Finger and Hand Care for Gardeners: A Digital Primer
Finger and hand care for gardeners can be a touchy subject. When you’re constantly shoving your hands into some of the most awful media imaginable (stuff like manure and sulfur comes to mind), the skin that covers them really gets the short end of the stick. You’ve gotta take care of your mitts. Read on to learn how I tend to my own two paws.
Vocationally speaking, I’ve had my fingers in a lot of different pies over the years. And I’ve found myself, many times, working in some pretty challenging and unpleasant environments. As a result, I’ve literally been up to my elbows in almost every kind of nasty, caustic, and punishing medium imaginable. And now, I’m a gardener. So the abuse continues…
A gardener’s hands are subject to all forms of cruel and unusual punishment. From fertililizers and additives like garden lime and soil acidifiers, to plants with angry protective mechanisms (roses come to mind), to the handles of garden implements, to the outdoor elements themselves – when you’re a gardener, your hands are up against the worst of the worst. And if you’ve got some extracurricular activities going on in your garden, like building stuff, you can add things like mortar, screws, caulk, lumber, brick, stone, etc, etc, etc to the list of abrasive articles your hand are forced to deal with.
I’ve spent my whole life beating the hell out of my hands, without giving much thought to taking care of them. Until this year. Just this past gardening season, I turned over a new leaf. I’m actually taking care of my hands now. I’m tending to them AND protecting them.
Save Your Own Skin
What am I doing for the skin on my hands and fingers so that when people shake my hand, they know they’re not dealing with a monitor lizard? What products rejuvenate the wrecked flesh of my paws when the day of gardening toil is ended?
1) Beessential All Natural Gardener’s & Mechanics Small Batch Bar Soap. It’s a bar of soap. But not just any bar of soap. It’s made from coffee and it feels great on your hands when you scrub up after a hard day of working your land (or changing your pan gasket). A great product that cleans the hell out of your hands without drying them out or cracking them. I love it. The very first thing I do when I’m finished working in my garden is wash my hands with this stuff. You know how sometimes dirt gets down into your fingerprint ridges and seems to never come off? This soap obliterates it. Plus, it smells great and it’s easy on your skin. Awesome stuff.
Beesential Gardener’s and Mechanics Small Batch Bar Soap is all natural, contains fresh ground coffee, and is made and approved by beekeepers. Most importantly, it cleans my hands and keeps them comfortable and healthy. I highly recommend it. If my beat-to-shit hands benefit from it, yours will too. Click the Amazon #advertisement link to order it right here, directly from Amazon.
Beesential Gardener’s and Mechanics Small Batch Bar Soap
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2. Crabtree & Evelyn Gardeners Ultra-Moisturizing Hand Therapy. So one day a few months back, one of my meathead buddies (a hardworking guy with a pair of rough hands of his own) stops over to the house on his way home from work (looking for beer). I was just out of the shower after working all day in the garden when he showed up. And I had just squirted some of this stuff out of the tube into my hands and was about to rub it in. Still had the tube in my hand, in fact. My meathead buddy looks at the tube and says “Oooh, aren’t you pretty?” At this point, I open my mouth to say something, then shut it again. First of all, I don’t want the skin on my hands feeling scaly and rough. Been there, done that. Secondly, he is a meathead. So I ignore the comment and am content with the fact that his hands feel like damn Gila Monster claws and mine don’t. Anymore. The fact is, this is a great moisturizing product for any hands – women’s hands, men’s hands, doctor’s hands, lawyer’s hands, construction worker’s hands, gardener’s hands. And since I’ve been using it, I actually feel like my hands and digits are actually, once again, part of my original anatomy. You only need to use a tiny amount at a time, and it moisturizes the skin on your fingers and hands (even your finger nails) with absolutely no greasy feeling whatsoever. I love this stuff!
Using Crabtree & Evelyn Gardeners Ultra-Moisturizing Hand Therapy on your hands is sort of like taking them out for dinner and the theater, then cocktails at an Upper East Side jazz club, followed up with a long weekend on the Côte d’Azur. Honestly, this stuff makes your hands feel great. Think of it as a much-deserved reward for all the hard work they do for you in the garden. Click the Amazon #advertisement link to order it right here.
Crabtree & Evelyn Gardeners Ultra-Moisturizing Hand Therapy
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3. O’Keeffe’s Working Hands Hand Cream. This is what to use when you’ve totally beaten your hands into ragged, cracked, and painful submission. This is the big dog. O’Keeffe’s Working Hands will repair virtually any kind of damage and abuse to your hands, including deep and painful splits and cracks. And it will do it quickly. You need very little, and it is absolutely guaranteed to work. This stuff has quickly healed ravines and fissures in the skin on my fingers and hands big enough to drive a Jeep through. No joke. When you’ve abused your hands to the point that you can’t even bend your fingers because the cracks in your skin are so painful, it’s time to apply O’Keeffe’s.
O’Keeffe’s Working Hands Hand Cream is THE go-to for healing up your seriously abused fingers and hands. It’s not fancy. It’s not exotic. It’s not gourmet. It’s not “handcrafted”. It is incredibly effective. It does everything it’s supposed to do – it repairs the badly damaged skin on your overworked hands. O’Keeffe’s guarantees it. This is an incredible product. I absolutely can’t, and won’t, do without it. Click the #advertisement link to order it.
Just Like My Dad Used to Tell Me… “Always Use Protection!!!”
Properly following this piece of advice – protecting my hands in the first place – would ostensibly preclude my need for the use of any of the first three products I’m recommending here. If I’m wearing gloves like I’m supposed to, I wouldn’t need to be repairing my hands with soaps and creams, right? Wrong. And wrong indeed for a couple of reasons. First, it doesn’t matter whether I’m wearing gloves or not. If I’m doing physical work (like gardening) with my fingers and hands, my skin is still going to get fried. The damage is hugely mitigated by wearing gloves, but it still does happen. Second, even though I now wear gloves as a standard of practice, I don’t always remember to put them on. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve found myself halfway through a particular job before I realized that I forgot to glove up. By that time, the damage is done. So for these two reasons, I know I’m always going to use the first three products, in conjunction with my (relatively newly aquired) resolve to always wear gloves when working in the garden, in order to save my fingers and hands.
So, back to the gloves.
Like I said, even though your hands can still get roughed up while wearing gloves, the damage is comparatively minimal. No doubt about it, gloves go a really long way to keeping your hands healthy and safe. It’s stupid to not wear them. And take it from me, I know all about being stupid.
So, what are the best gloves to wear when working in the garden? For me, there’s only one choice.
1. Gloveworks HD Orange Nitrile Disposable Gloves. I cannot say enough about this product. Although disposable, these gloves are remarkably durable, breathable, and tactile-friendly. They’ve got a raised diamond grip pattern which allows for incredible grabbing and holding ability. It also allows for air to circulate inside the glove, which in turn keeps your hands moisture-free and perspiration-free. Plus, they’re chlorinated and latex-free. They’re remarkably thick for disposable gloves, yet they allow for the most delicate tactile work. I use these for virtually everything I would use regular gardening gloves or work gloves for, plus much more. While wearing these gloves, I can do a construction project in the morning, and later that same day, wearing the same pair of disposable gloves, bed a plant and successfully separate and spread the tiniest segments of its root ball. And they’re touch-screen sensitive, so I can do stuff on my smart phone without taking them off. These gloves handle big, obtuse jobs, and extremely delicate jobs that even regular cloth/fabric gardening gloves can’t do. There are only a very few activities I haven’t tried with these gloves. I haven’t mixed mortar or concrete, and I haven’t tried to set stone slabs in mortar while wearing these gloves, so I can’t tell you how they’d perform. (But I’ll find out this coming spring when my temporarily paused limestone project resumes.) And I haven’t tried to grab heavily-thorned, woody stems while wearing them either. (I’m guessing that leather gloves may be the best solution for grasping tough, thorny rose canes. But I can’t be entirely sure. These really thick Gloveworks Orange Nitriles might actually do the trick. They’re awfully tough.) But for everything I have done in my garden while wearing them, these gloves have performed beautifully. I cannot speak highly enough of these Gloveworks HD Orange Nitriles. They are my gardening and construction gloves.
The Gloveworks HD Orange Nitrile Disposable Gloves are my hands’ salvation. They’re comfortable, versatile, touch screen friendly, and remarkably durable. It takes a lot to rip them. Seriously. And I’ve put them through some pretty brutal paces. I give these gloves five stars out of five. I’ve used other disposable latex and nitrile gloves in the past, and none of them even came close to these Gloveworks HD Orange Nitriles. Try ’em, you’ll love ’em! Click the #advertisement link to get them right here, directly from Amazon.
So now, I treat my fingers and hands like they’re actually a part of my body. I take care of them. While I’m working on stuff in the garden, I now try to always wear gloves. You know my brand. And when I’m finished working in the garden, and the gloves come off, I tend to the skin covering my fingers and hands. For these ministrations, my recommended three-product combo is unbeatable. So now, as a result of protecting and caring for my mitts while busting my ass in the garden, I’ve managed to gain a halfway thriving plant population and hands that look vaguely human.
And truthfully, I’ve never felt prettier.
Cheers, and Happy Gardening!
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Thanks for sharing your hand tested favorites. Their costs are also budget friendly. Patti
Glad you found the recommendations helpful. Please let me know how you like them if you try them. Thank you!
Great article! All of these products are tried and true. O’keeffe’s also makes a great foot cream. Check it out by clicking on the Amazon ad for O’keeffe’s hand cream that John mentioned above.
Thanks, Kevin! And you’re right. These are excellent products. I’ve had great results with every single one of them!
Thank you for yet another helpful article. I go through gloves quickly and have been searching for something durable that still is useful for the delicate jobs. Off to order the Gloveworks and hand therapy. Always appreciate the humor as well!
Great, Jill! Glad the recommendations were helpful. Let me know what you think of them!
Great information for gardeners and non gardeners alike
Many thanks! If you try any of them, feel free to let me know your thoughts.
Now i know what to get my gardening friends/ family as gifts! Thanks! 😊
Thank you, Sue – I’m glad the recommendations were helpful!
Everyone should want to feel pretty! I know I do! Being a diabetic I really try to protect my skin. I have boxes of gloves and I use them! I even have my granddaughter using them. These products sound great. That’s for letting me know about them!
Glad to hear you like the recommendations. I know how well they work for me. The best thing about these products is that you don’t need to be a gardener to experience their benefits.
Beessential soap is GREAT for exfoliating rough hands I use it to keep my rough hands soft and feminine, my rough hands were part of my DNA !
The Crabtree Evelyn gardeners lotion is always with in my reach !!!
Now I am going to try O’keeffe’s that sounds like a winner for my rough hands .