How Care Routines Work

The mental model

Routines are rules. When conditions are met, they generate tasks on your dashboard. A routine isn't a task itself; it's the recipe for creating tasks.

Think of it like a recurring calendar event: the routine is the rule ("water tomatoes weekly"), and the task is each individual occurrence that appears on your Coming Up dashboard.

When do tasks appear?

Three conditions must be met for a routine to generate a task:

• Active plant: you have an active plant of that type.
• Season window: the current month falls within the routine's season window.
• Stage condition: if a stage condition is set, your plant must be in the matching lifecycle stage.

If any condition isn't met, no task appears yet. It will once conditions align.

Frequency types

Recurring routines (daily, weekly, every two weeks, monthly, every 3 months) generate a new task each time you complete the previous one.

One-time routines fire once when a specific stage is reached (like "net fruit trees" when fruiting starts).

Seasonal routines are different: see the next section.

Seasonal routines in depth

A seasonal routine generates one task per year with a time window instead of a fixed due date. For example, "Winter prune apple trees (Dec to Feb)" appears once December starts and stays available until the end of February.

It shows as "Available Dec to Feb" rather than a specific date. You do it when the moment is right within that window. Once completed, it won't reappear until next year.

If you miss the window, it shows as overdue. Cross-year windows (like Nov to Feb) work automatically.

Auto-adopted routines

When you add a plant type for the first time, Leaftide automatically adopts recommended care routines for it. These come from a curated library and cover common tasks: watering schedules, fertilising, pruning, pest checks.

You can dismiss or customise any of them.

Dismissing and re-adopting

To dismiss a routine you don't want, use the dismiss option on the task card in Coming Up, or from the plant's Care tab. Dismissed routines won't generate tasks again.

If you change your mind, go to Care Routines, then Recommendations. Previously dismissed routines appear there and can be re-adopted with one tap.

Completed tasks

To see what you've already done this season, go to the Garden Care page. The "Completed This Season" section shows all finished tasks grouped by month. This includes both care routine tasks and one-off tasks you've completed.

Creating your own

You can create custom routines from the Care Routines page. Pick the plant types it applies to, set a frequency (recurring, seasonal, or one-time), and define the season window (which months it's active).

Optionally, add a stage condition: only generate tasks when plants are in a specific lifecycle stage, like flowering or fruiting.