Quote Originally Posted by Jojoya View Post
Anytime you have things growing and know you'll be unable to play for a day (or more), put the garden patches or flowerpots into storage. The growth timer is paused while they're in storage and resumes when you place them back in your yard or house/apt/FC room.
In my case I had last tended to the plants sometime on Sunday. I was planning to play on Monday too, but completely forgot that the downtime for major patches is 24 hours and was unable to log on. On Tuesday after servers opened I was too focused on gathering and crafting the new stuff. And in the evening when I finally remembered the plants they had died.

So yeah, I could have put the garden patches in storage on Sunday. But I wasn't planning to be away, rather the downtime prevented me from tending the plants. If I had remembered the downtime I could just as well have logged on on Monday morning before downtime to tend them then logged off in my yard so I would have remembered them on Tuesday too.