When I was a kid on a dairy farm my hands took the worst beating during winter. Cleaning cows’ teats and udders before milking, on a cold day in January, was a sure formula for cracked skin and chapped hands.

For gardeners the high-risk months for chapped, sore hands are April and May. I like to conduct a visual hand survey at spring Master Gardener meetings. At an early May meeting the majority of hands inspected revealed abundant signs of digging in dirt. For gardeners it’s that time of year.

Some jobs, like planting small seeds, just can’t be done with gloves. And once the gloves are off, it’s easy to continue with other gardening tasks sans gloves because: a) I forgot where I set them down; b) they somehow got wet; or c) how are “winter hands” ever going to toughen up if I wear gloves all the time?

There’s no shortage of spring-gardening chores that are abusive to hands.

After a dozen years of living and gardening on a wooded property, I realize that uprooting small tree seedlings is a never-ending job. Birds spread tree seeds in their droppings, and seeds move about in the wind as they fall from trees. Each spring’s snowmelt exposes a bountiful new crop of woody seedlings: buckthorn, ash, elm, maple, boxelder, raspberry, cherry, dogwood and basswood.

It’s easier and wiser to pull seedlings out by hand when they are 4-6 inches tall than to wait until they have a two- or three-year foothold and refuse to budge when yanked by a set of hands. Attempting to pull larger tree stems out of the ground by hand can slice like a knife through the skin on fingers.

I’ve learned from experience that my hands can uproot a buckthorn seedling up to about a quarter inch diameter; any larger, and the task requires a spade. Buckthorn trees develop an incredibly dense root mass at an early age and don’t give up easily to being uprooted.

Wild raspberry and prickly ash are nasty plants to pull without gloves but sometimes I reason that, since a seedling is tender and young, if I grasp the stem carefully right at ground level, maybe I can pull the plant out without encountering thorns. I am generally wrong, and pesky slivers in the fingers persist for days as reminders of my poor judgment.

Planting and transplanting are possible with gloves but generally are more effective with bare hands. One day this spring I had just begun a lengthy list of gardening tasks when the U.S. Mail delivery person deposited a dozen bare-root white fir seedlings in the mailbox, the reward for an earlier donation to the National Arbor Day Foundation. (This wasn’t the first time mail order trees arrived on an already busy day!)

Since the roots had partially dried out in the shipping envelope I decided to dig holes and plant the fir seedlings immediately. With bare-root plants it’s important to spread roots laterally in the hole and create thorough contact between tiny feeder roots and friable soil. Dirt clumps need to be discarded or reduced to fine-texture consistency. For me, this was another gloveless job.

Each spring I mix potting soil in a wheelbarrow using one-third sphagnum peat, one-third topsoil and one-third composted manure, along with a sprinkle of 10-10-10 granular fertilizer. This mixing process could be done with gloved hands but I prefer to do it bare handed. When the mixture is shovel-turned to its optimum fluffy consistency, it just begs to be fondled with bare hands.

As containers are filled with the soil mix and young seedlings are placed in containers, only bare hands can add and move soil precisely and consistently so clumps are reduced and air pockets eliminated around the transplant roots.

Lest you conclude that I am a sadist or complete idiot when it comes to wearing gloves, I do don various types of gloves for recurring garden chores.

I wear a pair of heavy leather gloves with stiff wrist-protector sleeves whenever I go on the warpath of wild raspberry canes and prickly ash seedlings. For many woody plants it’s critical to pull out the complete root system or the plant will just re-sprout and grow again, sometimes twice as vigorously as before. Gloves are a necessity for thorny stems.

I wear rubber gloves (along with a mask and long sleeves) when applying fruit spray to my apple trees. I also wear rubber gloves when applying full-strength chemical to cut stumps to prevent re-sprouting. Chemicals can be readily absorbed through skin and can cause temporary or permanent neurological problems so I error on the side of caution when working with anything that comes in a bottle with a warning label.