A major challenge that green-fingered souls face is with regard to keeping their hands protected while indulging in their passion of gardening. While no one can deny the fact that nothing equals the thrill which gardening without gloves into soil brings, the flip side of the story is that by doing so, you may invite blisters and infections. Gharpedia, through this blog, strives to resolve these issues which come when doing gardening with bare hands through some simple and easy-to-implement ideas. We bring you simple garden tips and tricks for gloveless gardening.
“No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden.” – Thomas Jefferson
The above words of Thomas Jefferson aptly capture the pluses that gardening brings! No small wonder then that the series of lockdowns in 2020 sprouted many people indulging in a new passion – gardening. The pleasure of keeping oneself busy in nurturing plants, flowers and even vegetables; the pride upon seeing a flower blossom or a green chilly or red tomato pop-up equals nothing! Having said that, each hobby has its own pros and cons. So let’s have an impartial look at advantages of gardening and disadvantages of gardening.
Advantages of Gardening
Gardening is a creative, fun-filled and bonding activity which has a lot of advantages. So let’s have a glance at advantages of gardening:
- One of the major advantage of gardening is that it enhances the aesthetic quotient of your house.
- Gardening enables you to grow your own organic food/flowers. If you can successfully grow your own vegetable or fruit garden then it can turned out to be a huge money saver in the long run, as fresh fruits and vegetables are available in your home. Are you a novice in vegetable gardening, then please read our vegetable gardening tips for beginners:
- It doubles up as an educational tool for your children, as you can teach about nature to your kids.
- Gardening brings you closer to nature.
- It alleviates your stress levels and calms your mind. It also gives you an emotional high at having been able to nurture a plant to fruition.
- Gardening provides your family members with a ground to play and a recreational space.
- Gardening requires a lot of physical effort which indirectly helps you exercise your muscles!
- It strengthens your immunity system.
- Gardening provides office goers with the much needed contrast from their boring desk job!
- Gardening helps cut down your carbon footprints. It absorbs carbon-dioxide from the atmosphere and hence helps you in contributing to reduce global warming.
- It enhances overall physical and mental health. According to Perrins-Margalis et al., (2000), gardening has improved the quality of life of people with chronic mental illnesses such as anxiety and depression. We have a detail article on how gardening improves your mental health:
After going through advantages of gardening, you must be thinking there could not be any disadvantages of gardening! But there are!
Disadvantages of Gardening
Now let’s take a look at some of the disadvantages of gardening –
- Setting-up a garden can be an expensive affair and it calls for pretty steep maintenance cost too.
- Gardens occupy quite a huge amount of precious space. For small homes, it could be a problem for balancing built-up space and garden.
- Minor scratches, wounds etc. are an innate part of the gardening process.
- Some people may find gardening to be quite an exhaustive and demanding activity.
- It calls for a relatively high investment of time. Gardening requires regular watering and cutting. A garden must be inspected regularly for any problems.
- One needs to be updated about plants and flowers.
- Gardening restrains you from taking a vacation as gardens need constant care and maintenance.
So these were some of the plus and minuses of gardening. Now let’s cast a glance at the dos and don’ts of gloveless gardening.
Tips For Gloveless Gardening/Gardening with Bare Hands
Gloves help protect your hands from getting cuts, splinters and blisters. They will also keep your nails clean. Even though it’s a good idea to wear gloves while gardening, many gardeners prefer to remain bare-handed while they commune with nature as nothing can replace the sheer joy that one feels upon messing with soil.
Here are a few gardening tips without gloves i.e. for gloveless gardening so that gardeners don’t get too ‘down and dirty’!
01. Ensuring Clean Nails After Gloveless Gardening:
Right before you start gardening without gloves, scratch a wet bar of soap with your nails. Make sure that a bit of soap gets under each fingernail. Doing so will prevent soil from getting under your nails.
Soil under the nails is hard to clean, whereas soap can be easily washed and nail-brushed away as soon as you’ve finished gardening.
02. Blister Prevention Gardening Tips for Beginners:
When doing gardening with bare hands, moisture can lock in your hands. Moist hands can develop blister easily. When your hands get sweaty from working with a shovel or hoe, rub your palms with some oil to help keep them dry and blister-free. This is an important gardening tips without gloves, as it can help prevent blisters.
03. Prevent Infection When Gardening without Gloves:
It’s not unusual for a person working in the garden to get a scrape, a scratch, a nick, a gash or an insect bite. However, you don’t have to run into your house to tend to every little abrasion.
The answer here is to take a small spray bottle of full-strength distilled white vinegar outside with you whenever you go gardening.
Spritz the minor wound with vinegar, which will help prevent it from becoming a major infection. Once done, cover the boo-boo with a bandage until you go indoors and can clean and dress it up properly.
04. Garden Lime Neutralizer:
Garden Lime, which is used to raise the pH level (the measurement of acid/alkaline) of soil and to add calcium or break-up heavy clay soil can dry out your hands and make them look like alligator skin.
Whenever your hands have been exposed to lime when gardening with bare hands– even a little of it – pour some distilled white vinegar on them. Wait for about a minute or two and once the vinegar has had the chance to neutralize the lime – rinse your hands with plain water. Albeit the best option would be to wear gloves when you are working with lime.
05. Easy Knee Protection Gardening Tips Without Gloves:
Knee pads will add to your gardening endurance. To make an affordable pair, take your most comfortable work pants and sew on knee patches, leaving the top side of each patch open – as though you’ve sewn a pocket on each knee. For proper placement of the patches, be sure to get into ‘gardening position’ to determine exactly where the pants bend at the knee. Kneeling on something damp will help ‘mark the spot.’
Place a sponge in each knee pocket or a substantial shoulder pad or a piece of foam rubber. If you have a couple of extra computer mouse pads, you can use them as knee cushions too.
You can also put on an old pair of pantyhose and line up foam rubber pads at the knees. If you are uncomfortable being seen in this get-up put on a pair of work pants over the pantyhose.
06. Post Garden Tips and Tricks:
After gardening, add one teaspoon of sugar to your soapy lather and wash your hands with it. The sugar acts as an abrasive to clean away grass and garden stains.
Summing up, the above points cover the pangs you will face while opting to ditch your gardening gloves.
So here’s hoping that the tips for gardening at home without gloves shared in this blog allow you to do gardening with bare hands passionately and that too without compromising on the safety of your hands… Happy Gloveless Gardening! Before leaving make sure to check out our articles on gardening:
7 Ways to Keep Your Garden Healthy
A Beginner’s Guide to Gardening Tools!
Image Courtesy – Image 9
Author Bio
Huta Raval – An English Literature and Journalism Topper, Huta Raval has graduated from the L D Arts College, Ahmedabad. Post serving for 23 years in the NBFC and Public Library Sectors her desire for ‘writing the unwritten’ brought her to the creative field of content writing. Her clientele comprises of NGOs, Blogging Platforms, Newspapers, Academic Institutions, et al.
