I'm curious to hear your stories about when the clothes or protective gear you wore while gardening didn't hold up like you expected. For instance, I'll start: the knees of my gardening pants wore out super quickly, which left me with sore knees and dirt all over me. Any tips for improvement? I was thinking about getting a mat, but I'm not sure I'll always have it on hand when I'm moving around my garden.
2 Answers
I used to buy these cheap latex-coated gardening gloves, but they got filthy and stinky pretty quickly if I used just one pair. I found a better solution: now I keep two pairs going. While one pair is getting washed, I use the other, so they stay fresh longer. They've lasted me about two years, and it's way less gross!
Once, I was pruning my tomato plants while wearing what I thought was a pretty tough Kevlar vest, but it turned out it wasn't rated high enough. I actually got a bullet from some 556 green tip ammo through it! Talk about a gardening fail that ended in a scare! Now I double-check my gear before diving into any serious pruning.

That sounds smart! I hate dealing with smelly gloves while trying to enjoy gardening. I'm definitely going to try that!