Why I Now Wear Gardening Gloves

Do you wear gloves while gardening? When I first started gardening beyond my own backyard I always had a least one pair of gardening gloves with me. I carry a second pair because in my travels from garden to garden, somehow I always lost at least one glove, usually the right one. As I am right handed and possibly extremely so this loss was quickly noticed and I would pull out the other pair, always keeping the lone left one. Over the years I acquired a considerable collection of lone left gloves.

The, about five years back, I stop wearing the gloves, I had them and they were in my garden kit but I simply did not put them on, unless I was working on a new site, especially one that had never been a garden.

Why, I did not know what I might find so the gloves provided some protection. As I designed and worked in garden after garden, I must have lost sight of that. I enjoy the feel of the soil, the touch of plants and even an ant running across the back of my hand awakens my connection to what I am doing.

I forgot that soil ,while miraculous stuff, is still soil and even when organic it can have things living in it that you do not want to introduce to an open cut. It is very easy to get a small cut, nick or scrape while lost in the moment and these can be infected.

I was recently reminded of what can happen when gardening unprotected. This year, for the first time, in about four years, I decided to grow my own cucumbers. I like cucumbers and they make a great sandwich, but the ones from the supermarket, just do not cut it.

I have planted them for others over that time but did not harvest them. It was about six days ago when I noticed a slight warmth on my left wrist, there was no obvious injury so I basically ignored it. Then two days ago, I noticed a similar sensation on my right wrist, however, this time there was a bit of red and some small bumps, a rash was my thought.

The first step was to compare the wrists, both had a similar look and feel, not severe but present. So what had I been doing?

Talking this over with my wife, always a great idea, she said cucumbers you have been picking cucumbers and indeed, the cucumber harvest was underway. I had also been tying up the vines and on both incidents came into contact wit the cucumber leaves.

Now, intellectually, I knew that a rash was possible from handling cucumber leaves, but that never translated into wearing gloves. Well, that has changed. The gloves, four pairs of them are in the garden shed, right beside the cucumber bed. A fifth pair is in the kitchen, in the garden gadget drawer, or junk drawer as my wife prefers to call it.

From now on I will be wearing gloves when gardening the rash is a mild reminder of why I need to wear them, it could have been worse.