Gardening For Senior Citizens

Are you in a wheelchair, and long to dig in the dirt and create flowering beauty and grow far more zucchini than you can give away? Or are your knees just starting to age and even though you've loved gardening all your life, you're having more trouble getting up and down and are afraid you'll have to give up gardening altogether? Did you botch the last pruning of your roses because of the worsening arthritis in your hands?
Welcome to the world of the physically challenged gardener.

Don't despair. Adapt!

There's plenty of help out there in the form of advice, tools, raised flower beds and other specialized equipment.A Google search of "Disabled gardening tools" leads to 125 websites with specific helpful adaptive equipment. "Disabled gardening" gives a whopping 873,000 results where you can find advice and "handicapped gardening" yields 111,000. Let those arthritic fingers do your walking!

Problem: "The ground is just too far down there!"

Think about doing your gardening while sitting on a chair, instead of on the ground, squatting or bending over. The most obvious solution is to build raised flower beds and scatter containers throughout your garden area. Buy cheap plastic outdoor chairs and place one beside each mini-garden so you don't have to drag or carry when it's time to weed. You can just sit down and enjoy the feel of moist earth beneath your fingers and breathe in the heavenly smell of freshly applied fish emulsion.

If you hang a cup holder on the edge of your container, you can even have the luxury of tea or coffee with your weeds. Maybe the fish emulsion should wait.

Don't think about what you've lost now that you can't crawl around weeding the perennial border; teach your grandchild or a neighborhood kid the joy to be found doing that task ... you've just discovered a new adventure in gardening. The good news is that you may find whole different special areas of your yard where you can stick a mini-garden.

Get creative. Put a beautiful container near your front door and plant wonderfully scented flowers to greet your guests ... or perhaps a nice cherry tomato plant they can steal from on their way to ring your doorbell. Put a waist high herb garden right outside your kitchen door and add an area in it for your favorite cut flowers.

When you're deciding where to locate the raised bed or container, be sure to remember physically demanding practicalities like dragging a heavy hose to water it. Think and plan a low energy solution for what you'll do with the compost material.

Problem: "My painful hands don't have the strength for ..."

You can get tools which extend your arms to reach the ground level flower bed from a sitting position. Several manufacturers make specially tools with light weight handles designed to keep the wrist and hand in a stress-free position and to provide a firmer grip. Small, light rakes, hoes, etc. like this can work wonders.

Think ratchet pruner, rachet lopping shears ... let the laws of physics give your hands a hand. You'll be amazed when you look at the tools available. Pull difficult weeds by stepping on a lever.

Problem: "I get so tired so quickly."

Hey, the weeds didn't grow all at once; you don't have to pull them all at once. Pace yourself. Find ways to make gardening something you do while you sit and drink a cup of tea and listen to the birds, rather than a work chore you slave away at for a full afternoon. Pull one weed from the scented garden near your front door on your way out and another weed on the way in. Plant parsley in your kitchen door herb garden while your toast is toasting and the coffee is dripping.

Buy and plant 3 packs of flowers instead of a whole flat. Take a nice aerobic walk around your yard, stopping at a different container for 5 minutes "conversation" with your plants on each cycle, then go back inside and plop on the recliner. You'll be amazed at how much gets done in these mini-work sessions. Your heart will love you, too.

Remember, one of the nice things about flowers is they don't have anything to prove. We can all learn a lesson from them.

About the Author

This article provided courtesy of http://www.floral-shopper.com

More Tips at : Gardening Tips

Enjoy Working Your Garden With The Right Gardening Tool

Nearly every gardener has some type of gardening tools. In fact, it is nearly impossible to have a garden without the necessary garden tools. What kind of gardening equipment you use will obviously depend on the size and extent of your garden, what you are able to handle, if you want to spend a lot of time in your garden or get it done quickly, and finally, how much money you are willing to spend.

While many gardeners do not have expensive or high-tech gardening tools, all of them have some type of gardening equipment for cultivating. Tools for cultivating can include both hand held tools and power tools. What kind you buy depends on how serious of a gardener you are. Hand tools include your everyday items like shovels, spading forks, rakes, trowels, and diggers. These can all be used to get a garden ready for planting and are relatively easy and do not require much strength to use. Other tools include a wheel cultivator, pickax, and mattock.

While power tools are a little more expensive than hand tools, they really cut down on the hard labor. The most essential piece of gardening equipment is undoubtedly the tiller. The tiller will break up the ground and get it ready for planting, chop up any debris, and help mix in fertilizer and compost. If you do not want to spend the money on a tiller, you can hire someone or rent a tiller. Other power tools that are very popular include chippers and garden shredders.

If you have shrubs, hedges, or small trees in your yard, pruning tools are a vital piece of gardening equipment. Pruning shears are good for branches about ¾” in diameter, while lopping shears can handle branches from a half inch up to about 2 inches. Pole pruners are on a pole and can reach branches about 15 feet above ground. Hedge shears and pruning saws are both larger, more heavy-duty pruning tools for the serious gardener.

Since your plants must be watered in order to survive, and lets face it, it doesn't rain whenever we want it to, gardening equipment for watering is a must have. The one thing you cannot get along without is a water hose, everything after that is optional. Many gardeners use sprinklers or drip irrigation hose. There are even timers you can purchase for sprinklers or drip hoses, if you are willing to drop the extra cash.

Gardening without gardening tools would be a nightmare. Sure there are some people who enjoy getting a little dirty while they plant their flowers, but even those types of people have the most basic of gardening tools, like a rake or a hoe. Gardening equipment is a part of gardening, as important as the dirt and the seeds.

About the Author: For more information about garden tools, visit http://www.gardentoolinfocenter.com
More Tips at : Gardening Tips