Gardening

Take care

Spring means = gardening = means backache.

Not neccessarily so…

Is your back prepared for the spring onslaught ?

Is your garden a pleasure and a source of food ?

The modern advice is that gardening is good for you. It can certainly be a source of pleasure and stress relief but the pleasure and produce has to be balanced against the pain in the back after a big dig or a lot of continued bending.

What can we do help? Simple exercises can prepare us for the tasks ahead. Certainly warm muscles work better than cold ones and in other times and places a brisk walk or bike ride down to the allotment would certainly get our biggest muscle (our heart) pumping. The value of stretching is rather more controversial but to do some supported bending (leaning on the fence and doing hula hoop movements) can do no harm. See your osteopath for treatment to get your back working well and advice on what you can realistically achieve in the garden.

Digging is made easier by either not digging at all ever as is recommended by the “extreme mulching” faction of garden experts or by at least limiting it to the must dig tasks (potatoes) and then using the longer handled leverage spade which are widely available now. In these difficult times for water conservation the practice of carrying buckets of water from the shower to the plants is marginally better than carrying the pot plants to a source of water but some backs just don’t “do” carrying and the large unsteady weight carried on one side is a frequent cause of back strain.

Being bent over for a prolonged period puts excess strain on the muscles supporting the back. Try sitting or kneeling for a time. This variation of tasks and posture works well for all situations. Unfortunately changes in hips and knees can preclude all squatting and kneeling activities even with a kneeler so raised beds are popular with more disabled gardeners.

Sometimes “busy” people find gardening a dreadful chore and only fit in what absolutely has to be done to placate the neighbours or make the place look half decent for the relis visit. This is a high risk activity doing a job you don”t want to do , in an unskilled way, because you don’t do it very often, in a hurry because you are “so busy” when you are tired because you are “so busy”. The bad memories from the burst of compulsory gardening and the back pain put you off going anywhere near the garden until the next time the “bloody garden” is in urgent need .
Now is a good time to find some non-urgent time for the garden, plant some low maintenance plants and heaps of mulch. Promise yourself a half hour(no-longer) in the garden twice a week for the next month. Plant something you can eat.

Keep your tasks manageable and varied. Enjoy !

Miles James