When growing your own vegetables, do you have to worry about salmonella?
What is the cause of salmonella? My garden-grown vegetables are safe from salmonella, right?
What is the cause of salmonella? My garden-grown vegetables are safe from salmonella, right?
Unless you or someone uses your garden for human or animal waste its safe. The manure you buy in stores in sterilized. The market problems is often a matter of better supervision of farm workers.
It should be safe. To make sure you don’t ingest anything, keep any human or animal waste away from your produce. Try to harvest it attached to the vine/stem to prevent any lesions on the surface and then wash it thoroughly before eating.
Salmonella, like hepatitus, is a feces caused disease, that primarily comes from meat that has not been washed or that has unduly had manure all over it. Poor butchering habits and unclean habits of care for animals is what it comes from.
It can get swabbed all over other surfaces and cause a deadly illness.
CLEANLINESS with your vegies is a must. Do not use any human urine, or animal manures around them. It is different on a farm, for they allow time for the manure to set into the soil, and time for the PH to change, they turn the soil, and it puts nitrogen in it, and then when the soil is ready they plant. In some foreign countries, this illness is quite common, because of the feces and it gets all over everything.
Too often we busy folk are not patient enough with our gardens. If you do not have the expertise, seek it out. Go to the Food and Drug Administration web site to get further help.
Salmonella and Escherichia coli (or e.coli) are passed on to edible plants when manure (of any kind) has one or both bacteria and has not been properly composted but is used as fertilizer anyway. The bacterium goes into the soil and is taken up by the plants through vascular absorption (or systemically) and is INSIDE the plant and fruit or vegetable tissue – so the bacteria cannot be washed off.
If you use chemical fertilizers, none at all or properly heated manure compost – and there are any harmful organisms in the manure they will be killed by the heat (during proper heat composting) and using the compost is fine. You still should wash all your fruits and vegetables before consuming them
. I hope this information was helpful.
Yes..they are safe as long you aren’t added untreated “waste” to your soil. Salmonella is a bacteria that is introduced by animal waste or runoff. Vegetables cannot carry salmonella on their own.