Most people who message us about a sick plant are not GardenBuddy members yet. They found a spotty leaf or a soft patch on a tomato, googled it, got five different answers, and gave up none the wiser. Joining Pro for one problem plant always felt like overkill, so we built something smaller. One photo, one proper answer, five dollars, no account tie in.
What Plant Check actually is
Plant Check is a single garden diagnosis for five dollars, no subscription. Take a photo of whatever is worrying you, a leaf, a fruit, a whole plant that has gone downhill, and upload it. What comes back is the same kind of read our Pro members get every day: a best guess at what the plant is, what is actually wrong with it, how confident we are in that call, and what to do about it this week versus what can wait.
It is built for the person with one problem right now, not a whole season of tracking. Buy it, use it, done. If it turns out you want that kind of check on tap for every bed you grow, Pro membership covers a lot more ground for not much more than the price of a couple of one off checks.
How the read gets made
This is not a keyword lookup against a symptom chart. Every photo gets compared against a library built specifically for Australian home gardens, roughly three dozen pests and diseases that actually turn up in backyard veggie patches here, weighted by what is realistic for your climate zone and whatever you have told us is growing in your beds. That is the difference between a generic answer and one that fits a Dayboro backyard in late winter rather than a UK allotment forum from 2014.
We are upfront about confidence too. Some photos are obvious, and the answer comes back near certain. Others are genuinely tricky, a bit of leaf damage that could be three different things, and in those cases you get the top few possibilities ranked, with the reasoning behind each one, plus a note on what a second photo would need to show to settle it. That is closer to how a good nursery hand would actually talk you through it than a flat single verdict pretending to be more certain than the evidence allows.
An actual Plant Check report
Talking about it in the abstract only goes so far, so here is a real one. A grower uploaded a photo of four harvested potatoes sitting in a bowl, skins showing dark spotting and pitting. This is the report that came back, unedited.
1 photo, potato tubers
Plant: Solanum tuberosum (Potato) 95% confidence
Four potato tubers displayed in a bowl. All show yellow to pale skin with brown, dark surface spotting and pitting. One tuber shows more pronounced discolouration. No cross section visible to check the flesh.
- Brown, dark spotting on tuber skin
- Spread across several tubers in the batch
- Combination of lesions and pitting
- Rough, pitted skin texture
- Irregular marks consistent with feeding damage
- Pattern also fits natural lenticels or minor soil contact
Health score: 60 / 100
What to do this week
- Check the plant’s foliage, if it is still in the ground, for brown lesions with rings on the lower leaves. Remove any infected leaves straight away.
- Cut one tuber lengthwise and check the flesh for dark lesions or rings. Discard it if you find them, store the rest cool and dry, away from the affected ones.
Longer term
- Next planting, start from certified disease free seed potatoes and rotate the bed. Avoid overhead watering, it spreads blight spores.
To firm this up: a close up of one tuber cut lengthwise, or a photo of the foliage while it was still growing, would push that top read past 80%.
Suggested read. Verify before applying any treatment, tuber spotting has more than one cause.
Notice what it did not do. It did not hand back one confident sounding word and call it a day. Early blight was the strongest read at 65%, but slug damage and simple storage marks were both still on the table, ranked honestly, with the exact follow up photo that would settle it. That is the standard we hold every Plant Check to.
How to use it
Snap it
Good natural light, close enough to see the actual problem. Up to three photos if you have angles worth showing.
Pay once
Five dollars, no ongoing subscription. Takes a minute at checkout.
Get your report
Usually within seconds. Read it, act on it, done.
Got one plant bothering you right now?
You do not need a membership to get a straight answer on one problem plant. Upload a photo, pay five dollars, get the same standard of read shown above.
Garden Buddy, subtropical vegetable growing at Dayboro, QLD.
Published 31 August 2026. Last updated 31 August 2026.
