Free plant check
Photograph a plant, a pest, or a leaf that has gone the wrong colour, and GardenBuddy Check tells you what it is most likely looking at and what to do next. The advice is tuned to your climate zone, not to a northern hemisphere growing season.
You need a free account to use it. That is an email address and a password, no card, no cost, and it takes about a minute. The account is what the check is counted against, which is how you get one free every month instead of one ever. Already a member? Log in and the uploader appears below.
GardenBuddy.au Check
Snap a photo of a plant, a pest or a problem and get a diagnosis tuned to your climate zone. Every member gets one free photo check each month.
Log in to use your free check →
No account yet? Join free.
How it works
Upload one photo, or up to three if the problem is easier to see from more than one angle. A whole plant shot, a close up of the damage, and the underside of a leaf if you think it is a disease. An answer comes back in about five to ten seconds. Where the plant is one of the crops we write guides for, the result links straight to the growing guide for your zone, so you get the treatment and the growing calendar in one go.
What it is good at
Common vegetable garden trouble. Chewed leaves, curled tips, yellowing between the veins, powdery white film, black spot, aphids, caterpillars, scale, fruit fly damage, and the ordinary nutrient problems that show up as a pattern on the leaf. It is at its best on the seventy or so vegetables and herbs most commonly grown in Australian home gardens, which is the list it is allowed to name a plant from. Anything outside that list comes back as unknown rather than as a confident wrong answer.
What it will not do
Three hard limits, and they are deliberate.
It does not identify mushrooms or other fungi. Getting a wild mushroom wrong can kill someone, so it refuses rather than guesses. Note the difference between a mushroom and a fungal disease: powdery mildew, rust and botrytis on your plants are all still answerable.
It does not look at people or animals, and it will not comment on a rash, a bite or a sting. For anything you have eaten or touched, ring the Poisons Information Centre on 13 11 26.
It does not name chemical products or spray rates. Product registration in Australia is specific to the crop, the pest and the state, and it changes. The result tells you what the problem is and what your options are, then you check the current registration on the APVMA register or ask at your local rural supply.
One more thing worth saying plainly. It suggests an identification, it does not certify one. Check the answer against what you can see before you act on it. If it thinks it has found something that could be an exotic pest new to Australia, it stops and tells you to ring the Exotic Plant Pest Hotline on 1800 084 881, because that is a reportable matter and it is not ours to diagnose.
If one a month is not enough
The free check resets on the first of each month. If you need another answer before then, a single Plant Check is $5. If you are checking plants most weeks, Pro includes twenty a month along with the personalised digest and the garden tracking. The pricing page lays out the full ladder.
Ready when you are
Sign up, come back to this page, and the uploader is waiting. Nothing to pay on the free level and no card to enter. If you would rather look around before you join, the planting guides and the grow zone map are open to everyone.