Proper Gardening Gloves will Keep Your Thumb Green

If gardening is your hobby, it is said you have a green thumb. Most gardeners, though, find their hands usually covered with dirt instead. The therapeutic value of digging into the soil is familiar to everyone who loves working out of doors.

Using the proper gardening tools will ease your chores in the garden as well as allowing you to avoid wearing the garden by the time you are finished planting.

Gardening gloves are a necessity - and more than one pair is required if you work in your yard often. The most comfortable and least expensive gloves are constructed of heavy cotton. For repotting plants, light weeding, etc, these are fine to use. They can be laundered but seldom last more than one growing season unless the finger area is reinforced with heavier materials.

At the opposite end are heavy suede or leather gloves, meant to protect your hands from brambles and sharp objects. The protection they offer is excellent but most of them lack flexibility and they become uncomfortably warm to wear after a short while.

The best gloves for everyday work in your flower beds are made of cotton canvas combined with a soft thin leather palm and finger area. These provide adequate protection from damp soil and rose thorns yet can be worn comfortably for hours.

It is important to have a specific area of storage for gardening tools and gloves are no exception. One solution is to use a 5 gallon bucket to store your hand tools and gloves. When ready to plant or weed your beds, you need only carry the one bucket outside with you. In it you would keep your hose nozzles, your various hand sized digging tools, plant foot, clippers, pruning tools and your gloves.

Those who develop the habit of leaving gardening gloves here and there will find they are like socks in the laundry – you may very well end up with two left hand or 3 right hand gloves instead of the pairs you bought originally.