Summer Heat; One of the most important reasons why washing your produce is important. Field Heat can be retained in bunched produce for hours; reducing the quality and  the nutritional value of your produce.Blue Door Garden Peas get a bath

Washing your produce is easy and in the summer can be relieving!

Select a wash tub that can accommodate your produce size; be it the kitchen sink, plastic dish pans, cattle troughs or bathtubs. Keep this vessel clean!  For food safety reasons wash your vessels with soap and water and rinse with a 10% bleach solution; 9 parts water and 1 part bleach water before filling it with clean water to rinse your produce in.

Blue Door Garden July 2009 013

Harvest your produce and dunk it in water as quickly as possible. Swish it around to remove field dirt and heat.   If you able, set up two wash tubs; 1st rinse and 2nd rinse. The resulting produce is clean of dirt and debris and cool.  If possible, store produce in a cooler, refrigerator or coolest place available.

Pack clean produce into clean waxed boxes if possible; no point washing your produce if you place it in dirty containers… We purchase a bolt of white muslin and cut it into 5′ segments to line our wax boxes; the wet muslin keeps produce cooler longer.  After use muslin is washed in bleach solution and hung on the line to dry.

Blue Door Lettuce packed for market