Terms, privacy & accessibility

This course is offered free, as general education. In plain language: use it at your own risk, we collect nothing about you, and we try to make it usable by everyone. The details follow. Last updated October 10, 2026.

1. Terms of use and disclaimer

By using this site you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, please do not use it.

Educational content only

Everything here is general information, written for hobbyists and self-taught beginners. It is not professional, medical, legal, financial, engineering or safety advice, and it is not a substitute for the judgment of a qualified professional for your specific situation. Materials, sites, climates and people vary; results will differ from what is described.

Personalized content

The "Your garden" boxes, planting calendar, dates and calculators are generated automatically from what you type into the setup form, using general rules of thumb. They are planning estimates, not guarantees. Check every number against your own soil test, your local extension service, this year's weather and your suppliers.

Safety

• Call before you dig. Contact 811 (or your local utility locating service) a few business days before digging, so buried lines are marked. Planting a garden counts as digging, and some lines are only inches deep. Digging into a gas or electric line can kill.
• Lead in soil. If your home or a nearby building was built before 1978, or the garden is near a busy road or on unknown fill, test the soil for lead before growing food in it, and keep children from playing in bare soil until you know the result. Ask your local health department what a result means for your household.
• Pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers. Read and follow the entire label of any product, including organic and homemade ones, and store products in their original containers, locked and out of reach of children and pets. This course does not recommend pesticide products or rates. For questions, contact the National Pesticide Information Center (1-800-858-7378) or your extension service.
• Ticks, heat and sun. Check for ticks after working in tall grass or leaf litter, including in your own yard. Drink water, take breaks in shade and work in cooler hours on hot days; call 911 for signs of heat stroke. Protect your skin with a hat, clothing and broad-spectrum sunscreen of SPF 15 or higher.
• Wounds. A wound with soil in it is a reason to call a health care provider about tetanus. Adults need a tetanus booster every 10 years.
• Poisonous plant parts. Some parts of food plants are poisonous to people and pets, including rhubarb leaves and potato leaves, sprouts and green skin. If someone eats something that worries you, call Poison Control (1-800-222-1222 in the United States).
• Manure and food safety. Use manure only as the course and your extension service describe, with the interval before harvest observed. Wash produce and hands. Keep pet waste out of the garden and the compost.
• Lifting and tools. Lift soil bags and full containers with your legs, keep the load close, split loads and use a cart. Wear gloves and closed shoes when digging or using sharp tools, and keep tools out of reach of small children.
• Weight on structures. Containers, raised beds and wet soil are heavy. Ask your building owner or a structural engineer before loading a balcony, deck or roof.
• Electrical equipment. Use grow lights and heat mats only as their manufacturer directs, on a properly rated outlet away from water. Ask an electrician about any outdoor or added circuit.
• Rules where you garden. Leases, HOA rules, community garden rules and local ordinances (on structures, rain barrels, fences or fertilizer) take precedence over anything on this site. Ask in writing and keep the answer.

Third-party links and products

The site links to extension publications, agency pages and other resources we found useful, and names paid courses and suppliers only as references. We do not control those sites, do not endorse or guarantee anything on them, receive no payment or commission from them, and are not responsible for their content, availability, accuracy or practices. Product and brand names mentioned belong to their respective owners and are used only to identify them.

No warranty; limitation of liability

The site and its content are provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including accuracy, completeness, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. To the fullest extent permitted by law, Field Assembly LLC, Reassembly and the people who made this site are not liable for any loss, injury or damage, direct or indirect, arising from your use of the site or reliance on its content. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so some of this may not apply to you.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. Any dispute arising from the site or these terms will be brought in the state or federal courts located in Massachusetts, and you consent to their jurisdiction.

Changes and availability

We may change, pause or remove the site or any part of it at any time without notice. We have no obligation to keep it available or up to date.

2. Privacy

Short version: we do not collect, store or sell any information about you.

• No accounts, no sign-up, no email. There is nothing to join.
• No analytics, no tracking, no advertising, no cookies. The site sets no cookies and includes no third-party scripts, pixels or embedded content. Fonts are served from this site, not from a font service.
• Your setup stays on your device. What you type into the setup form, and the progress checkboxes, are saved only in your browser's local storage so the site can show them back to you. They are never transmitted to us. Clearing your browser data, or using the "Clear my setup" button, deletes them.
• Share links contain your setup. The "copy a link" feature encodes your answers into the web address itself so you can open them on another device or send them to a helper. Anyone who has that link can see those answers. Do not put anything in the setup form that you would not want in a link you share.
• Hosting logs. The site is hosted on Cloudflare, which, like any web host, processes technical request data (such as your IP address, browser type and the pages requested) to deliver the site and protect it from abuse, under Cloudflare's privacy policy. We do not use that data to identify or track visitors.
• Links to other sites take you to services with their own privacy practices.
• Children. The site is not directed at children under 13 and we knowingly collect no information from anyone.

3. Accessibility

We want this course to be usable by everyone, including people who use screen readers, keyboards, magnification or high contrast. The site is built to follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 at level AA. Specifically:

• Semantic HTML with headings, landmarks, lists and tables with header rows; a "skip to content" link; visible keyboard focus on every control.
• Every form field has a label; checkboxes and radio buttons are labeled; the menu button reports its state.
• Text and interface colors meet contrast minimums in both light and dark modes; information is never conveyed by color alone.
• Text resizes with browser settings; layouts reflow to narrow screens; no content flashes or moves on its own.
• Diagrams have text descriptions; icons in the navigation are decorative and accompanied by text.

Known limitations: wide reference tables scroll horizontally on small screens, and printable pages depend on your browser's print settings. If anything on this site is hard for you to use, please tell us through fieldassembly.net and we will try to fix it.

4. Copyright and sharing

© 2026 Field Assembly LLC. The text, structure and code of this course are copyrighted. You are welcome to use the course for your own garden, share the link freely, print pages for personal use, and quote short passages with attribution. Please do not republish the course or substantial parts of it, sell it, or present it as your own. Linked third-party material belongs to its respective owners. The self-hosted fonts (Cormorant Garamond and Inter) are used under the SIL Open Font License.

Built by Reassembly for Field Assembly LLC.