Gardening is the practice of growing and cultivating plants. It makes the environment healthier and beautiful. But gardening is not just about your home looking good. It’s also a physical exercise and a list of activities.
When you start gardening in retirement, you can’t go through all the activities anymore. At that time you’ll need to relax and reduce your stress level, let alone pulling off severe stunts.
To make gardening easier at an elderly stage, you’ll need some additional tools for safety. So here are 5 Gardening Tools for the Elderly that will make your gardening easier.
1. Garden Cart
Garden carts with lifting handles create versatile workhorses in and around the house; they are called trolleys. These are nice utility things to haul mulch, compost, sand, bricks, potted plants, and different stuff around the yard.
The guerrilla carts have a soft handle, making transportation less strenuous on the hands. It’s durably built, and enormous wheels ensure it rolls swimmingly across just about any parcel. With its four wheels and massive gas tires, it’s a lot stable and more comfortable to maintain.
You don’t have to raise it and strain your muscles, neither do you have to compel to throw your weight into pushing it as you are doing with a handcart. The structure of the cart might be unable to move serious masses into the cart bed whereas it’s tipped when you’ll be able to correct it. This protects you from having to raise the load into the cart, so saving you arduous work.
At the end of the day, when you’re gardening in retirement, you won’t need to carry anything, just push.
2. Apron and UV Protecting Sun Hat
An apron will help you to keep all the small tools in one place and a UV protecting sun hat will protect you from getting wasted under the sun.
The apron is made out of rugged material that helps you to retain your tools shut whereas keeping you safe from sharp tools like pruners, shears, and knives.
Utility aprons have accessible pockets that permit you to keep up a hands-on approach within the garden. You’ll have ample storage to stay your tools, gloves, and sun blocker shut. Alternatively, you can think about getting a harvest gathering apron that makes gathering groceries easier.
On the other hand, when you get aged, your skin becomes more brittle and vulnerable to sunburn. The combination of strenuous physical activity, high temperatures, possible dehydration, and direct sunshine can enhance the risk of heat-related diseases such as heat cramps and exhaustion.
If you use a wide-brimmed hat, it can help keep you safe and comfortable moreover, because it will help you protect your eyes from sunlight’s UV rays. UV lights can cause anything from mild irritation to cataracts and permanent damage to your eyes.
So before jumping into your backyard, keep the apron and hat attached to stay safe while gardening.
3. Long Handled Tools
Sometimes the plants are too low to reach, and since you’re old, it’s hard to blend. In this case, long-handled gardening tools can prove particularly useful as they offer increased reach, and they eliminate the need for any bending or stooping.
There is a wide range of long-handled gardening tools available, including rakes, hoes, forks, and cultivators. The Ergo gardening range from Fiskars is particularly recommended.
The tools are constructed from aluminum, which means they are both lightweight and durable, and they feature an ergonomically designed handle that fits the contours of the hand.
4. Kneeling Pads
Knee pads can be a valuable tool for safe and healthy gardening. When you need some help to get up from your kneeling position, a kneeler can be the perfect equipment for you.
The core benefit is that Kneeling pads have handles which makes it easy to get up on your own. The advantage you get from a kneeler is that you can alternate between working from a kneeling and seated position very quickly.
Some kneelers are durable and lightweight.
The kneeler is easy to fold and store, and it has a storage pouch to keep your equipment at hand. Therefore, gardening in retirement can be a lot easier with a kneeling pad.
5. Garden hand toolset
Hand tools are one of the great gardening tools for the elderly focused on planting, hoeing, and sowing activities. You buy all the necessary hand tools as a set from the store. So once you buy the set, you are all set to go for gardening.
I know I’ve talked about the apron before, but the apron doesn’t come with a set of tools, right? A hand tool set contains everything that you need. As an elder, you won’t be taking on large projects, and so the small tools will definitely come in handy.
The basic tools you will find in a hand tool set are shovel or spades, weeder, soil knife, garden hoe, watering hose, scissors, pruning shear, etc. Trust me, if you haven’t had a toolset yet, buy one right away. It will come in handy.
Conclusion
Choosing the right tools is really a headache, sometimes. You’ll always keep thinking about which one to choose and which one to reject. But there are also some standard tools that you must need while gardening in your older years.
The five tools that we’ve discussed are some of the most important ones. If you already have them then congratulations but if you don’t then get one for yourself cause you will be getting these sooner or later.