Managing Care Tasks

Managing Care Tasks

TilthIQ's Tasks system automatically generates care reminders for every active planting, helping you stay on top of watering, fertilizing, weeding, pruning, pest inspection, and lifecycle milestones throughout the season.

The Tasks Page

Navigate to Tasks from the main navigation. The page is organized into four tabs:

Due

All tasks due today or overdue. Overdue tasks are highlighted in red. This tab should ideally be empty by the end of each day.

Upcoming

Tasks due in the next 7 to 14 days. Use this tab for planning your week.

History

Tasks you have already marked done, shown in reverse chronological order. Full audit trail of care actions taken across your garden.

Manage

Per-definition configuration plus bulk actions. This is where you edit task intervals on individual definitions, bulk delete, and re-apply settings to existing plantings. See Bulk Actions below.

Task Types

TilthIQ has 16 task types grouped into two families:

Maintenance (recurring)

Task Purpose
Watering Water based on configured interval
Fertilizing Apply fertilizer or compost
Pruning Prune, pinch, train
PestInspection Check for pests
Harvesting Pick ripe produce
Weeding Remove weeds
DiseaseCheck Check for disease signs
Mulching Refresh mulch
Staking Stake or trellis
Thinning Thin seedlings
SuccessionPlanting Plant the next round

Lifecycle Milestones (one-time, annuals only)

Task Purpose
StartSeeds Start seeds indoors
TransplantIndoors Move to larger pots
HardenOff Begin hardening off
TransplantOutdoors Move to the garden
HarvestReady Plant is ready to harvest

Lifecycle milestones are never generated for perennials (trees, shrubs, grasses, vines, groundcovers, succulents) — they don't follow a season schedule.

Marking Tasks Complete

Click the checkmark next to any task to mark it done. Maintenance tasks automatically schedule the next occurrence based on your configured interval.

Per-Plant vs Per-Block Tasks

Task types can apply at two scopes:

Per-planting — one task per planting. Default for most task types. Example: one Watering task per tomato.

Per-block — one task for the whole block. Default for Watering, Fertilizing, PestInspection, Weeding, and Mulching. When you have 24 tomato plants in one block, you get ONE Watering task for the block, not 24. Much less noise.

You can toggle any task type between per-plant and per-block on the Task Settings page (/Planning/TaskSettings). Changing this does not retroactively update existing plantings — use Re-apply (below) for that.

Bulk Actions

Found on the Manage tab. Also available via the Garden AI in natural language.

Re-apply Tasks

Creates any missing task definitions for existing plantings — useful after you change Task Settings. Idempotent: only creates what's missing, safe to run repeatedly.

Scopes:

  • By block — re-apply everything in one block
  • By plant — re-apply for all plantings of a specific plant name
  • Garden-wide — re-apply across every block

You can do this from the Manage tab UI or just ask the AI: "re-apply tasks for B3" / "sync task settings garden-wide".

Bulk Delete Tasks

Removes task definitions (and their instances and logs) in one operation. Destructive — there is no undo.

Modes:

  • By block — every task definition in a block
  • By plant — every task definition for a plant name
  • By block + type — one task type within one block (e.g., "all Watering in B3")

Via the AI: "delete all tasks for B3" / "remove every watering task from the tree row". The AI will echo the deletion plan and wait for your explicit confirmation before calling.

Filtering Tasks

On Due, Upcoming, and History tabs you can filter by:

  • Task type — one type at a time
  • Garden block — one section of the garden
  • Plant — all tasks for a specific plant

Task History

Every completed task records:

  • When it was completed
  • Which planting or block it applied to
  • Who completed it (in team gardens)

Click any task in History to jump to the source planting.

Tip: On busy days when you can only tend part of the garden, use the block filter to focus your view on just the beds you are visiting. Complete the visible tasks, then return to the full view later.