Hello all,

Has anyone made a simple DIY air bubbler for washing vegetables? Does it work well? I am thinking of making one with a 15 gallon or so plastic tote, some PVC pipe, and an electric air pump, kind of like the one in this video:



We eat a lot of kale (that we grow) and my wife usually ends up washing leaf by leaf to get rid of the infrequent very tiny green worms. I'm hoping with this washer I can spare her the trouble. And maybe sell some kale!

At my friend's organic farm I learned the process they use to clean large amounts of greens.
First of all, there is a large tub of water. The greens are simply dropped in, swished under water for a second and left immersed in that for about 5 minutes, then removed and laid to drain on a slotted surface. After draining for a short while the cut greens (lettuce, or mixed salad greens) are spun in a large, industrial size salad spinner, which is cranked by hand. After that they are packed in bags for market. Sturdier stuff like chard or kale is simply bundled with a rubber band, and did not require the work of spinning to remove excess water. as cut lettuce does. Maybe drained a little longer.

Simply soaking underwater for 5 minutes is enough to remove caterpillars or slugs etc. which cannot breathe underwater. They lose their grip and are afterwards found in the waste water from washing when you clean out the tub, either floating on top or sunk to the bottom.
A very large tub of water can be used to wash quite a few greens in this way, assuming they are fairly clean to begin with. The important thing is not to overcrowd your soaking tub, so making sure there is plenty of water around the items being soaked so that insects etc can drift out.

IDK about the bubbler but it looked to me like it could be too vigorous, and cause damage to tender greens. Bruised greens will rot a lot faster. A good keeping product is really important to retain clients and get repeat business.
Secondly it seems like an unnecessary energy cost for a job that can be done pretty much passively, except for putting in, taking out, and maybe the occasional swish to move product in the water without any risk of bruising or other damage.

Thanks very much, Bower. I told my wife and she remembered that that's the method they use back home, but she didn't think about doing it here. I asked her why she didn't do the same here, and she said that because she didn't have a large basin and because she finds there are many worms here, she didn't consider it. I'll buy a large tub!

Do you have brassica whitefly or mealy cabbage aphid over there? I'm on the verge of giving up growing kale since it seems to get infested by these two annoyances every year. Soaking never gets the leaves clean, the nymphs of the whitefly have to be scrubbed off with a brush and the mealy aphid leaves a black sooty mould on the leaves.

We mostly have cabbage worms that look like this https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.almana ... orms%3famp.

Ah yes, the dreaded cabbage white. We have both the small white and the large white, plus the diamondback moth, cabbage looper and cabbage moth.

Cabbage white is our worst offender, with flea beetle a close second when it gets a chance. Oh not to mention slugs and snails!
There is no way to grow brassicas organically here without row cover. And rotation out of brassicas is a must practice every year.
At the farm, row cover stays on until the plants are quite large. Seems that limits the amount of losses.

I was meaning to say, I use the exact same cleaning process in my kitchen with the family sized spinner. I remove the strainer from the bowl and fill it with water, then soak the veg for a bit. Then I take out the wet greens and cut or break into serving sized pieces, which get loaded into the strainer on the side. Empty the main bowl, put strainer in and spin. It is work, no doubt about it, but it is more efficient than other hand methods.

I didn't have a problem removing aphids, except that they swim to the edge and try to climb out, but the sooty mold is game over, eh. Yuck.

There is a similar method for cleaning grubs from mushrooms, which added baking soda to the wash water. That might help in case of really an excess of pests. Or try adding vinegar, is another thing. Either of those should be harmful to aphids and other soft bodied pests, without ruining the food.

Never noticed flea beetle in our garden but I know it's a problem on allotments and for farmers. We net brassicas for most of the year since even when it's too cold for caterpillars, pigeons will fly down and strip leaves down to the stem. Spring is my favourite time to grow brassicas since most of the pests don't appear until summer. Come July the cabbage whites arrive and it's high alert frass and hole watch until October.

Soaking and vinegar is really good for getting rid of aphids but the whitefly nymphs are something else, they stick to the leaf and don't budge without the help of a brush.

This is pretty much what the leaves of my kalettes look like at the moment, though I am slowly reducing numbers with soapy water spray...