Hey everyone. I love to try to garden but I could use some encouragement. I'm 61 years old and I've suffered severe OCD my entire life. Is there anyone else out there who is my age or older and maybe tell me what all you do and that might encourage me and make me believe I can do it to. We have about 7 acres of land and I love flowers and vegetables. Thanks so much!
JS: I’m turning sixty this year and am an avid gardener though our soil is full of shale and clay and heavily forested (about 90 acres). So I grow herbs and build shade gardens. They grow easily in poor soil.
Shade keeps down weeds and once in, the garden needs little care. I’m very mobile, so bending no trouble but a friend who has trouble bending built raised beds high enough so she can garden standing up.
If mobility is not an issue, to create a shade gardens: collect cardboard or newspaper while its still cold and while still planning your garden. When spring comes and the snow melts line the tree with the cardboard or newspaper you collected. Make it thick so it suppresses weeds.
Now pour 3 to four inches of soil over the cardboard barrier and when warm enough, plant in shade (north and north eastern sides) and partial shade (south and south western side) plants (and shade loving flowers) into the soil (reverse for southern hemisphere). Mulch well. Keep it watered if it gets too dry in the summer and plants start wilting. Come fall, rake leaves over plants to bed them down.
Here are some pictures of the plants growing in my shade garden:
These garden are also good for some forms of OCD. For example hosta and sea form or sun tolerant ferns work well together and can be fitted geometrically using bee like hexagonal patterns to fit them into the bed.
By next year you have a functional mostly hands off garden. I usually only have to weed the edges using a hoe and I sometimes add cardboard and soil to expand the gardens. This is an simple starter garden that is easy to make and gives large returns.
Two other good gardens are herb which are also forgiving, as are local wild flowers and both draw bees and butterflies. They can be grown in many different kinds of beds including geometric or pattern ones. I prefer the wild look but you likely would prefer a more manicured look. Still there is a herb garden pattern that fits every person’s issues. Here are some examples:
Also many vegetables can be grown in pots taking the work out of them then that soil goes into shade gardens or raised beds, or even compost, in the spring after it’s used up. You can get prepotted tomatoes and even grown smaller versions of melons, or small pumpkins in a half barrel. I do this as well. They need to be regularly water and a little fertilizer once a month depending on vegetable plant and the different sized pots can be set into interesting patterns on a step.
Still, I’m old enough I’ve given up on huge square gardens with a lot of maintenance. I like gardens I can walk through and build and take down easily. I leave those big monsters for the younger generation and the local farmers. Still, little by little we are changing the part of the land we mow to low maintenance gardens and reducing the areas we need to mow and allowing some wild areas for nature.
I also planted many seed bearing and small fruit bearing bushes and trees to draw in song birds. These need watering the first few years (trees) or only first year or two (bush). They can also be put easily into patterns if that is your form of your OCD. Planning and caring for gardens works well for the other form I suspect.
All four garden types I describe are easy and adaptable, and I manged all of them with a busy scheduled as well.
Hope this helps.
