Gardening with drought restrictions and preventing injury while working in the yard
Hi all, there's been a lot of concerns about water restrictions coming this summer and I think most people are going to see them at least along the Wasatch Front. And if it's going to be possible to actually grow a garden with severe water restrictions. I know that Weber Basin water has announced you will only be watering once a week, and that includes both your lawn and your garden. In a garden situation, you can't just water once a week, once you put your vegetables in, because they need a month to six weeks to get established. What I would recommend doing is on the day of the week that you water, that's the day you plan to and you get some containers whether they're Rubbermaid containers, five gallon buckets, or even something bigger like a rain barrel, if you can find them, and fill those up on the day that it's your turn for irrigation. Those seeds a new plants that you just put in can be hand watered then on the days that is not your turn for irrigation. new plants actually don't require a lot of water to get established where something like a new pepper or a new tomato would be fine being watered three or maybe four days a week with around three or four cups of water. And over a period of a month or six weeks as the roots expand into the soil, you will need to water less often and things like tomatoes, and peppers, especially with use of some mulch of some sort will only need to be watered about once a week in most soils. I wanted to talk briefly about how to use mulch in the garden, you can put it around the plants and in between the rows and it not only helps hold water in the soil, but it actually does a great job of holding down weeds. Now the best free mulch I have ever seen are actually my grass clippings, I'll put two to three inches of fresh cut grass down on the soil and over a week or so at browns out and then it seems to compact just a bit. And it's a great barrier for most weeds. With the exception of something like maybe field bindweed which you're going to have to hand pull, the mulch that you put in will benefit the soil as it breaks down. And as I mentioned earlier, hold water in. And so with the use of mulch like grass clippings or bark, then you can get away with watering once or twice a week and your garden will actually be in really good shape. And that's assuming that it's established. I wanted to give a brief mention to what's called plastic mulch. And this is where you see gardeners putting down drip irrigation or drip hose stretching plastic over a row. And then they will go ahead and grow their plants up through the plastic by putting holes in it and then putting the seeds or transplants in there. The black plastic is very available from local hardware stores and box stores. You just want to make sure that is UV resistant. You also made need some landscape staples to help peg the hose down that you put under the plastic and to help hold the plastic in place. After I get the plastic placed. What I will do is then put soil on the sides of the plastic to hold it down. Now some concerns about plastic mulches.
There are a few concerns about plastic mulch one is is that the plastic is not recyclable, and so you do need to send it to the landfill at the end of the season. The other concern is irrigation. Let's say you have drip hose underneath your plastic mulch but you need to water more than once a week. In that situation, you'd have to have that saved water in your rain barrels or five gallon buckets or whatever. And you'd have to be able to water through the plastic and so you might need to make a bigger hole and even then make some sort of a basin around the plant. So as you carefully poured water in during the period, you can't irrigate, it's just a little bit more difficult to do. My other concern with plastic molter in the areas such as Sandy in the Leighton bench that have really sandy soils, this would include Clearfield and that little portion of West Point also, I would consider skipping the plastic mulch and sticking to something more like grass. Because your soil is so well drained. Another thing you can do is consider actually gardening in the bottom of the furrow. Normally we plant on top of the furrow. But in your situation because it's so hard for the soil to retain water. You would do your furrows and actually plant in the bottom of the furrow so that as water drains it stays at the bottom of the for a while longer than it will the top. And so in conclusion, I do think that we can still garden with us, even with restrictions of watering once a week as long as we're able to save some water for the in between time. And that's especially important for the first third of the season while you're getting your plants established and I hope we get a wetter spring than usual so that we don't have to actually deal with this
Taun Beddes 0:00
I'm with Gabi Murza, who is a Utah State University employee. Gabi, how are you doing?
Gabi Murza 0:05
I'm doing really well. Thank you.
Taun Beddes 0:07
So what is it you do for Utah State University?
Gabi Murza 0:10
I am one of the extension faculty. I work with the Heart Initiative, which is the health extension advocacy research and teaching initiative. And what we basically do is we do programming and events and other activities that address the opioid epidemic in the state of Utah, and other types of public health issues as well.
Taun Beddes 0:31
We know that opioids are a big problem. And I've read recently, there's been a lot of overdoses through COVID and even after and so in what ways are you specifically working to reduce opioid addiction,
Gabi Murza 0:47
there are a lot of different ways. And so the heart initiative does do you know, things like Naloxone training and community opioid education dinner's in more of the rural counties where there might not be a lot of education or resources. And then from the other side of things is more on the behavioral health aspect and physical activity aspect or when you think of injury prevention, so preventing injury preventing pain from occurring, so to avoid having to use opioids or using them for a longer amount of time. So that's kind of my approach in it that I bring into into this initiative.
Taun Beddes 1:25
So that leads us to the first main question is why is minimizing pain and preventing injury in the garden. So important.
Gabi Murza 1:32
there are a couple of reasons why I mean, when we think of gardening, and I'm thinking that your audience who's listening to this, a lot of them are gardeners or they enjoy gardening, but a lot of us when we when we think of gardening or when we have garden, we know what we may feel like at the end of the day, right? Our back hurts, our knees hurts, sometimes we overdid it. And so the the experience of pain and injury is sometimes can be a little too real for us. If we've experienced any of those things, and there are a lot of challenges to gardening, I mean, it is considered an exercise. So warming up, cooling down, taking breaks, hydrating, those kinds of things that you would consider when you're working out or when you're doing some kind of other physical activity. Sometimes our expectations so for example, I'll use myself as an example. Even though I teach most of my work, most of the things that I do is I sit in an office, I work on the computer, that's most of my day. And then on the weekends, or in the evenings, I go out and garden at home, I have a lot of stuff to do sometimes in the garden. And I feel like I have to do it all at the same time, because I only have the weekend. And so I try to do all of it. And that's just not realistic for myself or for anybody who's just who gardens for fun or relaxation versus someone who's in a landscaping business, you know, who does this more as a living. So our expectations of what our body can handle versus the reality of it can also lead to those injuries. And so those are some of those things that we have to consider. If we are trying to minimize that pain. Later on.
Taun Beddes 3:09
I don't know the number of times I've been outside, decide to even like mow the lawn or rake leaves. And while you're doing it, it's fine. But you come in and an hour later, it feels like you've been run over by a dump truck. Yes, exactly. Or you've been out working and all of a sudden you just a wrong move. And it's not necessarily if you know it's something really heavy, but you just turn wrong. And you can hardly walk back in because you've strained your back so badly. Yeah. And so it doesn't seem like it up front. But that jumping from injury working outside in the garden and doing horticultural related things, to going to the doctor for pain meds isn't that much of a leap.
Gabi Murza 3:51
It can also depend on a person's physical activity and physical strength and abilities and you know, things like that, that come into play as well.
Taun Beddes 4:01
So what are some of the most common ways people are injured working in the garden garden?
Gabi Murza 4:07
Well, we think of bodily injury. So of course, things can happen in the garden where we might get injured by tools that we use. So you know, like lawn mowers and weed whackers and things like that, like tremors those are things but what I'm really talking about is more of the repetitive strain injuries. So we call them RSI, and those are probably the most common so those are like the the pain that we feel in our muscles and our tendons and our nerves from either doing a repetitive activity or from over use or overdoing something. So for example, maybe you're holding something incorrectly and it pulls on your thumb and you don't realize it right and so you can develop an injury ligament injury in your thumb. Maybe you're weeding so you're pulling weeds for a long time and you're kneeling down on your knees and your back is arched and stuff. And so you're in that position. And you're doing that for a long time. And that can hurt your lower back. Those are examples of some of those RSI so those repetitive strain injuries.
Taun Beddes 5:13
what are some of your recommendations to help minimize the pain,
Gabi Murza 5:18
we can do three things so we can adapt to the garden, we can adapt the tools and or we can adapt ourselves. So for example, adapting the garden would be things that you would do structurally, or with the landscaping to help to help you be able to move around the garden and to make it a little more user friendly. So for the things like raised beds that help so you're not kneeling over so much. You can also do things that promote less weeding. So maybe the types of plants that you put in or the types of things that you can put in to minimize weeding. So that are to minimize the weeds coming up. If you're going to adapt your tools, there are ergonomic tools that are made to help make using those tools a little bit easier. You can also find tools that are better equipped for you as a person. So for example, finding if you're going to use a long handle tool, like a shovel or a rake or a hoe, find ones and you're a tall person find ones with a longer handle. I know some of this is easier said than done. But again, these are just kind of recommendations. But finding a long handle tool that is appropriate for your size and your height so that you're not hunching over. You can also find attachments to retro fit your tools that you have. I'm not talking about buying brand new tools. But there are attachments and things that you can put on your tools to make them a little bit easier to use. And then the last one about adapting yourself. So these are things like scheduling tasks. So for example, again, I'm gonna use myself is that this one weekend that I had, and I've done this so many times, but this one weekend, I had a bunch of stuff to do. I pulled weeds I planted flowers, I I took care of the dead stuff around you, I think I even put in like drip irrigation. I tried to do this in like a day and a half or something like that. And I was hurting for a couple of days. So I finally decided to schedule these tasks. And I work best in the morning, before I go to work. So I actually set time. I got up half an hour early. And I set my clock to 20 minutes. And I wrote down each day what task I was going to do put in drip irrigation next day I planted a flower. I consciously made that effort. So adapting yourself would be things like scheduling tasks. The other thing would be changing tasks more often, generally, you want to change tasks about every 20 to 25 minutes. So if you're pulling weeds, do that for about maybe 20 ish minutes, and then move to something where you're standing straight up, and you're not straining that back again, we want to change your tasks pretty often. Hydrating is really important. Sometimes we don't think about that. But make sure you always have a bottle with you dressing appropriately and then asking for help.
Taun Beddes 8:09
So when you say dressing appropriately, you're talking things that will prevent you from getting injury.
Gabi Murza 8:15
Oh, yeah, you know, sometimes we think of sun protection. So wearing a hat wearing sunglasses, but also wearing knee pads, I have gotten used to wearing knee pads because those those are stuck, right? Those will go with me everywhere I go. Also dressing appropriately, meaning wearing appropriate clothes to where you're not stifled, you're not overheating, your clothes are letting you breathe comfortably letting you move around comfortably, but also protecting you gloves and long pants and things like that that'll help protect you from other types of injuries that you can get either something doesn't hit your leg.
Taun Beddes 8:50
You have worked with multiple groups along the Wasatch Front in workshops with injury prevention. And so when you put on and facilitate one of these workshops, what sorts of activities do you teach your participants?
Gabi Murza 9:05
We talk about how to be realistic in your expectations. What are some of the common injuries that can happen? What are some ways that we handle those when we have injury when we have pain, and then we get into the best practices that come from orthopedic experts, the physical fitness realm, we also look at how to how to adapt the the garden, how to adapt your tools and how to prepare yourself but then the main part of it is being able to go to an outdoor setting like a garden, grab some tools, and practice these movements. So how to kneel correctly, how to bend down and pick something up correctly, and how to lift it correctly. How to carry it so you're kind of protecting your back. How do you use long handled tools and so being able to engage the correct muscles, the right muscles, to be able to help protect your things like your risk and your knees and your back in your shoulders. That's the biggest part of this is just having that hands on component.
Taun Beddes 10:07
IF somebody wants to contact you about maybe putting on a workshop for a community group or a group of volunteers. What's the best way to get a hold of you?
Gabi Murza 10:16
If you go to the Utah State University Extension in Utah County website? My information is there. My full name is actually Gabriela Murza, I just everyone calls me Gabby. But you can find my contact information there, you can call the Utah County Extension office. And there, you can be patched directly to my extension, or you can send me an email and that information is on the Utah County Extension website. So do you have any final thoughts? Gardening is an exercise so we kind of have to treat it as such, it's important to stretch, there's a lot of power and stretching, there's a lot of power and hydrating and you know, kind of preparing ourselves in being able to garden effectively and so we're not hurting ourselves. And essentially everything that we do we want to try to incorporate things that help promote healthy posture movements and kind of maintenance of those activities and the things that we love.
Taun Beddes 11:11
Well, thank you very much. We greatly appreciate you taking the time.
Unknown Speaker 11:15
Yeah, thanks again for having me.
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