Lettuce. Bags and heads.

[Syrinx]

What's going on?

If I buy a bag of lettuce, like Dole's or Fresh Express, it starts to rot in a day or two.

But I have some iceberg in my fridge, that I cut and cleaned myself, that is still green and crispy after almost three weeks!

What's going on with that?

:shrug:

[Denninmi]

1. Well, anything that is cut has more surface area to oxidize.

So it's naturally going to brown faster.

I'm very leery of prepared salads, to me its a big bacteria fest waiting to happen. I realize that if I dine out (which is rare) and get a salad, that is what I'm getting 99% of the time unless its a very upscale restaurant (which is about 1% if the 1%).

I have bought prepared salad items a a few times for various reasons -- only way to find the ingredient I want, or time pressures, but I always rewash them really carefully.

You might try repackaging into one of those "Green Bags" -- they really do keep produce fresh a lot longer. Also, make sure it isn't sitting in water, which would make it rot faster. Finally, my last tip, you can sprinkle about a quarter of a teaspoon of powdered Vitamin C on it (Fruit Fresh), but rinse before use or it may be unpleasantly sour.

[Warpy]

3. As I understand it, the cut greens are dunked in a weak sodium metabisulfate

solution to kill all the bugs, spun dry, and then bagged. The problems with the bagged baby spinach salad came from an effluent plume from a neighboring commercial pig farm, if memory serves me, so the washing didn't work on the bugs the plants had taken up internally.

I've had bagged greens last a long while as long as the bag hasn't been opened. Once it's opened, it turns into brown mush in record time, so I only buy it as a rare treat and when I know I'm going to eat it all within a couple of days.

Eating raw produce is a risk in most countries. It's really very clean here, or it has been, so the risk is an acceptable one here.

[Syrinx]

5. Fresh Express seems to do better with drying their greens than Dole does

And they do also seem to last a little longer, but not much.

Thanks for the tips/

[trud]

9. bacteria fest

That's my thought about bagged salads also. With regular greens, you can see what you're getting. With those things, a few times when I opened them stuff had brown edges, so I said forget it.

Glad to see another iceberg lettuce person.

[kestrel91316]

2. Kind of says something about how old that stuff in the bags is.......

[Syrinx]

6. maybe so

I wonder how long it takes for the lettuce to go from the field to a plastic bag in my grocery store? I never really thought about that before, but I think I'll look into it, and see if I can find out.

[Lucinda]

4. I used to buy baby spinach in bags but stopped

for that very reason. I wish I had a farmers market close by...or a bigger yard!

[Syrinx]

7. I would love to have a bigger yard...

More and better topsoil, and lower humidity. :)

[cbayer]

8. I've stopped buying the bags and other containers because I end up throwing

so much away.

I really, really like those heads of boston lettuce that are still alive. If you keep a little water around the roots, they can last for weeks.

And a head of romaine, carefully tended will also last for weeks.

[trud]

10. water around the roots

That reminds me, somewhere, maybe DU, I read about planting the cut off bottoms of celery bunches. I did that several days ago with two, have kept them well watered, and new celery is growing from the centers.

[beac]

11. Never heard of that. What a good idea!

Did you plant them in a pot or in the ground? I wonder how much root space they need?

[trud]

12. in a big container

I forked out for another big container for my deck a few months ago. I find as I get more creaky, I grow more stuff, even veggies, there than out in the very windy garden which requires a lot of weeding since I don't get out there often enough to keep up with it.

Off the top of my head, this container's about 3-4 feet long, more than a foot high, and more than a foot wide. I have a lot of stuff in those containers - a forsythia which I keep trimmed down, iris, beans, strawberries, flowers, etc.

But I don't think celery needs a lot of room is my guess. I think it should be quite happy with a foot of depth, probably even less.