Physical Benefits of Gardening
Did you know that when you garden naturally, you benefit from being more physically active by pulling weeds by hand, bending, stretching and digging, and by using a push mower to cut your grass... and by doing so, you create an healthy environment...all at the same time. Wow!
Gardening naturally is good for you and good for the environment and can be looked at as:
· an exercise program
· a diversion from stress that offers regular, simple routines
· a way to relax and
· an opportunity to create an healthy environment
Gardening also:
· allows you to have social interactions with neighbors
· stimulate thoughts and learning, and
· offers a provision of healthy foods and herbs [Website
www.netnaturals.com]
· improve the social, educational, psychological, and physical adjustment of an individual, thus improving his/her body, mind and spirit.
Good for your body
Gardening helps you fight stress. Tending a bed involves bending, lifting, stretching and squating. Turning over soil before planting is a major use of calories.
Did you know that:
· Digging involves lifting weights, abdominal stressing and partial squatting? The abdominal muscles are correctly exercised by holding your back straight, rather than actually lifting. The movement is associated to "crunches", where the emphasis is on not bending the lower back.
· Pruning trees makes you hold your arms up, while stretching?
· Weeding involves squats and forearm stretches?
· Push mowers exercise your leg muscles, shoulders and arms?
· Planting shrubs requires many muscles to be used, as you dig, mix soil, lift, carry and backfill, often in a squatting position?
As you get stronger, you take on more, work faster and work longer between breaks. For aerobic exercise, try double digging a plant bed. You dig the soil in rows, turning over each spade full and breaking it up on top of the previous row.
You do this for two spade depths, and if you have any size of bed above 50 square feet, you will be sweating and breathing heavily in minutes. The secret of aerobic exercise is to keep at that exertion level to maintain your target heart rate for a given period.
Other sources of heavy work include: turning compost heaps, clearing out beds for a new planting, raking thatch off lawns, doing your own lawn aeration, mixing potting soils, lifting planters, gathering leaves, push mowing a lawn, rapid hoeing, digging fence post holes, moving soil between beds, spreading mulch, and lifting mulch in the spring.
Also, studies have shown that the energy consumed in digging is 4 times greater than that needed for walking, and on the same basis, digging consumes as much energy as general aerobics and swimming. Activities such as carrying wood; clearing land, hauling branches; and laying sod are equivalent to stationary bicycling. Taylor (1990) [ican garden Website icangarden.com] cites several sources to illustrate the physical value of gardening, reporting that you can burn as many calories in 45 minutes of gardening as in 30 minutes of aerobics. One hour of weeding burns 300 calories (the same as walking or bicycling at a moderate pace), and manual push-mowing of the lawn burns 500 calories per hour (the same rate as playing tennis).
Instead of renting an aeration machine this spring, why don’t you create your own? Attatching a piece of wood to which you would have previously put nails and attach to your shoes or boots. Then, walking on your lawn back and forth will do the work. Your lawn will be well aerated and you’ll have a good workout!
Gardening -
18th March 2008
lek kif se2abit 
This is a picture of the original KnockOut but there are new colors added every year. This is not my garden. 
