Makers of gardening gloves, listen up!

In response to a post asking how readers store their gloves, I got the smartest damn answer:  put all the right gloves in one bin and the left in another, grab one from each bin and go!

But here's how glove-makers could do the right-left sorting for us.  Why not make ALL the left gloves one color and ALL the right gloves a different color?  So these Atlas gloves, for example, could all be stored in the same bin and we could simply grab a pink and a blue and no worries!  Not the expensive gloves we use for dangerous jobs but the cheap, everyday gloves.  I would totally buy them by the dozen.

Comments

[Kim]

Oh, no, please don't do that. My obsessive self MUST have matching gloves. :-) I've attached some of my pairs together with clothespins and put them in a garden tote. The ones I wear most often are piled on a shelf and I just hunt for two of the same color which takes about 1 second. Although I may have close to 20 pairs of gloves, no two pairs are alike (some identical except for color), so I don't really have a problem.

[Barbara]

Sign me up. I can NEVER find a pair of gloves, at least not when I need them.

[Pam J.]

Brilliant! May I also suggest that the LEFT gloves be LAVENDER and the RIGHT gloves be RED?

[Elizabeth Stump]

How about gloves that are tougher than pig skin. I swear, I can go through a pair of pig skin gloves in one season. And deer and goat skin? I went through one pair in one weekend.

[Rosella]

The best gloves I have found recently are the cheap cotton-dipped-in-something-red that I can buy for $3.97 for a dozen pairs at the local Asian grocery emporium. They are great for almost everything, with the exception of rose thorns, and for those I use a pair of heavy canvas work gloves. For that price, I can have a clean pair often, and not worry about where I left the others.

I would love to have some fine gardening gloves, but my usual garden attire wouldn't live up to them.

[donna]

I use latex disposables. Nothing else gives me the feel of the dirt. ;^)

[Greg Draiss]

I have the same problem with sunglasses which is why I visit the dollar store more often than I want to.

The TROLL

[Jenn]

Ugh. Please, no.

I do have a garden bucket, and the two pairs of gloves I'm currently using live there - one pair of leather and one pair nitrile. Backups for each pair go in the garden storage tote.

Here's a question. How many gloves do you need? (would be interesting to find out how many 'wardrobe' changes some gardeners go throw when they garden)

[susan harris]

Jenn, I need at least 5 pairs of the everyday gloves, plus some tougher ones for the dangerous jobs. S

[Samme]

I keep 2 pair. One 'old' pair for the particularly dirty jobs. These live next to (sometimes on) the shovel and rake. One pair of newer gloves for dealing with pruning and such (they don't have holes in them yet so they provide better protection). About once a year the new gloves get torn up enough to become the old gloves or the old gloves give it up entirely and I go get another pair.

I agree with the person who wanted tougher gloves. Blackberry brambles and roses rip holes in every 'heavy duty' gloves I have ever owned.

[Barbara]

Best ever: Ethel Gloves and a 10 year old oft-used pair of goat skin gloves from White Flower Farm.

I just came in from tossing manure about and pruning roses, went to sink w/ Ethel gloves on- dab of Dawn - "washed hands" and rinsed and placed on upturned horseshoe to be dry by am!

[Katie]

I don't wear gloves unless I am transplanting cacti. That means that my hands usually look pretty freaky, and get totally punctured and shredded when I prune roses, but, I think I would cut my finger off if I wore gloves.

[Town Mouse]

While we're at it, hey, glovemakers, how about MORE GLOVES SIZE SMALL! I'm having a very hard time finding any gloves at all.

[commonweeder]

I love the idea of left and right glove colors. I've actually managed to keep 4 pairs of gloves intact, one pair of Mud Gloves which are great, a nitrile pair, very cheap and comfortable, an old pair of leather Rose Glove with a rawhide gauntlet and a pair of leather Woman's Work gloves which are very stiff and uncomfortable. Any tips on keeping leather gloves pliable?

[Kathy J, Washington Gardener Magazine]

I just want an extra right-hand glove with every pair -- I bust thru that index within the first hours and then goes the thumb and middle finger. I always wear gloves and am very rough on them. Have tried every kind, with the exception of leather rose gloves, I've busted through the fingers on every one.

[suzq]

I just need to find the ones I have!

I need gloves that will withstand at least two rainstorms and being completely caked with mud so that I can re-use them by the time I find them under the bush where I left them.

[Lori]

i think that is a genius idea.

[Peter Hoh]

I stopped in at a big garden center this evening. I was very disappointed to see the dearth of options in men's gloves.

The choice for men was cheap or really expensive. On the expensive side, the Ironclad gloves are tricked out with awkward thick reinforced padding. Fine if I wanted to juggle boulders, I suppose, but I want to feel the dirt when I'm working the soil.

And the cheap ones? Basically the same selection I could get at WalMart, but priced a bit higher.

I settled on a brand of latex coated cloth gloves that I have not tried before. We'll see how long it takes for me to ruin them.

[Meg S]

I think the left handed gardeners need to hook up with the right handed gardeners to swap extra gloves....Being left handed, I bust through the left index finger well ahead of anything else...

Seconds on the goat-skin gloves, though--I have an old pair that are softer than anything, and have lasted for years...

[Blackswampgirl Kim]

Now I'm thinking that I need to find a pair of these goat-skin gloves you all are talking about. Because I've gone through SO MANY pairs of gloves that it's absolutely ridiculous... can we get a pair of gloves where the seams don't rip out, please? I always seem to ruin/rip mine near the wrist for some reason!

[OregonGirl]

The two bin idea is brilliant!!

For the record, I buy 4 pairs of cotton-nitrile-dipped gloves at the beginning of the year. Gardening year-round in Oregon, your gloves get wet. It takes a couple days for them to dry out, so I need to have a backup supply of dry gloves. I like the cotton ones because when they get really groady, I can throw them in the wash.

[Liz Hensley]

What I would really like is to buy a trio of gloves -- two rights for every left, or a six-pack of right hands, since I have a lifetime supply of left-over left hand gloves.

As to the number of pairs, I keep about five going at a time, so that I can change in the middle of a project if my gloves have become too wet or too stiff. I like to keep a pair in my garden bucket, and more by the back door and the front door for those quick "I didn't really mean to be weeding, but I noticed something on the way to the mailbox" moments.

[Country Mouse]

I'm with CommonWeeder - I have many pairs of gloves because I wear out the fingers on the right glove. I keep all the good left gloves because I can't bear to throw a good glove out. Wouldn't it be great if you could buy just one glove? Or maybe I can find my opposite number and share.

[Gardener]

I have quite a few gloves but when I get into the roses or blackberries, I always wear a pair of gauntlet gloves called the Protectors that I got from bearwallowgloves.com. They're goatskin gloves with a foot long heavy duty guantlet that goes up over my elbows. I've never even been poked when I wear these and they're over a year old.
When I'm not in dangerous territory, I wear the Atlas NT-370's for weeding. They're like a second skin and they wash up just fine in the washing machine with the rest of the wash. I use them all the time and I've had them for about 9 months and they're still going strong.

[Sara from Calaveras County, CA]

For Blackberries, Roses, and the like- My suggestion is to go to your nearest welding supply store and invest in a really good pair of TIG gloves. They are typically kidskin or goatskin, have kevlar stitching, and have either a long or short gauntlet. They are also very well cut for flexibility and comfort (not like MIG welding aka fat gloves, so don't bother with MIG/TIG gloves). TIG gloves are perfect and will last many seasons if you take care of them, but they are very expensive (15-25/pair).

One word of caution/advice- DO NOT "BORROW" your husband's TIG gloves. When my husband saw a bit of dirt residue on his, he just said - "they're yours now" (and not in a nice, giving way"). Go out and buy your own.

Just my two cents.