What plant problems are you seeing this season?

[evan23]

Hi everyone, I’m new here. I’m interested in learning which plant problems gardeners are dealing with most often, especially with houseplants, vegetables and fruit plants.

Are people mainly struggling with plant identification, yellow leaves, brown tips, pests, root rot or disease?

If you could use one tool when a plant starts declining, what would you want it to help with most identifying the plant, identifying the problem or explaining what to do next?

I’m working on a plant-health app and would really value honest feedback from experienced gardeners. I’m here to learn and contribute, not flood the forum with promotion.

 

[Meadowlark]

Welcome @evan23

As a member here, you have access to all the thousands of posts made on this forum. By reading and searching through them, you can obtain the info on Id, etc.,etc. that you requested. You could even develop statistics on what things people are struggling with.

The best tool remains the experienced gardeners accumulated knowledge. As yet, I haven't seen anything in the evolving AI world that equals or even approximates that tool.

 

[evan23]

Welcome @evan23

As a member here, you have access to all the thousands of posts made on this forum. By reading and searching through them, you can obtain the info on Id, etc.,etc. that you requested. You could even develop statistics on what things people are struggling with.

The best tool remains the experienced gardeners accumulated knowledge. As yet, I haven't seen anything in the evolving AI world that equals or even approximates that tool.

Thanks for the warm welcome, Meadowlark, You're absolutely right here's no substitute for the wisdom that comes from years of hands on gardening. That accumulated knowledge is exactly what I'm hoping to learn from this community.

I'll definitely be spending time reading through the archives. I'm particularly interested in understanding the gaps where gardeners might benefit from a quick diagnostic tool like when they're dealing with something urgent at odd hours, or when they're newer to gardening and don't yet have that accumulated experience to draw from.

You mentioned you haven't seen AI that approximates experienced gardener knowledge yet I'm curious, what would that ideal tool need to do to actually be useful to you? Is it accuracy? Understanding context like regional differences, soil conditions, etc.? Or is it something else entirely?

I'm here to listen and learn first. If I can contribute by helping research common problems or sharing what I'm learning along the way, I'm happy to do that too.

Looking forward to learning from everyone's posts

 

[Meadowlark]

You mentioned you haven't seen AI that approximates experienced gardener knowledge yet I'm curious, what would that ideal tool need to do to actually be useful to you? Is it accuracy? Understanding context like regional differences, soil conditions, etc.? Or is it something else entirely?

Accuracy is probably the largest shortcoming I see....and without it a tool isn't worth much. I find plant IDs via AI are not reliable...less than 50% accuracy. Often if you run the same info more than once, you will get a different answer. Not just plants either....I find that butterfly ID's and pollinating insects IDs are very inaccurate via AI. That is really unfortunate because an accurate tool would be really valuable.

If the AI doesn't have adequate photos and/or other info, then I would much rather it say "I don't know" than give responses that sound like certain when in fact they are far from certain.

Regional differences are critical in gardening...all aspects of gardening. Here AI does better than the IDing function mentioned above but it still has a way to go to capture the local knowledge that is so critical to successful gardening.

My gardening is sometimes referred to "organic" gardening an overused and often misleading term. In this aspect, I find AI has a pretty good knowledge base. Soil nutrient levels (micro and macro) needed for given plants, ph, watering, light, etc. are all well represented in its knowledge base.

AI is absolutely outstanding in research tool role...that is research on various aspects of gardening. It presents the info to you in seconds that would otherwise take days. For that alone it is worth having and using.

Just some of my thoughts.

p.s. by way of background, in my other life, my professional one, I managed a group of scientists investigating the development of applications of AI to human spaceflight. I know just enough to be dangerous regarding AI.

 

[evan23]

This is incredibly helpful...thank you for taking the time to lay this out so clearly