Sweet Vitriol

the gardeners gauntlet

by Ether

If you peruse the garden supply section of any nursery, garden center, home center, or hardware store, you’re sure to find them. They come in all colors, not nearly enough sizes, and run the gambit of price points. No, I’m not talking about flower pots or silly little garden statuettes, I’m talking about gloves. Gardening gloves to be exact.

Even if you’re new to gardening, you might have had a pair when you were little. It seems every household has a few pairs of gardening gloves laying around somewhere. I used to purchase a certain style of such glove religiously for my stagehand work as a flyman. They were excellent gloves, and I wish I could still get them as I probably would use them as my gardening glove. Alas, as Amy of Garden Rant talks about in her post The Year in Gloves, the gloves never lasted me more than one season of fly work. The store where I bought those gloves is long-gone, as the gloves seem to be as well. So now I’m on the hunt for a new pair.

Amy brings up a good question- how do we find a good garden glove, and what is a good glove worth? Do we really need garden gloves? Personally I like to have a glove. As much as I’d love to be able to root around in the dirt and mud bare-handed, I have a day job where I need to look more like a professional and less like a ragamuffin. Working in the garden is hell on your nails, and dirt stains on your knuckles are hard to scrub out. Also some plants are downright thorny, and weeds often cut your hands when pulling them, especially crabgrass. I think Amy is right as well in saying that a good glove shouldn’t cost too much, as they will fall apart sooner or later. Probably sooner rather than later. I like a glove that fits me well, most are too short for my long skinny fingers, that allows me dexterity and precision of motion, and that protects me from the sharp and pokey things of the world.

I’ve recently been eyeing a pair of Mechanix gloves. They’re a bit cutesy, but they actually fit when I tried them on. I do like that they are a lovely olive-green tone too, although they appear more spring-green online. Still, $20 seems a bit high to me for gardening gloves, so I’m undecided. Maybe I’ll go back to my roots and get the big floppy canvas gloves from the hardware store- the kind where you have either two right- or two left-handed gloves and just sort of muddle through. Check your parent’s garage or your dad’s work-shed, I’m sure you’ve got a pair laying around somewhere already.

Posted by Ether on March 13th, 2008 filed in Gardening4 Comments »