Reference tool
Product restrictions by state
Two different things restrict what you can put on a lawn: your state's own fertilizer and pesticide rules, and the state footnotes printed on individual product labels. This shows both, for the 50 states we have researched and the 65 product labels we have read.
Read this before you use the result
- An empty result is not a clearance. It means we found nothing in what we read: 65 labels of the 84 pesticide products we stock, plus 0 we could not resolve and 19 whose category carries no registration at all. Nothing outside our own catalogue has been checked.
- County rules are often stricter than state rules. Florida's summer nitrogen blackouts are county ordinances, not state law.
- The label on your container is the legal authority. Where it and this page disagree, it wins, and we would like to know — lawnhealthai@gmail.com.
Not listed? We only publish state data we have researched individually — a missing state means we have not done that work yet, not that it has no rules.
Common questions
- Does an empty result mean the product is legal in my state?
- No, and this is the most important limitation to understand. An empty result means we found no restriction in the labels and state rules we have read — not that none exists. Of the 84 pesticide products in our own catalogue we have read 65 labels; 19 carry no registration because their category has none, such as minimum-risk products and devices; and 0 we could not resolve at all. Our state rule research covers 50 states. Anything outside that is simply unknown to us, and the label on the container you are holding is the authority either way.
- Why are most of the restrictions in California?
- Because California runs its own pesticide registration process in addition to the federal one, so a product registered with EPA is not automatically available there. What shows up on the label as a footnote reading 'Not for use in California' is usually that second process, not a judgement about the chemistry. New York applies additional restrictions of its own, which is why the one entry we hold for it is a Long Island rate cap.
- Are these restrictions on the whole product?
- Usually not, and that is why every entry here states its scope. A state footnote on a turf label is normally attached to one use, one pest or one adjuvant direction. One product in our catalogue carries 'Not for use in California' against a single pest in its outdoor list rather than against the product; another carries it against the moss and algae use only, leaving the rest of the label intact. Reading the footnote as a ban on the product would cost you a product you could legally use.
- Do county rules matter?
- Frequently more than state rules, especially for fertilizer. Florida's summer nitrogen blackouts are county ordinances rather than state law, and they differ between neighbouring counties. Several states in our data have a phosphorus rule set at municipal level. Treat this tool as the state-level floor and check your county or city before a fertilizer application near water.