3 Keys to Food Safety in the Garden
Growing your own food can be healthier than buying junk food from the store. But if you don’t know the basics of food safety, you could make yourself or your family sick. If you follow these three keys to food safety in the garden, you can stay safe and enjoy your garden-fresh produce any time you want.
Key #1: Ditch the Dirt
The first of the keys to food safety in the garden is pretty obvious. Clean the dirt off of your food before you eat it. But it’s not as easy as it might sound. Of course, you can see obvious dirt like when you dig a carrot or potato out of the ground, but there are lots of other possible sources of contamination. What about your harvesting tools and containers? How about your hands that touched the dirty produce and then the clean food? Or the dirt that hides in the crevices of the leaves, fruits, or roots that you grew?
Not all dirt is dangerous, you could probably eat some dirt and be fine, but it can harbor bacteria, fungi, and other germs. Make sure to remove as much dirt as possible from your food out in the garden. Outdoor wash stations can be a great way to keep the majority of the dirt outside where it belongs. Keep your harvesting containers separate from your serving containers. Don’t put a cleaned piece of food back into a dirty container. Check leafy greens and oddly shaped fruits or roots carefully and consider soaking in fresh water to rinse out any hidden dirt. Keep your hands clean when harvesting and cleaning your produce. I know one of the signs of gardening is “dirt under your fingernails”, but you still need to practice proper hand hygiene.
Key #2: Ban the Bugs
Another of the keys to food safety in the garden is eliminating pests. They can attack your plants, but they can also spread germs on your food. Having an abundance of ripe fruits and vegetables in your kitchen can create an ideal breeding ground for fruit flies, house flies, ants, and other insects. But when a fly goes from one piece of food to another, they can transport dirt and germs as well. How can you keep them at bay?
Getting rid of rotting food sounds simple, but it can be hard to keep up when you are overwhelmed with produce during harvest time. You don’t want to waste any of the hard work you did in your garden, but it is actually true that “one bad apple spoils the batch”. Once one veggie or fruit on a tray or container starts spoiling, it can rapidly spread. Insects will take advantage, even before you may be able to see obvious signs of rotting food. Process your food as quickly as you can, keep checking for “bad apples”, and when in doubt, throw it out! Having a compost pile or livestock to feed it to can make it much easier to justify tossing your home-grown food. At least it stays in your home ecosystem.
Key #3: Keep it Cool
The third key to food safety in the garden is probably the most difficult. When you harvest food it starts out at room temperature. This can be pretty high in the late summer of harvest time. With the exception of a few foods (like tomatoes), getting that produce down to refrigerator temperatures as quickly as possible is ideal. It keeps the food fresh longer, it can improve the crispness and flavor of some veggies, and it can prevent some food-borne germs from multiplying and making you sick. But how do you cool a bunch of food quickly?
Luckily washing in cool water to remove dirt and bugs can also help cool your food quickly. Immersing your produce in dunk tanks can be a quick way to follow all three keys. A soaking sink, a rinsing sink, and then into a cooler is the best way to handle foods like salad greens that will be eaten fresh and need to be as clean as possible. For some root vegetables, like potatoes and onions, it’s best to brush off the dirt and allow them to cure. Don’t wash them or cool them until you are ready to eat them. But even those veggies will benefit from storage in a cool dry place.
Use What You’ve Learned!
Now that you know the three keys to food safety in the garden, you can use what you’ve learned. Get out there, harvest your produce and enjoy some home-grown food with your family.
What if you don’t have a big space for your garden? Well, you can always grow some food in a container garden. It’s a great way to get started. You will be surprised how much food you can grow in a small space. Check out my Crazy Easy Containers guide for more.
Want to keep your plants safe too? Check out my post on how to Help Your Plants Beat Pests. You’ll learn five ways to help your plants win their next pest battle.
