Well, thanks to a readers comment I went ahead and got the gloves I was pondering earlier. I guess it wasn’t so hard to win me over after all, though I will say that the pretty designs on the fingers and the label saying that they were machine washable helped lure me in a good bit. What’s that? Target audience? Well perhaps…

It has come to my attention that I am sorely lacking in certain areas of the gardening gear department. The department in question is that of weed annihilation. I’ve always relied on my (well, ok, initially it was my mother’s) hori-hori knife. That unassuming tool really has served me well, and until now I never felt I was missing out on anything.

Yeah, until now. That’s the danger of reading garden blogs, you start discovering things you didn’t think you needed, but now you lust over. Right now it seems everyone else has an assortment of hoes except me. Of course you can’t talk about hoes without mentioning Carol of May Dreams Gardens with her collection. Recent days have found me poking about various blogs into their older posts, and lo and behold- more hoes! So I suppose I should get a hoe, or a few hoes, I’m just not sure what sort is ideal for me. I think the reason I’ve never needed one is I do such intensive style gardening that there isn’t much room for weeds to really grow. This year there will be some more space amongst my veggies, so I might actually need one of these tools. I’ll leave the suggestion lines open to all of you gentle readers- what hoes do you like? Have you ever met a hoe you didn’t like? Any general hoe thoughts?

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.