Why Grocery Store Greens Go Slimy in 3 Days (and Ours Stay Fresh up to 4 Weeks)

You know the routine: buy the clamshell on Saturday, find the slime on Tuesday, feel like you threw three, five, even eight dollars straight into the trash. Here's the part nobody tells you: it's not you, and it's not bad luck. It's the calendar. By the time most greens reach your cart, they've already spent their best days warehoused.

1. The Tuesday slime. How often has it happened to you?  You eye the tub in the produce section.  It has a best by date 2-3 weeks from now.  You decide to go for it.  Couple days later, open it up, and first thing that hits you is the smell.  A little bit like rotting veggies.  The leaves look a little darker than they should.  And then you see it.  The slime on the bottom.  As one of our customers said, "You feel like you wasted your money."

2. The warehoused salad. We’re a little bit lucky in Vancouver, WA.  Most grocery stores do not truck their microgreens in from California.  But here’s the deal: small, local growers don’t get picked up by individual grocery stores.  Tom approached a few stores.  Every one said, "We only take farmers who can supply every one of our stores in this region of the country."  What does that mean?  Mass grown, assembly style microgreens, warehoused, then days passing before they reach the shelves. 

3. Why same-day harvest changes the math. Every day a green doesn't spend warehoused is a day it lives in your fridge. Can you imagine holding a tub of microgreens that was harvested that very day?  We’re here to blow your mind, because that’s what you get at Good Earth Microgreens.  A fresh batch, grown and tended by Lydia and Tom every single week, harvested and right into your hands.  When you taste them, you’ll never go back.

4. Real fridges, real reports. When we first began in April, we said you could expect your microgreens to stay fresh up to two weeks.  Then we heard from customers saying they were managing three weeks!  Now, Dawn tells us she gets four weeks out of her tubs!!!  So, even if you don’t get your microgreens munched within a couple of days, it doesn’t matter!  Store them well in your fridge and they can last until you get through every single leaf.  What a bargain buy!

5. The storage how-to. Main fridge body (produce drawer preferred), not the door (fluctuating temperatures) or any section that tends to get over cold.  Wash them right before eating – wet leaves go bad quickly.  Use a plastic or glass tub.

Here's the evidence! The top photo is our fresh crunchy mix. The bottom photo is a tub purchased from the natural foods grocery store with a best-by day two weeks out. When I opened it, I immediately smelled rotting veggies. Look closely and you can see some of the leaves wilted and wet. Tom paid $8 and we couldn't even bring ourselves to eat any of it.

Stop paying for greens you end up dumping out: get same-day-fresh delivery or pickup at https://www.goodearthmicrogreens.com/product-page/single-clamshell-weekly-subscription.

Fresh, Crunchy Mix (Sunflower, pea, radish) from Good Earth Microgreens

Rotting microgreens purchased from the grocery store