Gardening Gloves

my_secret_garden · Sun Apr 30, 2006 11:38 am

I use my gardening gloves to do things like dig in the dirt, mess around with the grass, and plant things but I use work gloves with traction on them for doing yard work and pretty much everything else. Rubber dishwashing gloves for working in the Pond!

opabinia51 · Tue May 02, 2006 6:29 pm

We used to try using rubber gloves when working in the pond at a former place of employment of mine but, the water was so deep that the gloves will fill up with water so, I discarded the gloves and just used my hands.

.... Probably one of the reasons why my hands are so well worn these days.

my_secret_garden · Wed May 03, 2006 12:44 am

grandpasrose wrote:Cute Opa!

Personally, I don't wear gardening gloves. I get gardening gloves given to me by everyone every Christmas, and I have a whole stack of them in my garden shed of all different kinds and types, but they never get used.
I have tried, but they just don't let me feel the soil and the plants the way I like to. I want to be able to get the full effect of getting down in there and feeling it all.
I also find them awkward to weed or do any kind of finer work with because I can't feel as much.
Sound pretty touchy feely, don't I?
I guess that's just one of the many things that gardening fulfills for me.
Val

Send some of those glove stacks to me! I wear them all the time and have a lot of dirty pairs. I can't bring myself to dig in the dirt much with my bare hands because I have kind of a phobia of touching bugs with my bare hands. Blech. If I was digging around in the dirt and touched a worm, I would probably scream and cry. With gloves on, not nearly as bothersome. I am kind of a weinie.

my_secret_garden · Wed May 03, 2006 12:47 am

opabinia51 wrote:We used to try using rubber gloves when working in the pond at a former place of employment of mine but, the water was so deep that the gloves will fill up with water so, I discarded the gloves and just used my hands.

.... Probably one of the reasons why my hands are so well worn these days.

Yep, I can only reach so far into the murky depths with the rubber gloves but I am in the process of cleaning my pond out so I can't bear the thought of digging around in that nasty water with my bare hands.

Grey · Wed May 03, 2006 11:37 am

I FINALLY found a pair of gloves that let me feel what I am doing. I've used them for 2 months, pretty hard, and they're still fine. They are pretty thin, with a rubber layer on the palm part and just a stretchy ACE-bandage like fabric on the back. They are made by Atlas.

opabinia51 · Thu May 04, 2006 5:29 pm

Hi Secret,

Yes, I'm pretty unsqueemish. Luckily I never came across a snake but, al the cool water insects and frogs that we used to come across were pretty cool.

Though this one species had a painful bite. I didn't like that very much. But, they weren't venomous just biters.

my_secret_garden · Thu May 04, 2006 11:20 pm

Omg. My pong might be the one thing you would be squeemish of. It was unattended last year (was my husband's job to keep it clean...) and it was disgusting and full of decomposing leaves, stray trash, twigs, muck, sludge, some kind of nasty green substance that could be algea, and some dead snakes. Mmm.

Couldn't pay me enough to put my bare hands in there!

junkhead · Wed May 10, 2006 12:42 am

No gloves for me. I love the feel of stems, leaves, pedals, weeds, all of it. I feel much closer to nature that way.

opabinia51 · Thu May 11, 2006 5:14 pm

I've found that only the thick leather gloves help but, I really like to wear gloves when pulling thistles, you can reach down to the roots but, I still often get stuck and it really hurts. So, I like to wear some sort of protection when pulling those guys. A shovel also works well.

Marge · Fri May 12, 2006 6:01 am

I used to hate wearing gloves when gardening as I liked the feel of the soil etc, but as I became more bothered about my manicure (!) I took the plunge and now use simple, thin cotton gardening gloves.

Mind you for some jobs I just have to go glove free, especially making seed trays. It just isn't the same with gloves, even delicate ones.

opabinia51 · Fri May 12, 2006 6:30 pm

I often misplace my Right gardening glove when I start planting seeds in my garden. Finding it again is always fun

CatGiorgia · Tue May 16, 2006 2:47 am

If I don't wear gloves while doing housework or gardening, my hands tend to get painfully dry. So, I have multiple pairs of gloves for the garden: soft, cotton for protecting against caluses when raking, mowing, or hoeing; thicker gloves with rubber nubbies on the palm for regular weeding; water-proof gloves for planting; and thick leather gloves for working with nettles or roses.

My big problem is that the finger-tips of the right gloves all wear out four times faster than those on my left gloves. I think that work- and garden-glove manufacturers should sell gloves "in bulk" -- so people could replace the worn, "dominant"-hand gloves, instead of replacing whole pairs and having to throw out so many still-good singletons.

(Or, maybe we could start an exchange?)