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Sally Nex

~ Sustainable food growing

Sally Nex

Tag Archives: product reviews

In search of the perfect glove

05 Monday Mar 2012

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

gardening gloves, gloves, product reviews, Town and Country, Weedmaster Plus

Some time ago, at a press event somewhere, I picked up one of those bags of gardening-related products you get when people who sell things want you to write about what they’re selling.

Now, normally I treat this with great scepticism as it is sometimes laughably un-targeted: I have little use for chemicals to treat rose blackspot when I’m a (mostly) organic fruit and veg specialist.

However, in this particular bag was a pair of bright yellow and black gardening gloves.

Now I am something of a connoisseur of gardening gloves, due to the fact that I am, with a piquant irony, allergic to soil, so if I garden without gloves my hands erupt into something not unlike the surface of Mars. Apart from fiddly jobs, like potting on seedlings, I always have a pair of gloves on.

This has made me very picky. Gloves have to be thin: unless I’m dealing with brambles, I want to feel what I’m doing. Yet they also have to be tear-proof and tough.

They have to be waterproof – nothing worse than gardening with hands wrapped in soggy canvas – and made to last: I wear them for anything from half an hour (on a bad day) to six or seven hours (heaven) every single day.

It’s a lot to ask. As a result, I have been through a lot of brands in my time.

A year or two ago I’d run out – again – and while I was hunting for an old pair that might still be serviceable, and failing to find one, I stumbled across my freebie pair.

At first I wasn’t convinced. They had a fiddly bit of velcro across the wrist which got muddy almost immediately and failed to stick, so started flapping about irritatingly (I cut them off). But as I wore them over, and over again, and they still looked (nearly) as good as when they started, I was gradually but completely won over.

Waterproof to heroic proportions, they’re as thin as a second skin. I can do anything in them; they even keep out a commendable proportion of thorns (though I still don gauntlets – over the top – for the hated brambles).

And best of all: they last. Boy, do they last. I wore my gloves – and wore them, and wore them – for over a year before they started to show signs of wear and tear. I had never had a pair that lasted that long. Admittedly, once they did start going, they went very rapidly; huge holes in the fingers within a day or two. But that’s fine; that’s more than fine. That’s admirable endurance.

I went to buy a new pair, but there was no label sewn into the gloves, and I’d long since lost the publicity blurb. Note to manufacturers: there is such a thing as too discreet. My newly-found perfect gloves were lost again.

And then…

In one of those serendipitous moments, I walked round the corner in the Garden Press Event last month slap-bang into a rack of bright yellow and black gloves. The mourning was over: I’d found my perfect gloves once again.

They turned out to be Weedmaster Plus, by Town & Country. It’s not often I harangue a PR lady for a pair of the product they’re trying to sell – in fact I don’t think I’ve ever done it before – but on this occasion I hope she was pleasantly surprised by my refusal to go anywhere without at least one pair safely stowed in my bag. The relief of having them back again is wonderful.

I’m told the waterproofness comes from a nitrile coating on the palm and fingers – yeah, right, means nothing to me. All I know is they don’t go soggy. There is a version without the fiddly velcro strap – which was the version they were trying to sell at the show – but they also happen to be the result of some technical development which means you can produce a pattern on the waterproof nitrile bit. Result: I’m sure they’re lovely to garden in, but you wouldn’t want anyone to actually see you doing it.

My yellow-and-black Weedmasters are now my glove of choice, and now I’ve found them I won’t be letting them go again. Just don’t let them take them off the market for some ‘new, improved’ version: you can’t improve on something this good, and I shall be inconsolable.

Of garden hoses and organisation

25 Sunday Sep 2011

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

hoses, Hozelock, product reviews, watering


At the beginning of this year, I had the biggest rats-nest of garden hoses I have ever accumulated.

So enormous was it that the tap had disappeared beneath it. So ratty and nesty I couldn’t figure out where the end of the hose I needed was, and even if I had been able to locate it, extracting it with any hope of actually watering something with it would have tied the knots still tighter.

This was partly an accident of history: our last garden required two hoses joined together, especially if we wanted to top up the pond at the other end (yes, I know, you’re supposed to use rainwater: but this ignores the unavoidable fact that ponds only need topping up when water butts are empty).

And I also had an allotment: 70ft long, with another 70ft or so to go between the gate and the tap. This demanded the mother of all hoses: in fact so big was my allotment mega-hose it needed two hosereels to hold it all. Luckily, it being an allotment, a certain amount of shabby chic allowed, so I was able to leave it out most of the time.

Both ex garden hoses (disconnected from each other by now) plus the allotment hose were stacked hopefully by the garden tap behind the house on moving day. And that’s where they stayed, completely baffling my attempts to organise them and as the record-breaking drought of April 2011 kicked in, reducing all my poor gasping patio plants to the occasional watering can full when I could spare them from dousing the greenhouse.

About the same time, an email dropped into my inbox from a nice man offering me a free hose reel to try out in the comfort of my own home, if I should be inclined to write about it in return.

Luckily, it didn’t seem to put him off when I told him that if it didn’t work, or isn’t quite right, or I didn’t like something, I reserved the right to say so. And within a week a very large package arrived on our doorstep: by this time it hadn’t rained for about five weeks, so it wasn’t a moment too soon.

The hosereel in question is the Hozelock Autoreel: a megalith of a hose reel if ever there was one, and I spent the tail end of that drought-ridden spring testing it to the limit. I tugged it from one end of the garden to the other, mercilessly dragging it to its 40m limit. I left it out for the puppies to chew; flapped the hinged wall bracket back and forth relentlessly; took it out and put it away again more times than I can remember.

I had a damn good try at breaking the autowind stop mechanism, too: this is like a spring catch which only works as you pull the hose out. So you pull the hose to a certain length, and when you let it go, it catches so the hose is held at (more or less) the length you’ve chosen. Pull it again, and the catch comes off, allowing the hose to spring back automatically to the start.

But though I verged on the irresponsible with the way I let the hose whack back to the catch, it hasn’t broken yet. This is one tough customer: it needs to be, with the way I treat my garden gear, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised by what it will put up with. Besides, anything that puts itself away is a winner in my book.

Niggles: such a behemoth of a creature needs a Proper Bloke to fit it to the wall. I’m pretty handy with a drill and some screws when required, but even I had to come over all girly and get the hubster to do it.

He said something obscure about a template being needed to screw the back plate onto the wall straight: not entirely sure what he was on about, but then it probably means more to perfectionist carpenters than slapdash gardeners.

And you need two people to lock the hose in place if you don’t want to use the catch mechanism described above. There is a locking switch on the main casing (see picture left), but you’d need someone to stand by the lock to turn it when you get to the point you want the hose to stay: if you let go the hose to run back and fix it with the lock, it gaily sprints along by your side, racing you back to the start as that auto-wind kicks in. Maybe I was missing something, but this was one of the few design features I couldn’t see the point of.

I’m not too keen on the bright green thing it’s got going on, either: why on earth does Hozelock have to choose such utterly garden-unfriendly, plasticky colours for its brand livery? Nobody, I can assure you, would choose the garden hose as a focal point, however wonderful it might be to use. Fortunately mine’s tucked away nicely out of sight behind the house so that doesn’t matter.

But these are small complaints: my shiny new hose has entirely revolutionised my watering life. I love that it’s on a hinge, so you can pull it two ways: ideal for me, when the same hose has to be threaded along both directions of a narrow passageway.

The hose itself is as tough and beefy as the casing. It’s satisfyingly heavy, so it doesn’t kink and lies where you put it unlike most hoses, which have an annoying habit of flipping across your prize dahlias as you’re watering.

Nor does it disappear back into the casing: a sturdy business-like ball (see second picture) strapped to the hosepipe just behind the end takes care of that. This reel is full of sensible, practical design ideas like this: it’s the tidiest, most well-organised thing in my garden.

My poor chaotic old green, red and yellow hoses – all three of them – have been made entirely redundant and have been put out to grass in the garage while I decide what to do with them. If anyone out there fancies a few hours unknotting hosepipes, they’re yours.

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