Half the jobs in a garden bed need a trowel for about ten seconds. Pulling a weed with a long root, scraping a planting hole, turning the top of the soil in a pot. You go and get the trowel, use it, put it down somewhere, and spend the next five minutes looking for it. These put four claws on each hand instead, so your hands are the tool and there is nothing to lose.

Why They Stand Out

• Eight claws, four on each hand — both hands dig, so you can work with two hands the way you actually garden rather than one hand doing everything.
• Nothing to put down and lose — the honest reason people love these. The tool is on your hand until you take the glove off.
• The claws sit on the fingertips, so the digging motion is the one your hand already makes when you scrape soil away.
• Latex-dipped palm — grip on wet soil and wet weeds, which is where bare cotton gloves slide.
• They rinse clean under a tap — the coating does not hold mud the way fabric does.
• Elasticated wrist — keeps soil out when you are down in the dirt up to your wrists.
• Light — 78 g the pair, so there is no bulk to fight when you are planting out seedlings.

Where to Use Them

• Weeding a bed by hand — the job they do best. The claws get under a taproot instead of snapping the top off.
• Scraping planting holes for seedlings — punnet in one hand, hole scraped with the other.
• Turning over the top of a pot — breaking the crust on potting mix without tipping the plant out.
• Working compost or fertiliser into the surface around established plants.
• Lifting bulbs and dividing clumps in loose soil.
• Raking out leaf litter and mulch from between plants where a rake will not reach.
• As a gift for a gardener — one of the few garden gifts that gets a reaction out of the wrapping paper.

How They Work

1. Four rigid ABS claws are moulded into each fingertip, curving down and forward.
2. The palm and fingers are dipped in natural latex for grip and to keep soil off your skin.
3. You scrape rather than stab — the claws work pulling toward you through loose soil.
4. The elastic cuff seals at the wrist so nothing works its way inside.

How to Use Them

1. Water the bed first if it is dry — these are made for worked soil, not baked clay.
2. Scrape, do not jab — pull the claws through the soil toward you. Driving them straight down into something hard is how they snap.
3. Keep a trowel nearby anyway for anything deeper than about 5 cm.
4. Take them off to plant — see the note below.
5. Rinse them under the tap and hang them to dry before you put them away.
Tip: use them for the clearing and weeding pass, then swap to bare hands or a light glove for the planting pass. Trying to do both in these is where people get frustrated and decide they do not work.

Care and Maintenance

• Rinse the soil off straight after use — dried mud in the claw bases is hard to shift later.
• Dry them in the shade, as sun degrades latex and makes it go sticky and crack.
• Check the claws for cracks each time; a split claw will break off mid-job.
• Store them flat and out of the sun, not in a hot shed window.

Specifications

What's Included

• 1 pair × Garden claw gloves with 8 fingertip claws

Before you order: these dig and weed rather than plant, the claws are plastic so keep them out of stony ground, and they contain natural latex.