Category Archives: Gardening

Pond Planting Gloves Review

Garden Maintenace, Gardening, Pond planting, Ponds, ,

22nd March 2016

Planting a Pond

There is something really satisfying about a pond or water feature in the garden. A good one looks beautiful and is great for all sorts of wildlife. Water features can bring movement and sound into any garden.  But garden ponds need occasional maintenance and the water is cold and dirty and if your hands are immersed for any length of time, or there is a cold wind passing over wet hands, the whole business can be quite unpleasant. Perennial Favourites has come across just the gloves to bring back the joy into messing about in the water. We tried Drain and Pond gloves  for the first time while planting a pond in a school garden. Yes a progressive school which is prepared to allow water in the grounds, they do exist.

Peter & van
Gloves in hand, ready to go
The fashion houses of Milan, Paris & London all had a hand in the design of these gloves. The promise of ‘full arm protection’ got us particularly excited.
Drain and Pond glove label
Fashionable too
Gloves
You put your left arm in…..
The gloves are easy to put on, one might think they were purpose made for the insertion of a hand, fingers and just one thumb per glove, perfect!
See how they allow for all your fingers to have separate flexibility, these are no mitts.  And the arm section is a lighter blue so you know its your arm.  You also start to see how strikingly good looking they are, perhaps a bracelet could be added for more bling, but not copper as that isn’t good for aquatic life.
Small palms up  
Small hand dipping
I’m going in
The hand section is thick enough to make planting holes in the soft mud and they keep your hands dry.  They seem pretty tough but not too stiff.  On this first try out we restricted the action to shallow water just to get the measure of the gloves before going too deep. 
The pond gloves were easy to operate and easy to manipulate.  Handling plants and squishing them into the pond soil was easy enough.  You can see in the image the watertight union between the arm/glove sections so you know which way up your hands are. The full arm protection is long enough for most marginal planting. The only time they might be too short is if you had vigorous water lilies to plant in quite deep ponds or lakes.
Small both hands in Pond

Conclusions

Pete reflects on the pond
Upon Reflection
Upon reflection, these gloves are a very good idea.  If you are the type of person who has fabulous nails, these gloves are just the thing to protect them.  If you are a landscaper and you have a days worth of pond clearing or planting, or an aquatic nurseryman, (err, not sure that came out right?) you will be a lot more comfortable working through the day using these gloves to keep dry.  As a householder with your own garden pond to maintain, the whole task will be a lot pleasanter and more enjoyable by preventing your hands from getting frozen stiff in cold water.

The gloves seemed to be robust enough to last well so from Perennial Favourites and Pete, our glove model and specialist aquatic plant operative, a rubber thumbs up for long sleeved pond gloves. Thanks to Pete for keeping his hands clean and dry and volunteering to be the blog guinea pig.

 

 

 

Compost Corner

Compost, Gardening, , , ,

17th March 2016

Compost Corner

Here at Perennial Favourites we recycle as much organic material as possible, dead plants (yes even we have plants which die), used seed trays, prunings, apple cores, weeds and so on.  The compost heaps get quite large quite quickly but that’s ok because it will all get used.

I add some nitrogen fertilizer, this helps to feed the bacteria which break down all the organic materials into a nice crumbly brown compost which is great for using to improve your soil.  This is the material garden writers describe adding to the soil when planting trees and shrubs.

Pelargoniums grown by Perennial Favourites
Pelargoniums

Compost feeds the soil and a living soil is your best friend for growing healthy plants and having a successful garden.  As this is the time you will be preparing new planting beds and borders your compost heap should be being used up at a rate of knots.  Here on the nursery allotment growers understand the benefit of garden compost and come and dig out my heaps which are then dug into their vegetable plots to help them grow fantastic vegetables.

So gardening tip number 375b, start a compost heap.

The best way to make a compost heap is

Happy gardening

Adam