Gardening can help people feel better and lower their stress hormones. You can do more gardening to relieve stress on you and your family during the epidemic prevention period.
MORE: A Dutch study found that gardening can help people feel better and lower stress hormones. A group of subjects who had a stressful task and then split it into two groups, one who read for 30 minutes indoors and another who did gardening work outdoors.
The results of the experiment found that the group members who worked in gardening had significantly better moods than those who read indoors, and also had more reductions in "cortisol", the stress hormone.
So, to relieve the pressure on you and your family during the epidemic prevention period, do more gardening work. Below we have listed the gardening work you can do at home during the epidemic prevention phase. You can soothe your mood through these activities and create a more satisfying garden/vegetable garden.
Clear weeds
If it's raining, the weeds in the yard will start to move, and the rain and sunlight will make the weeds grow freely. Now that you have the time, get your hands on weeds!
Make Compost
Have you tried composting at home? Not only does composting reduce the amount of waste, it can also be a huge benefit to the plants you grow. "Compost is organic matter that can be added to the soil and help plants grow," according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
About 30% of the waste we throw away is food waste or yard waste, most of it can be composted! When composting, make sure you first find a large litter box with a lid and be tall enough to keep the box from getting opened by raccoons and nearby dogs.
Material suitable for composting can be divided into green waste and brown garbage. Green waste is mostly wet, e.g. fruits and veggies, while brown waste is dry leaves, branches, or old newspapers. The ratio of these two wastes has to be balanced because of the two wastes brown waste can provide carbon and green waste can provide nitrogen that can supply different nutrients to the microorganisms responsible for decomposition and activating the soil.
Inventory Tools
Is your garage or garden tool room full of clutter that hasn't been dealt with in a long time? You might as well take advantage of this time at home and invite your family members to tidy up together, dividing all the utensils into two piles that are needed and those that are not needed. You can reclassify the must-have utensils and store them in your garage or toolbox. If useless utensils aren't comfortable to throw away right away, they can also be packed in cardboard boxes and placed in the corner of the garage.
Grow some new flowers and vegetables
Lots of nurseries are open during this time and if you have lots of seeds or bulbs, you can swap them out with your neighbors while keeping social distance.
