On Fri, 28 May 2021 10:01:13 -0400, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

On 5/28/2021 5:53 AM, micky wrote:
Do I have to wash fruit and vegetables I grow myself if I haven't used
pesticide? Haven't used anything.

Right now it's cherries.

I used to have two apple trees but they were killed by cedar apple rush.

Some ugly bushes are dying so I may plant something else too, but now
I'm mostly concerned about cherries.


Washing gets the soot and bird **** off of them.

As a kid, I didn't wash anything. Bird **** and spider webs would warrant a
quick rub across the thigh of my dirty jeans or the front of my even
dirtier t-shirt. Stuff that came out of the ground, like carrots, radishes,
and horseradish, just got a few rubs to remove most of the dirt. On
multiple occasions, I bit into an apple and found a live worm at the core.
Once I bit into an apple and found half of a worm, writhing in pain because
the other half of his body just got cut off. I still finished eating the
apple.

The other day I opened one of those little boxes of raisins and it was
alive with little worms. Hundreds of them. I googled it and G said
essentially all raisins have the eggs, so it's just a matter of time
whether they hatch or not. You can soak the raisins in a bowl of water,
slightly salted is even better, to encourage the worms to swim for safety.
Strawberries have the same problem and the same solution - a bowl of salt
water.

How come as kids we didn't need to wash anything before sticking it in our
mouth but as adults we do? Is it mostly social conditioning?