Gardening is Good Exercise and Good for Your Health

Everyone is on a kick to be healthy, but rarely think about gardening to become healthy. Granted, the food you grow in your garden will be better than store-bought, it’s the weeding, watering, and trimming that keep your body in great shape. If you want to lose weight, garden for a month or two. 

You can’t go wrong with gardening, even if you have a brown thumb.  All plants need are light, soil, water, and nutrients.  Some plants don’t even need nutrients since Mother Nature supplies all the food they need to eat. The plants in your garden can easily be added to your dinner table.

If you just want to tone your body, gardening can to that, too. You lift plants around, hull the water hose around, lean over and weed, and plant seeds, which work all the muscles in your body. What a great way to lose weight and put food on your dinner table.

In several studies it has been shown that gardening help 9 out of 10 people lose inches in their waist after just one month of gardening. You can tell it helps because the next day your muscles will be sore. If you continue to garden, those muscles will tighten up and tone your body. You can have that beach body in a few months and fill your dinner table with all the food you need.

Not to mention how much fun gardening is when the whole family joins in to raise all the tomatoes you can eat or planting beans and peas for the table. The kids will love watching the seeds sprout up and spring into a veggie they like.  It also teaches them responsibly when they have to water and weed their very own garden patch.

So, you see how much gardening can help your health? Plus, it’s  fun to watch tiny seeds growing into a giant watermelon, carrot, or any other type of vegetable or fruit.  You can also garden in apartments, condos, and houses whether you have a large or small plot of land.

There are thousands of vegetables, fruits, shrubs, and trees that can make your garden a lovely place to relax, have a picnic, or grow a culinary herb garden. You can use any type of container or plant your garden right in the ground.  You can also grow vertical gardens  up walls, fences, and the side of a house or apartment.

You can let your imagination sore to new heights while supplying your dinner table with fresh herbs and vegetables or a lovely bouquet of flower for any surface. The amount of scents you can enjoy while your garden shines with a plethora of colors to lighten up any day. 

8 Gardening Mistakes and How to Fix Them

Do you realize that gardening mistakes happen right in your front yard? Whether you think that your garden looks good or not, if everything doesn't work together, the entire garden doesn’t work. Let’s talk about the most common gardening mistakes and how to fix them.

Lawn&Garden (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

1. Grass is not greener. This ranks number 1. Why? Most gardens and yards have lawn, but one may be slightly greener than the other. If your lawn looks browner than the soil underneath, it is time to reassess your watering, fertilizing and mowing schedule. Think where you may have gone wrong and make the necessary lawn care adjustments. Tired of lawn care? Consider other lawn substitute options such as ground covers such as periwinkle. Visit Greenwood Nursery for more on lawn substitutes.

2. Tools and clutter are everywhere. They may be useful objects, but if they are just stacked in your garage or tossed in a box, then you think they are not worth the storage. At that point, they don't just look like junk; they are junk. Sort through them one by one and determine whether you want to keep them or not. Your criteria when deciding if they deserve the trip to dump or not is simple: Ask yourself, do you specific plans for them?

3. Your house and garden can be seen from the road. There are several short- and long-term solutions to using plants to create privacy. One quick-fix solution is to build a concrete wall that would separate your garden from the sidewalk view. For a longer, much appealing look, planting fast growing shrubs is a good idea.

4. Weed invasion. Keeping your lawn regularly maintained can solve weed problems. Do a regular walk through to check for weeds about twice a week during the growing season. Dig the weeds out by hand to keep them from re-growing by seeding the empty areas of your lawn.

5. Limited space. If your problem is space, then here's one idea that can definitely help you maximize every square inch of your garden: think vertical gardens. With vertical gardening, you can create a sense of lush greenery by using wall space, arbors and trellises to allow plants to climb upwards.

6. Where's your house? If shrubs have swallowed your house, then hedge clippers comes in handy. You don’t want plants blocking the way from your drive to the front door so some serious pruning may be in order. You want landscaping, not a house in the middle of the forest. Also, tall and over grown shrubs are a security hazard providing a burglar with the protection and opportunity that they would need to break into your home. It's time to select curb appeal plants.

7. Selection and winter care. Some garden plants will not survive winter temperatures without proper care. When planning your garden, be sure to select the majority of your plant that will grow year round and always include a few evergreens and plants with winter interest. In fall be sure to provide your garden plants with a good thick layer (approximately 3 inches) of shredded bark mulch to insulate and provide moisture over the winter months.

8. Fences are falling apart. Fences are not just to separate your property from your neighbor's. They also add to the overall look of your garden. Make sure that you maintain your fences like the way you keep your plants. Use fences as backdrops for your landscaping projects.

8 Gardening Mistakes and How to Correct Them by Greenwood Nursery

Learn How to be a Gardener - Free Gardening Course

I feel that it is one of my missions to not only share my own experience and information, but to search out new and helpful information that will make gardening and landscaping easier and more fun. Each month, I receive many emails from first time homeowners who are anxious to learn how to garden. There are so many gardening books that have come onto the market in the past few years that it is mind boggling to narrow it down to one that offers the best info. ‘Cause, do you go with the one with detailed pages or the one with the best pictorials? It is hard to find that perfect combination that is just right for everyone.

Learn “How to be a Gardener” by Alan Titchmarsh in collaboration with the Royal Horticultural Society. This is a free short course on learning the basics of gardening and is broken down into 8 lessons or modules which include not only written text with pictures, but video clips as well. Each lesson will have an introduction page to give an overview of what it will cover. The topics covered in a lesson will always be in the upper right hand side of the page followed by a quiz that you can take to see how much you remember.

Once you complete all 8 modules, you can advance onto part 2 which goes into landscape design topics. Everything from problem solving to creating a natural garden is covered.

Visit GreenwoodNursery.com for this and other free online gardening courses.