Best Gardening Gloves

Why Do You Need Gardening Gloves?

Gardening gloves are more than just a way to keep your hands clean. As good as soil feels, it’s often packed with diseases and abrasions your hands shouldn’t make direct contact with.

For example, you risk getting Tetanus, an infection that lives in soil and manure. If you get a cut from one of your garden tools, the infection will find its way inside in no time.

Plus, soil contains bacteria like E. coli, salmonella, and Listeria monocytogenes. More importantly, direct exposure to soil makes you susceptible to rose gardener’s disease, caused by a fungus living in soil. The worst part? You can even get it through inhalation.

Lastly, you don’t know what kind of insects are hiding in your soil until they bite you. It’s always better to be safe than sorry, and gardening gloves are just the protection you need in unpredictable environments like soil.

That also means that you don’t have to take a break from your gardening tasks after getting a fresh manicure!

What Every Gardener Needs to Know

The best gardening enthusiasts consider a little dirt under their nails a badge of honour, but the first interaction with poison ivy or a scratch from a zucchini plant is enough to change their minds.

Finding the best gardening gloves for your requirements is more than just about getting the right size. There are many more elements you should keep in mind when buying the perfect pair. Here are a few factors to consider while glove-shopping.

Gardening Glove Type

There are three types of gloves used in lawn and gardening work: work gloves, rose pruning gloves, and good-old gardening gloves. Here’s what you should know about each type.

Work Gloves

Work gloves are robust and durable. They’re made to protect both sides of your hands, specifically from cuts and scratches during landscape work. Moving rocks, using heavy gardening tools, and raking are much easier with work gloves.

Rose Pruning Gloves

Rose pruning gloves are made for exactly what the name entails: pruning roses. They’re a bit baggy, made from real or synthetic leather.

Rose pruning gardening gloves have long, elasticated cuffs or gauntlets for extra protection from noxious weeds or thorn punctures. Plus, they’re not just for gardening tasks. You can also use them to groom cats that hate being groomed.

Gardening Gloves

Gardening gloves are typically made for light gardening jobs, but you’ll also find variants for medium and heavy-duty work. They have a tight fit that allows for good dexterity when dealing with small and delicate plants. The best gardening gloves also double as work gloves.

Material

The material of your chosen pair can make a big difference. But, at the end of the day, the best gardening gloves are durable and protective regardless of what they’re made of. Here’s what you should know about different gardening glove materials.

Real Leather Gardening Gloves

The most puncture-resistant gardening gloves are made of leather, such as pigskin, cowhide, or goatskin. They’re durable and protective enough to apply to various industries.

Leather gardening gloves are coated in natural lanolin to stay soft and comfortable to wear. That means you should never use soap to clean your real leather gardening gloves since it can dissolve the soil and dehydrate the material.

Other than that, if they’re brand new or brightly coloured, they can stain your skin when your hands are wet or sweaty. Do tons of research on your leather gloves before making an investment – they tend to be pricey.

Synthetic Leather Gardening Gloves

While not as robust, synthetic leather gardening gloves are a lot more breathable and comfortable than real leather, but if they keep getting abraded, especially in the fingertips, they’ll wear out pretty quickly.

They’re not ideal for thorns and nettles, but they still do a great job of protecting you from cuts and blisters. Most of them come with a synthetic leather palm and fingers for a perfectly snug fit, thanks to the flexible fabric on the back of the hand for more dexterity.

Synthetic leather gardening gloves can be a great alternative for vegan gardeners. Plus, they’re often machine washable.

Nitrile and Latex Gardening Gloves

Some woven mesh gardening gloves are covered in nitrile or latex, which are thin, rubbery, and protective coatings. If you have a latex allergy, nitrile-coated gloves are still safe to use.

These chemical and water-resistant gloves offer a good grip even in wet conditions. Since these are well-fitted and light-duty gloves, they offer a great range of motion while working.

But remember that these materials aren’t puncture-resistant, so they’re not the best match against thorns and nettles. Still, they make up for it by being touchscreen-compatible. You’ll be able to use your phone in between gardening tasks.

Knit Work Gardening Gloves

Knit-work gardening gloves aren’t designed for heavy-duty work or tough gardening tasks, but they’re super soft and comfortable. They’re made from cotton or a cotton-polyester blend, making them machine-washable.

These lightweight gloves offer a better range of motion than stiff and heavy leather gloves. In some cases, they have a non-slip nitrile or latex-padded palm for extra protection and to help you grip tools easily.

In hot weather, they can be very breathable while offering extra warmth in colder weather. Keep in mind that they can snag on thorns due to the knit work, so it’s best to stick to light garden tasks.

Build Quality

The best gardening gloves are characterised by their build quality. If they aren’t made well, they won’t last.

If you’re looking for high-quality gloves made from leather, the first thing you should look at is the seams. Double-stitched seams are always a better choice, especially on the palms. When dealing with rocks and branches, a single-stitched seam will fray and fail pretty prematurely.

Even if the glove looks great on the outside, looks can be deceiving. Any loose stitching or rough seams inside the glove will snag and rug against your hand and eventually fall apart. If you go for latex or knit gloves, any loose strings around the cuffs indicate an uncomfortable and low-quality pair.

Luckily, we’ve only included the best gardening gloves on our list, with the highest-quality stitching.

The Right Fit

We’ve all heard the saying, “fits like a glove,” but it’s not easy to find the perfect fit for your gardening gloves. They’re not all supposed to fit the same, so how do you find the perfect one for your hands?

Well, it all depends on the type of gloves you’re looking for. For example, heavy-duty gloves made from leather should be a bit baggy to avoid friction and “hot spots” that cause blisters. Meanwhile, latex garden gloves should fit well for better dexterity and grip.

Most companies design separate men’s and women’s gardening gloves, but you can also find unisex options. So, it’s safe to say the sizing depends on the manufacturer. Women’s gardening gloves will be smaller, but the build should be the same.

You can find the right fit by measuring the circumference of your palm just under your fingers. You’ll also need to measure the length from your palm to your middle finger. Luckily, most manufacturers have sizing charts on their product pages to help you find the right fit.

Intended Use

The best gardening gloves will be perfectly catered to your intended use. However, it’s not easy to find the right pair for the right job.

Sure, no one can stop you from using rose-pruning gloves to plant a cabbage, but they won’t be as comfortable and effective as using the the best gardening gloves for transplanting.

For example, tough leather gloves will last you a lifetime when used for basic yard work but wear out after a year of heavy-duty work. Meanwhile, nitrile gloves offer a good grip, but their tight fit can cause blisters when used to handle certain gardening equipment.

If you’re an avid gardener, you’ll need multiple glove types in your arsenal for all work occasions.

Maintenance

Even the best gardening gloves will get dirty and worn down – you can’t avoid it. While a machine wash or a good old scrub with soap may seem like your best bet, it’s not a good decision for all glove types. Remember to read the label before you clean your gardening gloves.

If you have nitrile gardening gloves, machine washing with cold water and letting them air dry can be suitable. However, real leather gloves should stay far away from soap as they can strip down the lanolin oil coating. Simple tap water and a gentle brush are enough to get the job done.

Still, you can’t go wrong with checking the label when in doubt.

Once they’re cleaned, don’t put them away while they’re still wet because they will definitely rot. Leave them out in the air until they’re completely dry. Ideally, keep them in the dark since UV light can break the polymers in synthetic materials.

How We Tested These Gloves

With hundreds of thousands of pairs on the market, finding the best gardening gloves is no easy feat. We went through a precarious testing process to pick the top five choices on our list.

Our first priority was how well they were rated by product reviewers on vendor websites like Amazon. In our opinion, the best gardening gloves checked three of our boxes: comfortable, functional, and durable.

We tested each pair on our best gardening gloves list with a variety of light, medium, and heavy-duty gardening tasks. They were categorised for gardening, pruning, and work tasks. All pairs had one task in common: transplanting, pruning, and harvesting vegetables.

We were able to find out how handy each pair was by removing fragile transplants from their seeding trays, as well as how they protect your hands from dirt. The pruning gloves worked alongside our best pruning shears to work on thorn bushes while pulling out tangled and overgrown plants.

Meanwhile, the work gloves shovelled compost, drove fence posts in place and picked up field rocks. They also worked alongside weed trimmers so we could test how they prevent vibration and improve grip.

Frequently asked questions