Leaf Journal
The six things33

Module 6 · Putting it together — a plant you can keep alive

Put it all together

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The capstone

Keep one plant alive for 30 days, on purpose

The whole course, proven on one real plant. You will pick a forgiving plant, put it in a spot you have actually measured, water it by the check instead of the calendar, walk past it once a week, and log the lot. Thirty days later you will not just have a living plant — you will know exactly why it lived, which is the thing that finally kills the black-thumb story for good.

  1. 1.Pick a forgiving plant — pothos, snake plant, zz or cast-iron — that matches the light you can offer.
  2. 2.Do the light audit and place it in an audited spot, in an airy free-draining mix in a pot with a drainage hole.
  3. 3.Set a check-based watering habit: finger check before every water, water thoroughly only when dry, empty the saucer.
  4. 4.Do the weekly walk — look, turn a few leaves over, and note anything different — on the same day each week.
  5. 5.Log every check for 30 days: date, what you noticed, what you did, so the record shows the routine working.

How you know you have got it

The plant is placed by measured light:
You can name the plant's spot, its window direction and its shadow-test light level, and it matches what the plant wants.
Watering is driven by the check, not a schedule:
Every watering in your log was preceded by a finger check, and you can say roughly how many days this plant takes to dry.
The weekly walk happened every week:
There are at least four weekly walk entries across the 30 days, each with a genuine one-line observation.
You caught or ruled out trouble early:
Your log shows you checked leaf undersides and either found nothing or spotted and acted on an issue while it was still small.