The new year starts with good intentions of fulfilling a list of New Year resolutions. But for many the list looks the same each year… eat healthier, exercise more, spend more time with family, save money, make a difference, learn something new… with negligible change made in any of the areas. However, gardeners are able to accomplish each of these goals while enjoying their favorite avocation.

How can you accomplish the above new year goals by gardening?

Eat healthy

Order herb and vegetable seeds now in order to start seeds for your kitchen garden indoors. Add daily fresh fruits to your diet by planting a variety of fruit trees and vines during winter.

Consider how diet can reduce the risks of vitamin and mineral deficiencies and such chronic diseases as diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and hypertension. Plant accordingly. For example, cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, cabbage, collards, kale, and bok choy contain phytochemicals that prevent particular cancers. Calcium– rich foods fight osteoporosis.

Replace processed food snacks with a garden of snack foods like cherry tomatoes, baby carrots, blue popcorn, and strawberries. Personalize the nutrition garden for your family’s health needs. Get more exercise

Planting and maintaining a garden burns calories while providing low– impact aerobic exercise for the cardio–vascular system. Aerobics, flexibility, and muscle tone are achieved through activities of digging, shoveling compost, raking, hoeing, pulling weeds, pushing a wheelbarrow, and walking back and forth. Wear a pedometer in the garden to see how far you travel while you work out.

Reduce reliance on power tools and increase use of muscle–power tools.

Spend more time with family

Save cash by growing your own food. Share the fun and benefits of gardening with the family. Gardening is an ideal intergenerational activity. More gets accomplished in less time with additional hands.

Cultivating a garden leads to questions, conversation, and cooperation. Gardening connects generations at harvest time when everyone’s contribution becomes a shared meal. Reality TV cannot match the real time spent with family in a joint venture like gardening.

Save money

Even a small flower and food garden can save money on store bought flowers, vegetables and seasonings. Find ways to maximize the space you have by considering vertical growing systems, raised bed gardening, and containers of plants on the patio. You save cash not only on the produce but also on gas to buy groceries.

Since homegrown produce tastes so much better than restaurant fare, eating out may become passé.

Personalize the garden for your family’s nutritional needs. Often gardeners have a surplus. Donating fresh food to the local food pantry saves money within the community.

Make a difference

Gardeners can use their gardens as models for environmental stewardship by eliminating use of pesticides and herbicides, creating backyard wildlife habitats, recycling yard waste to compost and mulch, planting trees, and coaxing neighboring homeowners to do likewise. You may start a guerilla gardener movement to clean–up neglected public spaces or initiate a community garden within your neighborhood.

Gardeners take the lead in propagating plants for plant exchanges and volunteering with green thumb projects at schools, shelters, and nursing homes.

Learn something new

Enroll in your county Master Gardener program or horticulture classes at a nearby technical college. Attend lectures on gardening offered at Riverbanks, through the Richland County Master Gardeners at library branches, and local garden centers. Subscribe to a gardening magazine featuring regional advice such as Carolina Gardener. Visit the National Gardening Association (www.nga.org) and American Horticultural Society (www.ahs.org) websites for educational resources available.

Include a bowl of strawberries in the snack garden. Gardening is an integrating activity for accomplishing multiple goals in the New Year.
Use muscle–powered tools to get the best work out.