stressful, wrong move). I might have fertilized it (also wrong). Instead, I had actual information to work with.
What I track now
I've simplified over time. When I started, I tried to track everything: watering, fertilizing, light conditions, humidity, soil moisture. Too much.
Now I track three things:
Watering. Every time, no exceptions. This is the one that catches most problems.
Fertilizing. Easy to forget, and easy to overdo if you're not keeping count.
Notes when something changes. New leaf, moved to new spot, looking droopy, pest spotted. Just quick observations.
That's it. Takes maybe 30 seconds total throughout the week. Anything more elaborate and I know I wouldn't keep up with it.
Photos are worth keeping
One thing I wish I'd done from the start: take more photos.
Plants change slowly. Day to day, you don't notice much. But comparing a photo from three months ago to today? That's where you see the growth (or the decline).
I try to snap a quick photo of each plant once a month. Nothing fancy, just a phone pic. When something goes wrong, I can scroll back and see exactly when things started looking different.
It's also weirdly satisfying to look back at older photos and see how much a plant has grown. My monstera was so small when I got it. Now it takes up half the corner of my living room.
You don't need an app
I use Beflore because it fits how I work. The widget is fast, the timeline view is helpful, and everything stays on my phone so I don't worry about my plant data floating around on some server somewhere.
But plenty of people use notebooks, spreadsheets, or even notes apps successfully. My friend Sarah still uses her paper notebook after all these years.
The method matters less than the consistency. Whatever you'll actually use is the right choice.
If you've tried notebooks and they didn't stick (like me), an app might work better. If apps feel like too much technology, paper is great. The only wrong answer is tracking nothing at all.
The real benefit
The practical stuff is obvious: you water better, you catch problems earlier, you know what's working.
But there's something else that's harder to explain.
Keeping a journal forced me to actually look at my plants. Not just glance at them as I walk by, but really look. Is that leaf more yellow than last week? Is the soil still moist from three days ago? Are there new roots coming out of the drainage hole?
That attention is what makes the difference. The journal is just a tool that keeps me paying attention.
Sarah doesn't have a magical gift. She has years of paying attention, written down in her notebooks. The plants benefit from that attention, and over time, caring for them becomes more intuitive.
I'm not at her level yet. But my plants are healthier than they've ever been, and I no longer think of myself as having a brown thumb.
Turns out I just wasn't paying attention.
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Download Beflore →If you want to try digital tracking, Beflore is free for up to 10 plants. But a $3 notebook works too. The important thing is starting.