Gardening is mostly low-risk. The parts that aren’t are worth knowing before you dig, spray, or harvest. Here’s what this site will and won’t tell you, and where to go instead.
In an emergency, call. Don’t read.
This site is not an emergency service. If a person or an animal has eaten something from the garden, call.
- People: Poison Control, 1-800-222-1222, free and staffed around the clock. Call 911 for trouble breathing, unconsciousness, or a seizure.
- Pets: your vet or the nearest emergency animal hospital. The ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center is 1-888-426-4435, also 24 hours; a consultation fee may apply.
- Bring the plant, or the bag the mulch came in. Identification changes the treatment.
Plants, children, and pets
Assume nothing in an ornamental bed is food. The hazards that come up most often are ordinary things sitting in reach.
- Cocoa bean mulch holds theobromine and caffeine, the compounds that make chocolate dangerous to dogs, and it smells like dessert. Dogs that eat it can vomit, tremble, or seize. Use another mulch where dogs go. (Poison Control)
- Bone meal, blood meal, and iron products smell like food to a dog. Bone meal can set into a cement-like mass in the gut; iron is toxic in quantity. Work them into the soil and store the bag out of reach.
- Ornamental bulbs are not onions. Daffodil bulbs get mistaken for onions every year, and daffodils are toxic. Label the bag; keep bulbs away from food.
- Check before planting. The ASPCA keeps a searchable toxic and non-toxic plant list for dogs, cats, and horses.
Articles here give the fact and a link to a poison authority. Whether a mouthful was enough to matter is a call for Poison Control or a vet.
No plant ID, no foraging, no mushrooms
This site does not identify plants and never covers foraging, wild edibles, or mushrooms. A wrong identification can kill an adult, and the deadliest lookalikes are the ones beginners find convincing. A photo drops what matters: smell, spore print, the base of the stalk. Take specimens to your state Cooperative Extension service, a university herbarium, or a mycological society. Find your land-grant university in the USDA NIFA directory. Medicinal and herbal uses are out of scope too: no health claims, no remedies.
Pesticides and herbicides: the label is the law
Read the label on the product in your hand and follow it exactly. Registered US pesticide labels carry the line “It is a violation of Federal law to use this product in a manner inconsistent with its labeling.” Under FIFRA, off-label use is a federal violation, and the label sets who may apply it, where, how much, and how often. (EPA)
So this site publishes no rates, dilutions, tank mixes, or off-label uses, including for products sold as organic. Labels differ by formulation and change between versions; a number copied off a website is the wrong number for your bottle.
Homemade sprays are out here too. A kitchen-cupboard mixture has no label behind it, no tested rate, and no safety data; it can scorch foliage or irritate the skin and eyes of whoever mixes it, and there is no tested amount anyone can honestly give you. Keep anything you do apply off open blooms and away from foraging bees.
Growing food safely
- Never build a food bed from creosote-treated railroad ties, CCA lumber, or tires. Chromated copper arsenate wood contains arsenic and left residential use at the end of 2003, so reclaimed boards from before 2004 are the risk. Use untreated rot-resistant wood, stone, brick, or metal. (EPA)
- Test the soil before growing food in the ground, especially close to a house painted before 1978, along an old fence line, or near a road or demolition site. Lead from paint and old gasoline concentrates in those spots. Extension services run or refer soil tests; lead is usually an add-on you request.
- Raw sprouts carry documented Salmonella and E. coli risk. The warm, damp conditions that sprout a seed also multiply bacteria on it, and FDA is explicit that home-grown and organic sprouts are not safer. Use seed sold for sprouting, never garden seed, and cook sprouts thoroughly. FDA advises anyone pregnant, very young, elderly, or immunocompromised to avoid raw or lightly cooked sprouts entirely. (FDA)
Preserving the harvest
Follow a tested process, unchanged, every time. Canning, curing, fermenting, and oil infusions are food-safety procedures, not recipes you adjust to taste. Botulism is the reason: odorless, tasteless, sometimes fatal. Plain vegetables, meat, poultry, and seafood are low-acid foods, and pressure canning is the only recommended method for them, because they need temperatures boiling water can’t reach. This site links out to the National Center for Home Food Preservation and USDA-tested processes and publishes no methods of its own.
Invasive plants and your state’s list
Check your state noxious-weed list before buying a seed mix or a pass-along plant. Some species are illegal to plant, sell, or move, and blends sold nationally aren’t screened for your state. Your state department of agriculture publishes the list.
Wildlife in the garden
- Leave active nests alone. Nearly all native birds, their nests, eggs, and feathers are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, enforced by the US Fish & Wildlife Service. Prune before nesting season, or wait until the young fledge.
- Hummingbird feeders: four parts water to one part plain white sugar. No honey, which spoils and grows mold. No red dye, no brown sugar. Empty, scrub, and refill every two days in warm weather, daily in a heat wave. Fermented nectar and mold are the real hazard.
- Ticks: long sleeves, tucked socks, an EPA-registered repellent, and a body check the same day. Pull an attached tick straight out with fine-tipped tweezers, then watch for symptoms and ask your doctor what to look for.
- Don’t handle sick or dead wildlife. Call your state wildlife agency.
Tools, ladders, sun, and heat
Eye and hearing protection for anything powered. Long trousers and closed shoes for mowers and string trimmers, which throw stones. No mowing a slope you’d hesitate to walk. Ladders on level ground; hire out overhead work near power lines. For heat, drink before you’re thirsty, work early, and stop if you get dizzy, stop sweating, or feel confused. Those are heat-illness symptoms and they escalate quickly.
Zones and frost dates are averages, not promises
Treat every date here as a starting point you adjust locally. The 2023 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map uses 1991-2020 data, built with Oregon State’s PRISM Climate Group, and describes the average annual extreme minimum winter temperature. It doesn’t predict this winter, and knows nothing about your slope or the wall that holds heat overnight. Frost dates are probabilities, not guarantees. NOAA data for your own station beats any national number, including ours.
Disclaimer and limitation of liability
Everything here is general information for a general audience. It is not professional, medical, veterinary, legal, or horticultural advice, and no substitute for your Cooperative Extension service, a licensed professional, a veterinarian, or emergency services. Your garden, soil, climate, and local rules differ from any general description.
This site is published by Ava’s Garden Tips, an independent publisher. Content is provided “as is,” without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including accuracy, completeness, or fitness for a particular purpose. To the fullest extent permitted by law, Ava’s Garden Tips is not liable for any loss, injury, illness, plant loss, property damage, or other damages arising from use of this site or reliance on its content. Outside links are for reference; we don’t control those sites. Any dispute is governed by the laws of the United States and of the state in which the publisher is established. Spotted an error? Write to hello@avagardentips.com and we’ll fix it.
More: About Ava, editorial policy, contact. Last reviewed August 25, 2026.