Growing Together: A Gardening Podcast · Forum Communications Co.

Ditch your riding mower, and other tips to better health through gardening

·38 min·2 clips

Plain water is fine, but beer is not a good hydrator.

1. Growing Together: A Gardening Podcast focuses on ditching the riding mower and using gardening for better health. 2. John Lamb hosts with Don Kinsler, the NDSU Extension horticulturist for Cass County, and guest Julie Garden-Robinson is an Extension food and nutrition specialist and professor with NDSU. 3. The episode asks whether mowing, weeding, and other yard work can count toward the step goals people use for health. 4. Don answers a listener named Dave about purple growths in a lawn, identifying them as mushrooms or fungus with a mycelium below the soil. 5. Don says the best control is to rake up and dispose of the mushrooms because mushrooms can be toxic to children and pets. 6. Julie says she got the column idea while pushing a battery-operated mower on a hot, humid day while her husband rode a 30-year-old mower. 7. She says she probably reached 10,000 steps that day, and John notes that 10,000 steps equals about five miles of walking. 8. Julie cites a meta study of about 57 studies and says 7,000 steps a day now looks like a healthy target. 9. She adds that for adults over 60, the CDC found 6,000 to 8,000 steps per day linked to lower risk of premature death. 10. The conversation links gardening to bending, stretching, stooping, walking, and even the daily walk to fetch forgotten tools from the shed. 11. John says gardening helps him lose about 10 pounds when the season starts, and Julie agrees that gardening gives a sense of accomplishment. 12. Julie says gardening helps joints and bones, and the hosts connect yard work to mental health and being outdoors. 13. Julie recalls the old reel mower from childhood, where a twig or acorn could stop the blades and send her belly into the machine. 14. She says her electric mower is quiet, but it ran out of power before the front yard was finished and got stuck under a pine tree. 15. Julie says the backyard was thick and lush after heavy rainfall, so her husband with a bad knee took the rider on that section. 16. John and Don discuss mowing patterns, including diagonal passes and turning the mower like a baseball field. 17. Julie says outdoor workers should take water breaks, use sunscreen, and stop if they do not feel well. 18. She says plain water is fine unless someone is an elite athlete, and she recommends food like fruit, crackers and cheese, peanut butter, and vegetables for snack breaks. 19. People who garden, mow, and want practical Extension health advice would benefit from this episode. 20. People looking for a fast entertainment-only listen or a pure technical lawnmower review might skip it.

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