Gardening is one way to a brain-healthy lifestyle - who knew?

I'm currently reading a book called '100 days to a Younger Brain'. So what's that got to do with growing veg, you may ask?  On many levels, gardening is good for you but I hadn't realised that this pastime was helping to keep my brain in tip top shape.

Forget-me-Nots ... an appropriate flower for this post?

After skimming through the salient chapters in the book,  (I will go back and read it properly but first wanted to get straight to the nitty gritty), it seems that if we want to slow or reverse cognitive decline in our dotage, we need to adopt a brain-healthy lifestyle with regular exercise, optimal amounts of sleep and stress, social engagement, mental stimulation, and a moderately healthy diet. I simplify, of course, but it reminds me of how my lifestyle has changed through gardening and engaging with the gardening community. I've learnt so much and have a better diet and more positive outlook as a result.

It's not the first time the wisdom of this sort of healthy lifestyle has been touted around but I hadn't realised to what extent this, or lack of it, affects our brains as we age.  A classic case of not seeing the obvious until it's pointed out - but I do love some solid advice wrapped up in a bit of neuro-scientific nerdery.

Having lost both parents to age-related illness and dementia, I'm increasingly aware of the moments when instant recall fails me, such as having a plant's botanical name on the tip of my tongue or remembering a person's face but not their name. (Awkward.) It's beyond frustrating and sometimes just a tad worrying.  Reading this book has also made me question the extent of my parents' diagnosis and whether a few changes might have made a small difference to their last years. It's also given me a boot up the bum to improve a couple of areas in my own lifestyle - move more, walk more, drink more. (As tempting as that sounds, I mean water not gin.)

The author, a research psychologist, offers practical advice to slow, halt or reverse signs of deteriorating brain health and how to build resilience against disease through healthy lifestyle choices. Scarily, our brains have already started to atrophy at age 30 (who knew?) but that decline accelerates once we reach 60 by which time we've potentially lost up to a third of our brains anyway.  Crikey. The good news is that even if our brains have shrunk to the size of a small coconut, physical exercise and stimulating environments will help to increase the brain's abilities to learn, remember and function, thereby potentially counteracting diseases such as dementia.

And that's where gardening comes into play - for me, at least.

Being outside gives me social contact with my neighbours; lugging compost and plant pots strengthens my bones; weeding, sowing and hoeing keeps me supple; proximity to nature and the seasons promotes mindfulness and calm. Even writing this blog is keeping my brain active!

So far, so reassuring. Now I just have to work on taking regular breaks from screen time (a quick walk round the garden or run up and down the three flights of stairs to my front door?) and to drink more water.  Sometimes I literally forget to drink. This week though I've had a jug of water on my desk and manage a litre a day plus tea and coffee! As a result I'm feeling less tired in the evenings and sleeping soundly. Result.

The best though is that during regular breaks, I wander onto the balcony to think about the garden, or stroll down to the veg patch to see what's occurring - often coming back with some herbs or veg for lunch. Communing with nature, exercise and a healthy lunch? Three more boxes ticked!

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I learnt of this book through a blog I subscribe to, The Age Well Project and then, intrigued, I bought it.  This is the link to the relevant post, 'Can laughter help you live longer?'

March in the veg patch garden

Regular as clockwork - blossom on the plum tree. 

Tonight the clocks go forward in the UK, heralding the start of British Summer Time. Tomorrow I'll wake as usual at 7am and change the hands on all the clocks to 8am and feel that the day has stolen a march on me.  It's all very unsettling but, despite my curmudgeonly attitude, at least I'll feel one step closer to summer!

The first quince blossom this year

Now that April is only a day or two away, the garden is really coming alive.  Mostly with flowers, to be fair, but when those flowers are sparkling on the pear and plum trees, you know you can start to get excited. There's even one small blossom bud on the quince tree planted at the northern end of the veg patch; the other quince (a patio variety in a pot) has never flowered and I'll be pleasantly surprised if I see any blooms this year.  I'm not sure why it's never flowered but no flowers means no fruit.  More feeding is needed I guess.

And so to rhubarb. Choosing the best cultivar is key; I've already indulged in some delicious stewed rhubarb a few weeks ago thanks to a friend who grows a large patch of Timperley Early and, serendipitously for me, doesn't like rhubarb!  Regular readers may remember that I got rid of my Glaskins Perpetual clump last year. It was too big and too green - but fantastic if you want stems for most of the year.  I like a nice red stem (a must for fruit fools or stewed fruit) so pinned my hopes on a new Siruparber plant from Lubera in Switzerland as well as the two Red Champagne plants struggling to survive under the apple trees.

Red Champagne rhubarb - and a matching tulip

In the past few weeks I'd convinced myself that the Siruparber was a goner as there was nothing to indicate where it had been last year, but this week I've spotted a couple of tiny leaves poking up and quickly put a wire basket over the top for protection against fox cubs.  The Champagne plants have produced a towering flower stem in the past, (not a good thing for rhubarb), clearly demonstrating that they are Not Happy.  And this is where you learn by doing - I'd read that rhubarb could be grown in light shade ... or apparently not in this case. I have two Champagne crowns so one will be carefully dug up and moved into the light - or as much as it can get with a four storey block of flats in close proximity on either side of the veg patch. (The patch gets around 6 hours of sun on a good day, which is fine for most veg and annuals.)

Cerinthe / Honeywort
Lamprocapnos / Bleeding Heart
Borage / Starflower

I do think colour is so lush in spring - I have primulas, cowslips, daffodils, forget-me-nots, tulips and muscari (grape hyacinths) to keep bees happy. I've only seen a couple so far but they'll buzz over once they know the nectar bar is open. This year self-seeded Cerinthe (honeywort) and Borage are blooming under the fruit trees - perfectly placed for pollinators - and one or two calendula plants have over-wintered. I don't even mind that the purple sprouting broccoli has finished and started to flower.  It's possibly the prettiest time in the veg patch and all part of the circle of life.

Last year's tulips return. Did I put those colours together?

Lessons learned from last year and what you can do in March

Having resolved not to be overly hasty in seed sowing, I sat outside on a bench on Thursday with my eyes closed, my face lifted to the warm sun and pondered the big question at this time of year, 'Is it warm enough to start sowing?'.

Sometimes I think it could be but, on the other hand, I had my hot water bottle out two nights ago and this morning the wind is battering my windows. Typically for March, the weather is completely unpredictable and makes me long for a sturdy greenhouse where I could raise hardy seedlings. (And shelter from the weather!)

Realistically, I know it's best to keep to my plan to sow direct next month but I've been re-reading Charles Dowding's 'Veg Journal' - the man is such an inspiration - in which he suggests sowing spinach indoors, 2 or 3 seeds to a module or small pot, and then planting out in 5 weeks time, ie mid-April when the weather will hopefully be less turbulent. Ditto for beetroot and leeks, which is a good reminder for me as I always forget to sow leeks in time and then worry as their skinny little stems look so fragile if the weather gets too hot ... or cold ... or windy.

But, before this season of veg growing starts in earnest ...

What have I learned from last year?

Baby Boo squash: A lovely creamy white on the vine but have yellowed over the winter months indoors. 

Every year is different and there's always something new to learn. What works one year may not work the next so it's good to look back and take stock before starting off again on your gardening journey.

• Write it down! I always start off well, recording seed sowing dates in a notebook or cheap diary but often forget to record transplanting or harvest dates. This year I'm inspired by The Green Conspiracy's garden planner where each vegetable is recorded on it's own page so its progress can be easily tracked. The planner is being produced in Germany after a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund the first printing and looks to be amazing for new growers. A printed planner is too expensive for me at around £30 (it needs to be replaced every year) so I'm buying the cheaper (£6) pdf version to see what it's all about.

• Last year I was super excited to grow Baby Boo squashes - seven of the cutest 4 inch wide white pumpkins from one plant. They were beautiful for natural autumn decorations but I was disappointed to find there was very little flesh inside. Last summer's heat (and lack of water) may be to blame but I'd rather play it safe with a different squash this year. (Possibly spaghetti squash which is delicious with butter.)
• What did work well was letting Baby Boo ramble through sweetcorn - a very symbiotic planting and worth repeating again this year. The squash leaves minimised moisture loss around the sweetcorn roots while the corn stalks gave the squash something to grab onto as the vines grew. Two sisters, rather than three. (This would also work with courgettes.)
• Will I bother with peas this year? No. Nor mange tout. I've thought long and hard about this but, if I'm honest, I'm happy with frozen peas and the mange tout weren't plentiful enough to bother with in my small space patch. But I will be keeping my eyes open for varieties that claim to produce prolific crops and might grow a few in large pots.  When you've not much space, it pays to be practical as well as considering alternatives like container growing to expand on available space.
• Always grow kale.  In 2017, I let a Cavolo Nero plant go to seed (the bees love the flowers); one tiny seed dropped and grew through the 2017/18 winter and produced leaves from early summer onwards. It's now taller than me and still growing (just starting to flower but the flower stalks are edible) - must have saved me a fortune in the shops!
• Always grow Purple Sprouting Broccoli (PSB). Not only is it expensive to buy but gathering home grown vegetables from the garden in the depths of winter (even a mild one) feels like a real treat. The same is true of kale, leeks, parsnips and sprouts. And I get to feel very smug that I have fresh psb growing and looking so much perkier than the ageing produce in the shops.
• I experimented with turning my metre square asparagus bed into a square foot planter - I divided the space into a grid of nine square foot spaces and put one plant in each of the squares not already occupied with an asparagus crown. I planted tomatoes in between the asparagus fronds as they make good companions; it nearly worked except that a neighbouring redcurrant bush partly shaded the tomatoes. The small plum tomatoes did well, the beefsteak toms were still trying to ripen at the first frosts! A stupid mistake on my part. This year I'll put the tomatoes next to a sunny wall and plant calendula and spinach around the asparagus.
• Don't forget the verticals.  Every year I regret the lack of a sturdy arch. My cheap metal arches lasted two seasons before toppling in gusting winds but oh how I loved seeing beans climbing up and over the top. This year I want to try again with growing luffas and Malabar climbing spinach. The search for how to build a sturdy structure is on.
• Say yes to salad onions. I used a lot in cooking last year and they take up very little room. I'm thinking of lining a section of the veg patch path with them. I'll also sow some around the edge of my carrots as I find this helps to keep carrot root fly away. Or maybe I just don't get carrot root fly. Works for me, anyway.
• Don't panic if you haven't mulched. Recent research suggests that if a thick mulch (minimum 5cm) is applied one year, it can be skipped the next. The same research also advised mixing the mulch 50:50 with garden soil or compost as too rich a soil can make plants sappy and weak. Personally, I never have enough mulch for a thick layer so tickle a thin layer into the top layer of soil in the veg beds and put a thicker layer around perennials (like rhubarb and raspberries) and fruit trees.

Here’s what you can do in March: 

There are no hard and fast rules for when to sow - what matters is warmth and light. Waking early yesterday, I noticed that in south-east UK we're now getting a good twelve hours of daylight but the weather is still chilly at night and wet/windy during the day. In his book, Charles Dowding suggests that vegetable seeds fall into three categories - cool, medium and warm temperature veg. Cool-type seeds can be sown outside once temperatures are consistently above 5°C/41°F (roughly now in the UK) but will rot if the weather turns wet and cold before they successfully germinate. Anything sown direct in the last couple of days here would have got washed away. The warm seed category (tomatoes, chillies, etc) need to be germinated and raised with heat above 64°F/18°C so tend to be raised under cover.

Outdoors: 

• Plant garlic cloves, onion sets, and potatoes. I'll also be replanting some oca saved from last year's harvest. 
• Sow broad beans, radish, spinach, sorrel, peas for shoots, parsnips, brassicas (broccoli, calabrese, cauliflower).  
• Edible flowers - try sowing nasturtiums and calendula now. Self seeded borage is about to flower in my veg patch which tells me that the soil is warm enough to grow things. And I have so many violets in flower that I might try moving a small clump.
• If the daytime weather forecast for my area comes true (58°F/15°C), a first sowing of medium temp veg seeds might be possible - carrots, spring onions, winter lettuce - but would need fleecing against wind and lower nighttime temps. Probably best to wait a while longer. 
• Weeds - take them out while they're tiny otherwise they'll be soon be hogging light, water and nutrients intended for the plants you do want. 

Indoors/under glass: 

I haven't sown anything yet but will get going over the next few weeks with germinating the following on warm windowsills in seed trays.

• chillies, 
• tomatoes, 
• peppers 
• aubergines 

I'll be sowing pea shoots and micro leaves indoors and beetroot can also be sown into modules - I use this lovely paper pot maker * as I can plant the whole module when the time is right with less root disturbance.

And while I wait for the right time to start sowing, I'm going to be enjoying all the gorgeous spring flowers in the garden.

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* Disclosure - the paper pot maker was gifted to me last year by Burgon and Ball but I genuinely love it, finding it easy to use, efficient, and perfectly suited to my as-plastic-free-as-possible lifestyle.