Get your garden gym going

You may or may not know that the vegetable gardening season is upon us. It’s always an exciting time for me after having waited the whole winter to be able to work in my own garden and produce some of my own vegetables, including good ole backyard tomatoes, which, if you’ve ever had one, you know that the grocery stores don’t even come close in taste to the ones that you pick from your own vine.

It might seem that I’m writing outside of my zone with my discussion of backyard gardening on a health and exercise column, but on the contrary. Vegetable gardening is one of the most comprehensively healthy activities that you can take part in. Not only do you get to grow food for yourself that’s healthier and that you know where it came from and what’s on it, but you also reap the physical benefits that come with tending to your own crops.

So what physical benefits might you experience from working your own vegetable garden? Well, while it depends on the size of your garden, as well as the methodology that you might use to grow your vegetables, vegetable gardening can be a very thorough workout opportunity. Consider the physicality of the following tasks you might take part in while gardening:

Tilling your soil: Using a powered tiller is a decent workout, and doing it by hand is a very vigorous workout

Applying dirt/compost: Many muscle groups are utilized by transporting fertile compost to your garden by bag, shovel or wheelbarrow

Planting seeds and seedlings: The bending down required by this task builds great endurance in your lower body over the season

Applying water and fertilizer throughout the season: Another opportunity for muscle building through lifting

Harvesting your vegetables: Yet another opportunity for lifting

One thing I didn’t mention with the above tasks is all of the walking involved to accomplish everything. Considering the fact that growing a decent garden requires consistent, daily effort, you might be walking a few miles a week without even having to think about it. And the fact that you’re incorporating strength-training with all of the lifting that comes with it makes vegetable gardening a really great workout. It’s worth noting that a gardening workout gets even better when you do more of it by hand rather than by machine.

If you don’t mind, I want to throw in a little specific gardening tidbit for those of you who might have dismissed the garden idea because you believe your thumb is brown rather than green. One of the easiest things for any first time gardeners to try to grow is sweet potatoes. They’re relatively easy to get started and require little watering unless it’s particularly dry. I challenge you to get a sweet potato from the store, stick it partially in a cup that’s filled with water in a south-facing window, and once it has sprouted, take the 2-4 inch slips (what they’re called) and plant them in mounds of soil that you’ve prepared beforehand. Large pots work as well, and while the potatoes take all season to grow, you can harvest the leaves throughout the season to eat the same way you’d eat spinach.

I hope you’ll consider starting your own vegetable garden so that you can grow your own healthy food and get a workout while doing it. Think about this. Vegetable gardening is not merely activity done in vain. It is activity that actually produces something and allows you to literally reap the ‘fruits of your labor.”

This story was originally published April 25, 2017 at 7:04 PM with the headline "Get your garden gym going."