Gardening for Old Folks (Adaptative)

[CapricornFarm]

All BYC rules apply. Lets play nice. I am getting ready to celebrate another birthday. And it is getting harder for me to garden. There are ways to make things easier and still have good results. Let's talk about it!

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

After my first knee replacement last year we converted my free formed raised beds into really raised beds. They were so easy to garden in.



My cucumbers were grown on a cattle panel arch for extra easy picking.

 

[CapricornFarm]

Once upon a time i was young. I could dig soil for hours, no problem. Double digging, mixing in sand and manure were easy. Rototillers could be wrestled and i could win. Now i am making raised beds and trying to do things the easy way. Hubby has health issues and so do i. But i love getting my hands dirty! Hoping to build a greenhouse, just got a book and am reading about how to do it. So i am sure i will discuss that as well. I plan to have benches i will build at a level convenient for me to tend plants. No planting on the ground inside.

 

[Beer can]

Sorry, just had to share this for any who haven't heard it, this thread reminded me of it.

 

[CapricornFarm]

Great thread idea and happy birthday, Capricorn! I'd love to hear more ideas on how to make gardening physically easier. So far I'm doing raised beds from 17" to 24" and keep an old shower chair outside to save my arthritic knees. Also using as much drip irrigation as possible...

Thanks, my birthday is not until the 28th but i did get a present today and it holds 10 eggs!

Even having bad soil can make raised beds necessary. I put some in my new garden here in Virginia this year. Still i am digging up the soil inside the beds and adding composted manure and sand to the clay based soil. I only plan to do that once. I was not able to spend much time on the garden because i was building chicken coops. This year will be different.
You might be interested in straw bale gardens. They could even grow on a raised platform.

 

[Sunshine Flock]

I'm 47, but as of late I've been wrestling with chronic back pain and noticing how stiff and sore my legs are whenever I stand up from sitting on the floor. I'm planning garden beds to build before spring arrives and remembered modified beds a dear friend had made for her.

She had Parkinson's and asked for tall beds with wide boards around the perimeter to use as a bench. The beds were three to four feet in height. I think she had soil placed inside them down to the ground, but I've read about beds that are designed on stands to reduce the amount of soil needed.

Large farm style dinner tables are about the size of a garden bed. Three placed side by side with space between them would allow for a nice amount of veggies to be grown.

And there's a gardening method called Hugelkultur that requires some work to build up the beds, but it's essentially mounded gardening. The food grows up and around the mounds, making it easier to reach, and it also requires much less watering. It's akin to growing a food jungle where compatible veggies are grown next to each other and clumped and you don't have to maintain neat and tidy rows.

When I move to Idaho I'd like to build a greenhouse with the walls lined with shelves and a large island in the middle, so I can grow vegetables without having to bend over. Most veggies don't require deep rooting and would do well in beds on raised platforms.

 

[nminusyplusm]

Great thread idea and happy birthday, Capricorn! I'd love to hear more ideas on how to make gardening physically easier. So far I'm doing raised beds from 17" to 24" and keep an old shower chair outside to save my arthritic knees. Also using as much drip irrigation as possible...

 

[microchick]

A minister's wife once told me, "what don't hurt, don't work." She was about ten years younger than my 64 years at the time, I was in my mid thirties.......now I know what she was talking about.

Like mentioned but others, I too have the back problems, knee problems, foot problems, joint problems, blah blah blah. I will be seeing a rheumatologist in the future for suspected RA or some other rheumatic type of arthritis but besides the problems I have with kneeling for too long or standing for too long...oh, don't forget, bending too much, I am loosing fine motor function in both hands making using gardening tools a bit of a pain.

This coming spring, I am downsizing the number of plants I plant in my garden. DH is great at helping me but I will probably just be planting potatoes, onions and various squash. and then mulching the devil out of every thing to control weeds so I don't have to do so much hoeing.

This year I went to planters for my annual flowers and tubers like cannas and elephant ears, and will continue that trend this next spring. I am also moving my strawberries to a barrel planter but will let extras root in a small ground bed around the barrel planter.

My big challenge will be in adapting my smaller gardening tools to my hands. I'm thinking pool noodles cut in sections split and glued to my tool handles. It should help me grip them better and with less discomfort. I know they make built up implements for RA suffers. Guess it's time to apply some of what I've learned for my own use.

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

A view of my vegetable garden area. The rest of my boxes are at the end of the line.



I have a secondary area where I grow asparagus, blueberries, pumpkin and squash. Last year I tried my tomatoes over there and they all blighted, so much for rotating crops. The red are my Cozy Kotes, they help me get my tomatoes in up to a month earlier.

 

[rjohns39]

What are the benefits?

Well, I have like an inch or two of top soil, then rock and then red clay. So trying to make a soil that will work well and is easy to weed. I've probably got a hundred garden books, but still just don't really get the whole soil farming thing. So I read and look for things I have or can get a hold of and go from there. Here's a look at my garden that went in late spring.

Tomatoes and peppers are hydroponic.