She gives him her full attention while he talks, and then nods her understanding and turns to the plants. It takes a few minutes of poking around to find the problem, and unfortunately it's not a problem she can walk away from to fix.

"Part of this mechanism here," she indicates the broken part she's holding together to make things work properly, "cracked and isn't distributing the chemical levels properly. We have more, but I can't let go of this to get it. They're in the top cabinet over there on the far right, could you get one for me?"

Also looking at the height of the indicated cabinet shows that she's too short to reach it without a chair.