Is lawn weed and feed safe for pets and children?

Combined weed-and-feed products put a selective herbicide across an entire lawn to deal with weeds that occupy a small part of it. That is worth thinking about before buying, because the biggest single reduction in exposure is not a safety precaution — it is applying less product to less of the garden. Approvals for garden chemicals change, so specific active ingredients come and go and no guide can be current on that; the label on the pack you have bought is the authority.

Safety

Step by step

1. Read the label before you buy, not after.It states the re-entry period for people and animals, whether it can be used near ponds, and the intervals before seeding or mowing. These are legal conditions of use, not suggestions, and they differ between products.
2. Understand where the risk actually is.The realistic exposure routes are a dog or child eating granules directly, licking wet treated grass, or drinking run-off. Dry, watered-in residue on a lawn is a much smaller exposure than an open bag or a fresh spill.
3. Keep everyone off until watered in and dry.Granular products need rain or watering to move the actives off the leaf surface and into the soil. Until that has happened and the grass has dried, the residue is on the leaf where a paw or a hand will pick it up.
4. Apply on a still day and keep it out of borders.Selective lawn herbicides damage broadleaved garden plants, and drift onto a vegetable bed is both a plant problem and a food safety one. Use a guard or apply on a windless day.
5. Protect ponds absolutely.Fertilisers cause algal blooms and oxygen crashes; herbicides and iron compounds are harmful to fish and amphibians. Leave an untreated margin around any pond, ditch or drain, and never apply before heavy rain that will wash it in.
6. Think about pollinators.Clover, daisies and dandelions in a lawn feed a lot of insects in early spring when little else is out. Killing them all is a choice, not a necessity, and leaving some of the lawn untreated costs nothing.
7. Spot-treat rather than blanket-treat.A ready-to-use spot spray or a hand weeder deals with a dozen dandelions without putting herbicide over 200 square metres of grass a dog sleeps on.
8. Store it properly and dispose of it correctly.Locked away, in the original labelled container, out of reach and away from food and animal feed. Unwanted concentrate goes to a household hazardous waste facility, never down a drain or into a hedge.
9. Know what to do if something is eaten.Ring a vet or GP straight away with the product name and label to hand, and take the packaging with you. Do not wait to see whether symptoms develop, and do not attempt to make an animal vomit unless told to.

Tips

• Feeding and weeding are separate jobs with different best timings. Doing them separately usually means less herbicide, better-timed feed and a better lawn.
• A thick, well-fed lawn cut at 35 to 40mm suppresses most lawn weeds by shading them out. Mowing height is a weed control tool that carries no risk at all.
• Hand-weeding dandelions with a long narrow weeder after rain is quick, satisfying and entirely safe around children.

Common mistakes

• Assuming 'organic' or 'pet-friendly' on a label means harmless — Those words are marketing rather than defined categories. Iron-based moss treatments are marketed as natural and still cause stomach upset if eaten and stain everything they touch.
• Letting the dog out straight after treating — Wet residue on leaf transfers to paws and is then licked off. Watering in and drying is the step that reduces this, and it takes one afternoon.
• Treating the whole lawn every year as maintenance — It maximises the amount of herbicide in a space children play in to deal with a problem that is usually localised, and it does nothing about the thin, hungry, closely-mown sward that let the weeds in.

Questions people ask