Top 8 tips for gardening with arthritis

If you love gardening but arthritis is getting in your way take heart: there are ways around this debilitating medical condition that can help get you out in the garden again before you know it. Here are eight top tips for gardening with arthritis.

Make the handles on lawn and garden tools easier to grasp the way hockey players wearing mitts do: wrap the handle in athletic tape to make it thicker – and wear gloves when working.

Take a break every 15 minutes when gardening.

• It's easy to become engrossed in yard work, but while the labour counts as exercise, you want to avoid getting too much of a good thing, lest you overwork your abdomen and lower back.

A garden doesn't have to be at ground level. Instead of stooping to the dirt, use raised beds so you can exercise your green thumb from a seated or standing position.

 Kneeling can be hard on knees. A better position is sitting low to the ground on a bucket, stool or small wagon.

• Check gardening centres or websites for garden carts that close with a lid that doubles as a seat.

As an alternative position, try lying on your side for hand digging or weeding.

If you need to kneel and your joints comfortably allow it, use pads made of closed-cell foam, which cushions without compressing flat.

• You can buy knee pads from your local garden centre or order them online.

When raking, use short strokes.

• Bend your knees slightly when stroking, to allow muscles of the legs and hips to contribute more to the motion.

Get with the narrowest trowel you can find.

• When digging, chop with the trowel to loosen clumped dirt, then insert the trowel no deeper than half its length to loosen the soil and avoid straining against more densely-packed layers.
• Work your way deeper with short scoops. Do the same when working with a shovel.

When planting seeds, sharpen one end of a broomstick to make holes in the soil, then drop seeds from a standing position using a long piece of small-diameter PVC piping cut to about waist height.

• This simple tool will save aggravation on your back because you'll avoid the need to keep bending over.