Gardening With Chronic Illness

Gardening was one of my favorite activities before I became chronically ill. It has been a long journey but over the last decade or so I have found some ways to continue to garden despite my sometimes unstable health. I have a long way to go on this but I thought I’d share some of what I’ve learned so far.

1. Learn about Permaculture practices. Permaculture focuses on working with nature rather than trying to tame it into perfectly straight rows. It focuses on perennials or plants that will grow back year after year. What that means practically is that once it’s planted it will require a lot less maintenance than typical garden crops. I have found that I feel my best in the springtime, which is nice since that is usually when perennials like to be planted. Then throughout the season I do some minimal maintenance. Perennials do tend to take longer to bear fruit, sometimes several years for things like fruit and nut trees, but if you have the space and the time, that will eventually pay off.

2. Find plants that require care when you are able to provide it. As I said above, I feel best in the spring, so I’ve found plants that need the most care in spring and require very little during the heat of summer. In the summer is when I typically feel my worst so it’s best if I can mostly stay in the AC.

An example of this is asparagus. Asparagus is a perennial that is planted in spring time and once established will continue to grow for easily 20 years, sometimes as long as 50 years. Every spring new sprouts come up and you need to keep it weeded throughout the spring. That’s also when you do your harvesting. Once summer is coming on you let the stalks grow and bush out. Once they do that you don’t have nearly as much weeding to do since the plant shades out most weeds. And since you aren’t harvesting in summer the work is really quite minimal. In late fall you have to do a bit more maintenance but by then I’m wanting to be outside again.

Another decent example is fruit trees and bushes. I have a handful on my property and they usually only need to be pruned and fertilized once a year, which I do in early spring. I may spread mulch under them or do a bit of weeding but once they are established they are usually big enough to fend off small weeds by themselves. Fruits do tend to become ripe in summer but harvesting is the easiest part of gardening to get your friends to help with because it’s instant gratification.

3. Plant to your convenience, there’s no shame in accepting limitations. I live on 1.25 acres and the most productive part of my garden is consistently the pots on my front porch. It’s a small growing area but there is protection from animals built into the space and it’s so convenient for me to care for them. If I’m sitting on my couch I can see most of those plants from there. I like to spend my morning on my porch anyway so pulling a few weeds or watering the plants isn’t much of a change in my normal routine. As an added bonus my living room doesn’t get a lot of natural light so it’s hard to keep houseplants alive in there, but having a whole row of green a few feet outside the window gives me plenty of green to look at 3 out of 4 seasons.

Another facet of permaculture is putting the things you use the most closest to your house. In permaculture they divide things into zones with the things needing the most attention or used the most often closest to the humans. Think herb gardens or tea gardens right outside your door, followed by your market veggies. Those things you are likely to need to harvest pretty frequently. Further out you’ll have your more perennial plants and fruiting trees since those require less attention and harvesting is typically done at one specific time of year.

4. Think of yourself as managing a whole ecosystem rather than growing specific plants. For starters, this mindset helps you not to get discouraged if something doesn’t work. But it also allows you to let nature do a bunch of the work for you. You don’t have to keep all the animals out of your garden if you make sure your space attracts those animal’s predators. For instance, we have a ton of chipmunks in our yard. I could spend all day trying to catch them and remove them, or I can make my land desirable to owls and let them take care of the problem for me. I have put up an owl box and we have a stream at the bottom of our property for water. Also we have some basically untouched woods. It’s a nice place for owls, which makes it a less nice place for rodents.

I also plant things that attract insects I want in my garden. The most obvious example of this is pollinator plants. That means planting things that bees in particular like and trying to make sure there is something blooming throughout the warm season. Ladybugs are another great insect to invite into the garden. Earthworms also come to mind. You can jump start this process by releasing live ladybugs or earthworms into your garden but make sure they have enough of what they need or they won’t stick around long. Making bug hotels or allowing natural versions of those (like rotting fallen trees) on your property can also help.

5. Grow native plants whenever possible. Whatever plants are native to your region are always going to grow the best. They have adapted to the area already. This is another focus of permaculture and I think it’s a really helpful one if you have low energy. As an example paw paw trees are native to where I live. Paw paws are a fruit that grows on small trees, often as an understory plant. But importantly for me, they don’t taste good to the wildlife in our area. That means they require limited if any protection. That reduces my work load significantly. They also don’t need much in the way of weather protection unless there is some very strange weather situation. I almost never need to water them or cover them to protect from cold weather. They are used to these conditions already so they do fine with very little intervention from me.

6. Mulch your little heart out in springtime. Since that’s when I feel my best and since it’s the beginning of the growing season I just mulch and mulch in spring. This helps in a number of ways. First, it allows me to do the most work when I feel the best. Second, it significantly cuts back on the weeds growing in my garden. Third, it holds moisture in the heat of summer so my garden doesn’t need to be watered as often.

7. Schedule your day so you can garden when the weather is nicest. In the spring and fall I do most of my yard work mid day to catch the sunshine and warmth. In summer I do whatever absolutely needs to be done in the mornings before it gets too hot. One thing I love to do is a morning garden tour. I’ll walk through my garden with my morning cup of coffee with the primary goal of just enjoying all the things that are growing in the yard. While I’m at it I can do small bits of weeding or check out if there are other things my garden needs. I can also take note of anything that needs to be harvested and come back around for it later. Ideally this garden tour takes me 15-30 minutes and is pretty leisurely. It’s primarily for enjoyment after all. It’s important to enjoy your yard if you want to stay motivated to work in it.

I will often try to harvest things earlier in the day and then take them inside before it gets hot out. In the AC I can do whatever needs to be done for proper storage or use. And if there are things I don’t get to in time I just feed them to my chickens. They aren’t wasted, they are just magically turned into eggs. If things can’t be fed to the chickens they can often be composted, which puts all the nutrients right back into the soil to help next year’s crops grow.

8. Ask for help. Even if you don’t have a very productive garden yet, there’s no shame in asking for help to work on something that brings you joy. If you do have a productive garden then more the better to entice your friends to help with projects. I find this especially helpful on larger projects. I don’t usually ask for help with weeding but if I’m building a fence or digging a trench (for instance to plant asparagus) my friends have been happy to help.

I hope some of these ideas help you to be able to continue gardening despite chronic illness. I’ve found it to be incredibly therapeutic in a number of ways. It’s good for exercise, getting appropriate amounts of sunlight and fresh air, getting your hands dirty can help with depression, and you get delicious and nutritious food to eat. Keep growing!