NatureThe BestieBeginner
Gardening: Keeping Your Plants Alive, a free nature course on Tomo

Gardening: Keeping Your Plants Alive

Like Duolingo, but for Gardening: Keeping Your Plants Alive. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.

For the part of you with thirty open tabs that never became anything.

A short one: 12 levels across 2 sections, about 24 minutes end to end, roughly 5 days at five minutes a day. It moves through The Survival Essentials and Troubleshooting and Growth. It starts from scratch.

12 bite-size levelsAbout 5 minutes each

Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android

Gilly the Gopher, the guide who teaches the Gardening: Keeping Your Plants Alive course
Gardening: Keeping Your Plants Alive
with Gilly the Gopher
12
Levels
2
Sections
5
Min/day
What you'll learn

Key ideas in Gardening: Keeping Your Plants Alive

  • Visual cues like dry-looking soil can be misleading
  • Roots need oxygen to survive
  • The finger test involves checking moisture two inches below the surface
  • Saturated soil pushes out air pockets, effectively drowning the plant
  • Surface soil dries faster than the soil near the roots
  • Overwatering is more common and harder to recover from than underwatering
  • Applying the finger test to determine watering needs
  • Understanding that overwatering is a primary cause of plant death via root suffocation
  • Excess water must have an exit path to prevent it from pooling at the bottom
  • Wet leaves provide a breeding ground for fungal spores
  • Standing water at the base of a pot causes roots to decay
  • Identifying the correct technique to prevent leaf-based fungal issues
  • Recognizing the necessity of drainage holes for container health
  • Morning watering allows leaves to dry quickly
  • Necessity of drainage holes
  • Midday watering leads to evaporation and scorch
Why not just Google it

You've tried the other tabs

Wikipedia

Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.

YouTube

You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.

ChatGPT

One answer, then back to scrolling.

Online courses

Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.

Tomo gives Gardening: Keeping Your Plants Alive the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.

Try a question

Here's what playing it feels like

A real question from this course. Take your best guess.

The Secret Life of Roots

Besides water and nutrients, what do plant roots absolutely need from the soil to survive?

Get it right to open this lesson and 11 more in the app.

Course map

Where Gardening: Keeping Your Plants Alive takes you

Stop the cycle of wilted leaves and empty pots. This course focuses on the most common mistakes beginners make and how to fix them before it's too late.

  1. 1

    The Survival Essentials

    • Watering Without Drowning
    • Finding the Right Light
  2. 2

    Troubleshooting and Growth

    • Reading Your Leaves
    • The Foundation of Soil

2 sections · 4 units · 12 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.

How it's taught

You pick the voice

This course
The Bestie

Gardening: Keeping Your Plants Alive is taught in the The Bestie style: your friend who just gets it. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.

Start free

Start Gardening: Keeping Your Plants Alive today.

Download Tomo, search Gardening: Keeping Your Plants Alive, and play your first lesson in under a minute.