There is something so American about having your own garden, to grow your own food on your own land! It is part of the American dream, and also part of a healthy lifestyle to know where your food comes from. However many people suffer from injuries and pain associated with getting outside and digging in the garden.

Gardening is great for exercise, and also as a hobby to help people get back to nature and to learn a lot about the environment. Plants are special organisms that require a healthy environment to thrive and survive. Keeping a garden healthy requires making sure the soil is healthy, putting compost and fertilizers into the soil help the plants grow, just like making sure our bodies get the correct nutrients and minerals to help us grow and be healthy. Making sure the plants are watered and hydrated is as important to their health as it is to ours. You can see how the leaves of a plant will whither if they don’t get the water they need. The same thing happens to us, our leaves may not wither but it sure does have the same effect!

The trouble with gardening is often many people hurt themselves and suffer from backaches, knee pains and shoulder pains every gardening season in pursuit of a glorious crop yield and vibrant beautiful flowers to enjoy throughout the summer. Pain is very limiting and also reduces the joy of gardening. Those once glorious garden beds can turn to dust and weeds so quickly from neglect it is scary to ever think of not taking care of them. You don’t want the neighborhood kids spreading rumors that your house is haunted and you have gone crazy because your garden beds are in such shambles your property looks like something out of a horror movie!

Keeping healthy while gardening actually isn’t as hard as it might seem. There are a few very common mistakes that occur in the gardening population that can be avoided as long as you are aware of them a head of time.   Keeping your back healthy and pain free is the first priority for a gardener. A long time ago in a land far far away; people worked outside on the land all day lifting, pushing, pulling, bent over for hours at a time. In todays world we don’t do that anymore. We sit at nice ergonomic desks, sit in nice car seats, and eat at nice dining room tables. Did you get the main theme there? We sit all the time! This creates a lot of tight shortened hip flexor muscles.

The psoas, the major hip flexor muscle, or for you hunters, the tenderloin, becomes chronically short when we sit all day. The psoas muscle attaches on the front aspect of the lumbar spine. When this is too tight it reduces the natural lumbar curve of the spine, altering the mechanics of the spine and jams up the facet joints; the angled joints at the back of your vertebrae, which then can cause severe activity limiting back pain.

This can be avoided by keeping your hip flexors stretched out. The easiest and most efficient way to stretch your hip flexors is to do a lunge stretch, I recommend both a straight leg standing hip flexor stretch and a kneeling lunge stretch to get different angles on the muscles. Stretching daily is important, and taking time to stretch before, during, and after your gardening will keep the back pain free.

It is also important to plan ahead and consider the space we are gardening in. There are many different types of gardens, and often we work with plots of land or big squares cut out of our grass, and we plant our vegetables as efficiently as possible using as much of that space as we can. However there may be some things to reconsider here that will help the health of your garden, and the health of your body.

The soil is the lifeblood of the plants growing in the garden. With all the clay in the soil here in the Gallatin Valley, when we get that soil nice and turned over and fertilized the last thing we want to do is walk all over it and pack it down. Planning your garden so it is in rows that you can reach the middle of from each side allows you to not over stretch yourself and also protects the soil and keeps your plants healthy. Planning your garden and building raised beds can be valuable this way and better on the back as well.

Keeping your knees healthy is also important as a gardener, because often you find yourself kneeling before your plants for hours at a time. Painful knees are another common ailment that is self-limiting to a gardener. It is important to take care of your knees before they start to hurt. I always recommend a good pair of kneepads when working in the garden, or at least a good cushion to kneel on that can be moved easily to keep your knees off the hard ground. If you want to get fancy there are Carharts that have knee pockets that you can slide a foam kneepad into, but anything soft and spongy will work just fine.

When working in the garden always make sure to maintain good ergonomics when lifting and carrying heavy objects. When using a full watering can keep it close to your body and don’t’ extend it to far away from you. The further it gets from your body the bigger the increase of the forces on your spine. Don’t reach and extend too far either, keeping your tools close to your chest is a much stronger position. Always remember to stop and enjoy the process. Take deep breaths, and sit back and smile at the sunshine. Our gardening season may be short, but it is such a lovely time of year to be outside and be thankful to be an American.

Dr. Phil Cameron DC is the owner of the Bozeman Wellness Center. He is a Chiropractic Physician and Professional Applied Kinesiologist.   He treats every patient as an individual and strives to help each patient Live Healthy, Live Naturally, and Live Optimally. Visit www.bozemanwellnesscenter.com for more information.