Here is the one I read about. Run your fingernails across a bar of soap then put your gloves on and it helps keep the dirt out too. Then you have soap to clean your hands.

Snowed in and bored too.

Teresa

Both of those would drive me crazy --- bored too. I have read that the vaseline would work with cheap cotton gloves over night. I have strongly considered that, but have not done it. I spend a fortune for my gloves and would not clog them with that goooo.

How long could you go with soap under your nails? Real Simple is one of my favorite magazines, but I am not sure those hints came from a gardener. If you could see my fingernails, you would laugh. They are terrible. Perhaps I should try some advice.

Sammy

I think the vaseline and soap would drive me crazy too! My tip for cleaning dirty fingernails is jump in a pool, lol! But I'm lucky, I have a friend that lives close and can use her pool whenever I feel like it. :)

Not snowed in, just dealing with a leaky house on a rainy day.

Beth

I'm with Sammy, I wouldn't want to put my hands covered in goo inside my gardening gloves. I have a bad tendency to get dirt inside the gloves and vaseline would make that a real mess.

My trick for cleaning fingernails is easy. I have a nail brush. One side is just a brush, but the back side has bristles that lay nearly flat against the base of the brush so you can easily run those bristles under your nails. The only time that doesn't work well is if I've let my nails get too long for the bristles to reach.

Vaseline under cotton gloves at night is an old, old trick I first learned about from women my grandparents' age when I was young. You can also do the same thing with your favorite hand lotion. Just smear on a good amount, more than you normally would as normally you'd want it to soak in rather than leave your hands greasy. Overnight under the gloves the excess soaks into your hands.

If you're prone to getting small cuts on your hands you can use a vitamin E capsule to not only help moisturize but also help small cuts to heal. Years ago I worked for a printing company taking forms off a machine that put them together. It wasn't at all unusual to go home with tiny paper cuts in the webbed area between the thumb and forefinger. At the time some drug store chain sold a vitamin E ointment I used. It had the consistency of vaseline. I could put it on my hands, much like hand lotion, and by the time I got home, about 12-15 minutes, the cuts would no longer hurt and would be pretty much healed up by the next morning (I worked a night shift). I haven't been able to find the ointment in years, but you can slit open a vitamin E capsule and do the same thing. The capsule's consistency is more like baby oil so it's a little thinner, but it still works.

Debra

Oh my, you know it is a boring winter/spring when we start discussing hand care!

I tried the soap-under-the-nails thing and hated it. It felt icky and all I wanted to do was run find a nail file and clean the soapy gunk out from under my fingernails.

As far as vaseline on one's hands under gloves, I wouldn't do it with anything other than cheap cotton gloves. Good suede or leather gardening gloves are pricey and I wouldn't wear anything like petroleum jelly on my hands/under the gloves because it would ruin the inside of them.

I keep a nail brush at each sink and just scrub my hands really well whenever I come inside to eat a snack or meal and at the end of a gardening session. Good little nail brushes are worth their weight in gold. I also keep handy indoors and by the outdoors faucet some pumice (Lava) soap, herbal gardener's soap and that orange-scented gritty hand-cleaner (similar to Goop) that you buy in the automotive section at big box stores. Between all those, I can get just about anything off my hands.

For hand therapy after gardening, I like to use Bag Balm, which originally was marketed for cattle but which is amazing for skin softening and repair. I also have a jar of herbal hand balm that I got as a door prize at last year's Plant Swap and it is amazing too. Burt's Bees has a hand balm in a tin that I like almost as much as I like Bag Balm. I keep tubes of cocoa butter hand lotion in every vehicle, and upstairs and downstairs in the house, and in my purse and am constantly putting it on during gardening season when my hands are feeling dry. One favorite form of hand therapy is one of those hot-wax manicure machines that melt the wax and then you dip your hands in it. It feels SO good.

If your hands are very dry and the skin hurts and is about to crack, find and use Zim's Crack Creme. You usually find it NOT with the other hand lotions but on the first aid aisle. It heals dry, cracking skin amazingly fast.

I buy medical-type disposable latex or nitrile gloves in boxes of 50 or 100 and use them whenever I am handling bagged potting soil or soil-less mixes, composted manure, mushroom manure or compost. You can pick up nasty fungal infections from any of those bagged products and sometimes those infections become systemic in your body and you can't get rid of them. It pays to be careful. If I were putting any kind of hand cream on my hands and wanted to put gloves over it, I'd use those nitrile or latex disposable gloves.

At any given time I have at least six different pairs of gardening gloves....a leather pair, a suede pair, some Mud gloves, rubber or nitrile-dipped cotton gloves and plain cheap cotton gloves....and I try to take care of all of them so they'll last as long as possible. When you spend massive amounts of time in the garden month after month, you go through a lot of gloves, and I'm not gonna gunk my up with sticky stuff.

Just lask week, I bought our almost-three-year-old granddaughter her first three pairs of gardening gloves so she'll learn from the start to protect her skin. Why three pair? Because one is never enough. lol

I've linked a photo of Bag Balm. I always buy it in the the little cube/box and sometimes buy it at a farm store like Tractor Supply Company or at a drugstore or big box store, where you sometimes find it with the regular hand lotions. I've used it for probably 15 or 20 years and cannot imagine gardening without it.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Bag Balm looks like this

Ew, I couldn't handle putting goop under my nails, either. Besides, what kind of self-respecting gardener doesn't have dirty hands & nails? ;-)

I never wear gloves. Well, I will wear them if I'm moving sharp-edged metal for hubby or something but for gardening? Nope, never. Shhh, don't tell Dawn!

Diane

Diane,

Oh, that's Ok, I wouldn't try to make you wear gloves. I don't wear them all the time, but I do always wear them if handling those bagged products.

Did you wear winter gloves outside today with the kids in the snow? Because I am assuming you had to play in the snow too.

Dawn

I didn't know that about potting soil, I will definitely not risk it and get some surgical gloves. I have cheapo gloves that I think I paid two bucks for, so icking them up is not big deal for me, but I can see if I paid more for them I would take better care.

I remember lava soap! I need to get some, my hands seem to take a beating!

Ezzirah,

We have had a harder time finding lava soap the last couple of years. This year, we found it at Wal-Mart but they had moved it to the automotive section.

Dawn

Dawn, I never heard that about the bagged soil but several years ago I got Legionares Disease. We never could figure out where I picked it up, even the CDC contacted me. I do know that I had recently done some winter sowing with the cheapest potting soil I could find from a Family Dollar store. Makes you wonder.

Patty,

You can get all kinds of fungal and bacterial diseases from any bagged soil-less mix. Some of the bags (including a bag of MG Organic my son bought recently) state on the label to always wear gloves when handling the product...and the diseases are the reason why.

I know that Legionaire's Disease can be picked up from potting soil OR even from the air near a construction site if construction equipment stirs up a lot of soil, and since y'all never could figure out how you contracted it, maybe it was in some soil you handled or were near.

To tell you the truth, I've never been that much into wearing gardening gloves unless I'm handling something icky. But I force myself to wear gloves when handling any bagged soil-less mix, soil amendment or mulch because you can contract so many diseases from them. Think about cow manure as a source for e. coli or chicken manure (used in MG Organic) as a source for salmonella and other stuff. It pays to wear gloves, it pays to wear gloves, it pays to wear gloves.

I learned about the connection between bagged soils and disease from some gardening show on HGTV about 10 years ago---back when they still had a lot of real gardening shows on the air.

Dawn

That is actually pretty scary when you think about it..and here I have been handling all kinds of stuff with out gloves. I know better now. Thanks a million Dawn!

Ezzirah,

You're welcome. I've gardened for many, many years and always handled potting soil and soil amendments with my hands. Even after I learned that I ought to wear gloves all the time, I didn't, and, consequently, I contacted a fungal infection on my left hand about 5 or 6 years ago, so I speak from experience. I learned my lesson and wear gloves now because it is better to be safe than sorry.

Dawn