By Jim McCausland, Sunset senior garden writer

Because cold soil and numb fingers take the joy out of winter weeding, I’ve experimented for years with different kinds of gloves. In the end, it turns out that the best — Atlas 451 Therma Fit gloves — are also among the cheapest, at under $5 a pair. 

They have a polyester-cotton knit shell, so your hands won’t sweat, and a natural rubber coating that extends from the palms down over the finger tips. The rubber keeps your hands warm and free of soil moisture, but allows great dexterity as you tease weed roots out of the earth.

I used these two weeks ago when I replaced a couple of declining old roses with two new bare-root varieties. You know the drill: you give yourself 30 minutes to dig out the old roses and plant the new ones.

But then you realize how weedy the soil is, and you spend much more time than you’d budgeted removing every weed from the bed.

When I did this, the top half inch of soil was frozen from a series of very cold days and nights. Yet after two hours of hand weeding, much of it spent breaking up the soil’s frozen crust by hand, I realized that my fingers were still completely comfortable, not cold at all.

Manufactured by a Japanese glove maker named Showa, these form-fitting gloves also keep your hands completely clean during weeding (imagine!).

You can buy Atlas Therma Fit gloves from nurseries, feed stories, and online vendors such as PalmFlex. I've noticed similar gloves at Lowe's and Home Depot, but haven't tried them.

See how to plant a bare-root rose.