How to keep a plant watering log
You pick up the watering can, then stop. Did you water the plant by the window yesterday, or was that the one on your desk? A plant watering log gives each plant its own record, so you can check what happened before deciding what to do next.
The useful starting point is a name, a date and a short observation. You can keep that in a notebook, a note on your phone or Last Time, which also counts the days since each entry.
Give each plant a name you can find
“Water plants” works if you always tend to the whole collection together. If you water them separately, use separate entries. Location makes a good label when you have several similar plants: “Water desk pothos” and “Water living room pothos” are easier to distinguish than “Pothos 1” and “Pothos 2”.
Add a cover photo in Last Time if that helps you recognise the pot. Keep repotting and feeding as separate events when you want their dates to stay independent of watering.
A simple watering-log example
These are example records, not watering instructions or recommended intervals.
| Entry | What to record in a note |
|---|---|
| Water desk pothos | The date watered and what you noticed before watering |
| Water bedroom fern | Whether you moved it to a different spot |
| Water kitchen cactus | Which pot you watered if several are grouped together |
| Repot living room plant | New pot size and the mix you used |
A useful note describes something you will want to compare later. “Moved away from the window” tells you more than “Looks fine” when you review the history a month later.
Record watering when it happens
Add your first event with the most recent watering date you actually know. If you cannot remember it, start recording the next time you water rather than entering a guessed date as fact.
After watering, mark the event done. Last Time starts counting again and keeps the earlier entry in the history. Add an observation to that entry when something changed: a new location, a different pot or time spent away from home.
If you check the plant but do not water it, leave the watering counter alone. Otherwise, it will show the date you checked rather than the date you watered. You can create a separate “Check plants” event if you want to record both activities.
Use the record as context
The log answers when you last watered. It does not determine whether a plant needs water today. Use care guidance for that plant and its current conditions to make that decision; an average gap in the app is simply a summary of your recorded dates.
For a one-off date check, the days-since calculator can do the subtraction. To keep a record across repeated waterings, add your plants to Last Time.
If someone else looks after your plants while you are away, agree on how they will leave a record of what they did. Last Time’s iCloud sync is for devices using the same iCloud account; it is not a shared household handover system.