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  • From: KAKerby AT aol.com
  • To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Market-farming] oops
  • Date: Thu, 3 Jun 2010 14:33:41 EDT

Well, I just ran what might work out to be a really expensive, failed experiment.  I'm harvesting more and more salad greens, and getting more and more frustrated with my plastic salad spinner.  Given the conversations recently, I wondered if perhaps it was time to graduate to using a washing machine.  Just so happens our existing washer is in good repair but due to be retired.  So I washed it out thoroughly, got it ready for the first batch of greens, filled it up with nice cold water, put in the greens, and ran a cycle on gentle.  My greens came out, well, abused.  Most of the leaves look like they were wadded up in a ball and then flattened out again, with extensive cellular ruptures.  They came out feeling almost like leather.  I don't know how well they'll hold up at market or if I'm going to take them at all.  Should probably just feed them to the chickens. 
 
It occurred to me that perhaps all that damage occurred because they were not in some kind of mesh bag?  Ironically I was concerned that having them in a bag would cause a lot of snags and tearing of the leaves, but it looks like I did more damage than I would have had otherwise.  So, I won't repeat this procedure again until I figure out what happened.  Is the machine's agitation just too strong even on gentle?  Would this have been alleviated using the bags?  I sort of thought I was already rougher than I wanted to be with the leaves and they'd stood up OK with manual agitation but apparently this machine really put them through a whole new level of agitation.  What did I do wrong?
Kathryn Kerby
frogchorusfarm.com (home of abused salad leaves)
Snohomish, WA



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