Any suggestions on cleaning soft skin fruit like peaches. If they were sprayed with Neem oil recently or other insecticde/fungicide how does it get cleaned off?
I know for apples sodium bicarbonate is good. From a University of Massachusetts study:
"Rinsing the fruit (apples) in the baking soda solution for 12 minutes was most effective for removing thiabendazole, they found, while a 15-minute baking soda rinse was most effective for getting rid of phosmet.
Some of the pesticide passed beyond the apple’s surface, with thiabendazole going four times deeper than phosmet. None of the washing methods could fully remove the residue."
They used a 10 mg/mL NaHCO3 washing solution. If my math is right that is about 2 tsp baking soda per liter of water.
I wash almost all my fruit with water/dawn and then rinse three times. I don’t know how well they are cleaned but I mostly spray with neem, dawn, or surround.
Walmart sells something called Veggie Wash which purports to remove “chemicals, wax, dirt, and other things from produce”. Amazon has it too. I’m not advocating it- I bet its just water and vinegar or baking soda or some common thing like that, but I don’t know. Here is a little more about it:
I wash with plenty of water. Frankly, I’m skeptical that anything that doesn’t come off easily is going to get removed anyhow, and I doutb that in the amount of chemical that remain on the food there’s much risk.
I got curious after I posted and also checked the ingredients! haha. Great minds think alike. Sounds like the cleaning agent is mostly citrus based. While I was looking, I also looked at a lot of the reviews and the vast majority were really positive, so maybe its worth it. But I still can’t seem myself paying for a produce cleaner- I’m with @marknmt and his line of thinking. But it still seemed worth mentioning for the OP and others.
I picked Carmine Jewel cherries today. Brown rot was visible on about 10% of them. I picked the ones that looked clean but I’m sure there was some unnoticed brown rot on the ones that looked clean. I’m wondering of there is any way to clean them so the rot does not continue on the picked ones.
What I do - pour the cherries into a large container of water. Add an oz of hydrogen peroxide. Let sit 5-10 minutes, stirring. Pick out cherries that float. Drain, rinse, pour into strainer, let drain in strainer.