The Best Veggie Scrubber

"Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from the corn field."
~Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1890-1969, 34th US President

This may seem an odd subject to blog about but if you scrub as many fresh veggies as I do, this is important and I’ve wanted to write a short post on it for quite some time. If you have a lot of vegetables to scrub, a good scrubber will not only clean the food you are about to eat but will not cause bodily fatigue as you use it.

I’ve used a lot of things to scrub my vegetables, everything from nail brushes to those green Scotch Brite pads. Most things I’ve tried worked well, except the loofa sponge. It got soft as soon as the water hit it. The Scotch Brite pads conform well to a variety of odd shapes and crevices but they break down over time and need to be replaced often throughout the year. As I said most cleaned well enough but many also caused some thumb or finger fatigue after a while. Some even caused wrist pain due to the amount of pressure needed to really get the dirt off. Carrots for instance can hold onto a lot of dirt stain, even those store bought that had already been rinsed.

Last year while shopping for my organic veggies at my local health food store I saw this little gem. It has become the only one I use and it shows no signs of wearing out.

The coir bristles are good and stiff. I wondered if they would hold up when wet unlike the loofa.  They do. The store offered the brush in two sizes. The one shown here is actually marketed as a nail brush per the tag but I thought it a perfect size for my smallish hands. There is another larger size marketed as the veggie scrubber this one was a better fit. The bristles are so tough I actually wouldn’t want to use it as a nail brush. That skin surrounding your nails can be pretty tender. Matter of fact these bristles are a bit too rough for the tender-skinned new potatoes or freshly dug sweet potatoes but are great for the tougher potato skins.

I also like that it is made from all natural materials and distributed by a company that is local to the Pacific Northwest, committed to quality, its employees and selling products made mostly of materials that are recyclable or biodegradable.

So if you do a lot of scrubbing like I do, I hope you find and like this brush. Scrubbing vegetables isn’t such a chore with it…well it’s at least a more enjoyable chore.

In Bloom in My Garden Today: Daphne caucasica ‘Eternal Fragrance’, Rhododendron, Daisy

Author’s photo