I’m always startled by the use of the word ‘dirt’ for soil. As if it is something dirty. Something you must definitely not touch. Something that makes your hands gross.
When someone says he filled a flower pot with dirt, I image him emptying his trash can into the flower pot.
Today I transplanted 200 seedlings and 50 roses from cuttings. I can’t imagine doing that with gloves on, as I need to feel the tender roots with my fingertips when I carefully pull a seedling or cutting out of the soil, and when I gently fill the planting hole with soil around the roots. With gloves on, I would damage more roots, and leave air pockets or clumps of soil or rocks around the roots.
When it’s a warm day, I put a 5 liter bottle of water fresh from the stream in a sunny spot, so I have a warm outdoor shower at the end of the day. When it’s a hot day, I skip the bottle and just jump into the stream.
I grew up using the word “dirt” for both what plants grow in, and also for what makes things unclean. My first impression from “soil” is a “soiled diaper”, or “he soiled himself”.
That would make not only my hands gross, but also the surrounding aroma gross.
Big proponent of touching dirt. Especially for babies and kids. It’s a vital part of the good germs exposure for building a healthy microbiome and immune system. I feel my breathing calm and just generally better when my hands are directly in soil, so I mostly don’t wear gloves when doing light gardening. My kids prefer no gloves and being barefoot, but this time of year I’m neurotic about nymph ticks and they’re told to wear shoes in the backyard…which sometimes works. I think feet in direct contact with the ground feels incredible. A cool substitute in doors that I 100% cannot understand, but 100% love is a grounding mat.
ill have my 3 yr.old grand daughter in dirt this spring. her parents garden as well so she will have plenty of contact. i was raised by a gardner as well as working the my great uncles family farm. from picking potatoes to hay bailing and rock picking the fields . we got a good dose of the germs and allergens out there. my wife doesnt like it outside esp. if the bitting bugs are out, which is most of spring and summer. why shes sick 4- 5xs. a year and has bad allergies. when she comes in contact, she usually gets it. i dont remember the last time ive got a cold or the flu. i get dust mite allergies during winter once we turn the direct air furnace on but i can lay in hay or fresh cut grass with no effect. wife has to close the windows when i mow or she has the worse hayfever attack ive ever seen.
If it’s not too cold, I’m barefoot or in crocs most of the time I am outside. If I’m raking or shoveling a lot, I will wear gloves. Other than that, no gloves for me! My 2 daughters (10&4) love to play outside barefoot and play in the dirt/mud!
I’ve never thought it was especially healthy to get dirt on my skin, but i find gloves very hard to work in. And i like feeling the dirt. So while i cover most of my body to keep the sun off, i almost always garden bare-handed.
I did a ton of research on masks during covid. The best masks keep dust out of your lungs with a minimal increase in the difficulty of “sucking in". An excellent mask for breathability is the 3M v flex
I’m not very sensitive to pollen, but if I’m going to be doing something really dusty, including mowing the lawn when it’s dry (especially in pollen season) or digging up a new garden spot on a dry dusty day, i wear one. When i take it off and see that there’s visible dirt that’s been pulled into the pores (or sometimes visible yellow pollen) i am grateful i didn’t breathe all that.
I still wear masks for disease protection when I’m on public transit (like an airplane) or when i visit a hospital, so i have a lot of disposable masks around the house. It’s easy to throw one on for dusty yard work. That’s usually the last time i wear that mask, because if it’s dusty enough that i bother to wear it, it’s going to end up full of dust.
Awe come on. where’s your sense of adventure? At this point, I likely have so many assorted thorns permanently embedded in my hands and arms that I feel like I should bear my own fruit.
“Ah yes, this patch here is from the wild blackberry skirmish of 2013. That one? Oh that is Goumi I absorbed when I believed someone who said Sweet Scarlet didn’t have thorns. No, no, I’m not wearing perfume. I had an ex who used to love beans, but not their effect on me. I’m not going to show you the rose bush, but believe me it’s there. Unfortunately, the darned thing is a multiflora so I haven’t been able to get rid of it. But, on the plus side, I no longer need a belt.”
I typically go barefoot in my yard and nearby park. Only issue I tend to have in my area is that walking on gravel is really uncomfortable (also when pinecones get broken apart by a lawnmower at the park those things are very pointy) surprisingly walking on holly leaves doesn’t tend to cause issues. When going further out I typically wear shoes so I don’t need to worry about broken glass. I don’t like having dirt on my hands but sometimes it’s just easier to just dig with my bare hands so that I can feel where the roots are and remove rocks. When weeding I generally only use gloves for things with prickles or spines and for poison ivy
I remember one thing I did for fun as a kid in the 90’s… smashing old concrete foundation with a hammer and trying to see where I’m swinging but also trying to look away so I wouldn’t get concrete splinters in my face xD But yea today I’m barefoot, I’ll stick my entire arm into places like old rotten leaves and just bush it off n let the moisture dry. Had a pretty cool experience doing this a few weeks ago when I had to try and bunch of my discarded acidic soil that not contains some yacon/jerusalem artichokes and quite a few random sunflower sprouts, I found several baby black fireflies xD It was very very close to total sunset so I was able to see the little glowy tails, funny thing is black firefly adults don’t glow which may explain part of why I haven’t seen all that many glowy adult ones for the past few years, ah well. But yea my feet often seemingly randomly get those nasty painful cuts between the toes They heal just fine though.
Also just saw a glowy firefly tonight xD
I saw a deal on Amazon that offered a grounding mat and grounding wristband for very little. A 24-hour special deal. After testing them I found the mat worked and the wristband did not.
I got a grounding rod I put in the backyard near a seat I have. When I rest from cutting grass I grab or rub up against the rod. It is copper clad iron. I wondered why they didn’t sell solid copper grounding rods at Lowes.
I worry for you haha
They heal just fine though.