Photograph the labels, and we set the plants up
Partly live · Every plant in one run goes to the same place — you can move any of them afterwards. It reads the printed label, not the plant, so a plant with no label is still added by hand.
On the Add a plant screen, tap Photograph the labels and we will read them. Photograph each plant's nursery label — the printed tag that came with it — one at a time; each one is read as you take it and appears in a list underneath. When you have done them all, tap That is all of them and you get one row per label: the crop, the variety printed on the tag, and the rootstock if the tag named one. Drop anything that is wrong, say where they are going, and tap Add. Nothing is saved to your garden until you tap that button. A label that will not read says so and costs you nothing else — the other plants in the run are unaffected.
What it is for
You bought seven fruit trees. Each one came with a printed nursery label that already says the crop, the variety and — for a tree — the rootstock. Typing all that in seven times is the app asking you to do its job.
Open Add a plant and tap Photograph the labels and we will read them.
How it goes
One label at a time, in front of the plant. The camera comes back after each one, so you work through the pile at your own pace. Each label is read as you take it and appears in a list underneath — Apple · Honeycrisp, or Could not read that label.
There is nothing to plan first. A garden walk asks you to lay out a route before you set off, because a walk is a route. This is a pile of plants, so stopping after four is a finished run, not an abandoned one.
Then you check it. Tap That is all of them and you get one row per label with its photograph beside it. Drop anything wrong, say where they are going, and tap the button. Until you tap it, nothing has been saved to your garden.
What we do with what the label said
- The crop is matched against our plant database, and that is what gives the plant its dates, its harvest window and its frost warnings. If we do not hold that crop, the row says so rather than guessing at a near-enough one.
- The variety is stored exactly as the tag printed it, and it goes into the plant’s name — Apple · Honeycrisp — because knowing which one you bought is why you photographed the tag.
- The rootstock is stored on the plant when the tag names one. It is the thing that decides how big the tree gets, and it is printed on the label and almost nowhere else.
- Each plant is recorded as bought already growing, because that is what a nursery label means, and its planting date is today.
What it will not do
It will not guess a variety. If the tag is smudged where the variety was printed, you get the crop and no variety, rather than a plausible one. A wrong variety is worse than a missing one: it moves every harvest date that plant will ever have, and nothing later would ever tell you.
It will not read the plant instead of the label. This reads print. Photographing a plant to find out what it is, is a different door — the camera beside the What is it? box on the same screen, which opens a conversation about it.
Common questions
- What does it actually read off the label?
The crop, the variety, the rootstock, and any planting note printed on the tag. So a tag reading Apple — Honeycrisp — on M26 comes back as an apple called Honeycrisp on M26 rootstock. It reads what is printed: it is told never to guess a variety from what the plant looks like, because a wrong variety moves every harvest date that plant will ever have.
- One of my labels came back as unreadable. Did I lose the plant?
No. Your photograph is kept and the run carries on. The row appears in the list saying we could not read it, and the rest of your labels are unaffected — a bad photograph of one tag does not cost you the other six. You can photograph that one again, or add that plant by hand afterwards.
- Does it add the plants straight away?
No, and it never will. You see every row before anything is written — the crop, the variety, and a Keep or Dropped control on each. A wrong identification becomes the record, and every date and warning after it would be computed for a plant you do not own. So the review is the point, not a formality.
- They are going in different places. Can I say that?
Not during the run yet — they all go to one place, and you move them afterwards. Asking where each plant goes seven times would undo the reason for doing seven at once. The screen says so plainly before you save, and moving a plant to another bed is a drag on that bed's plan.
- What if we do not have the crop in our list?
The row says so and cannot be added from here. We will not invent a crop record — every planting date, harvest window and frost warning is computed from it. You can still add that plant by hand, and telling us what it was helps us decide what to add next.
- Does this use my AI allowance?
Yes, one reading per label. Before the camera opens the screen tells you whether you have the allowance and how much photo room is left. If you run out mid-run, the labels already read stay read — and adding plants by hand always works and never uses any.
Shipped 2026-09-09. Last checked 2026-09-09. Something here wrong or out of date? Tell us — support docs going stale is a bug.