Grow Smart

Use Grow Smart, Grow Safe® to choose a safer garden product. The app lists over 1000 lawn and garden chemicals and natural gardening tips. Choose a garden product that is rated safer for you, your family and the environment. Products you can find in local stores are rated low, medium or high hazard to help shoppers make smart choices. Take this tool to the store or out to the garage and find out how your favorites rate. There are great tips on gardening without pesticides too.

Grow Smart, Grow Safe® uses science-based research to rate pesticide safety. It’s designed to help Pacific Northwest gardeners find safer products and learn more about what they already use. We know many people want to choose products that are safer for the environment and safer to use where their children and pets play. The product lists in Grow Smart, Grow Safe® make it easier for them to do that.

Standing in the pesticide aisle at the store can be pretty overwhelming. There are lots of choices. There is a lot of information on the labels but it can be hard to understand, and it’s really difficult to make comparisons. Grow Smart, Grow Safe® takes on the science for you and reviews the research about pesticide active ingredients. We also go into the stores to see what products are available to people in Washington and Oregon. Then we combine those two sets of information into a list of pesticides with the safer ones at the top on down to those with more health or environmental concerns.

Grow Smart, Grow Safe® partners include the Local Hazardous Waste Management Program in King County, Washington; Portland Oregon’s Metro; and Thurston County Public Health and Social Services, Olympia, Washington. Products listed in Grow Smart, Grow Safe® are found in local stores and are registered for home use by the Washington State Department of Agriculture. These local governments built Grow Smart, Grow Safe® to provide reliable, science-based information to our residents. It’s approved for use by Washington and Oregon Master Gardeners.

Grow Smart, Grow Safe® began as a Local Hazardous Waste Management Program in King County publication in 1998, went online at www.GrowSmartGrowSafe.org and is now available free at the iTunes App Store.

More information is available on our website www.GrowSmartGrowSafe.org and from the Local Hazardous Waste Management Program in King County at 206-263-1650. In Oregon, contact Metro at 503-234-3000. In Thurston County contact Public Health & Social Services at 360-867-2500.

How to use this App: Pick your pest from the home page. Insects? Weeds? Slugs? Now either search for product information or learn about ways to manage your pest without pesticides. Choose Search for product rankings or Alternatives for gardening naturally tips.

In Search type part of a product name or an active ingredient and click Find it! You’ll see a list of products in the pest category you’ve picked. The arrow icon lets you know if it’s ranked low, moderate, or high hazard. Click the arrow for more details about the product. The search function looks only at product names and active ingredients. We are not able to search by the specific pest that a product is intended to kill like dandelion, aphid, or black spot.

Gardening without pesticides is always the safest choice. In Alternatives you’ll find great ideas on how to deal with those pesky pests without using pesticides and tips on creating a beautiful, healthy yard and garden.

There’s more too. Why do we care about pesticide use? Your health, and your children’s and pets, can be impacted by pesticide use. Pesticides can have lasting impacts on the environment, fish, wildlife, birds and bees. Natural yard care, natural lawn care and Integrated Pest Management (IPM) give in-depth information to help you learn more.

We’ve also included a detailed section on how we do our rankings and provide a link to the Thurston County website where the active ingredient reviews are posted.