Garden Produce Wash Stand

Root crops harvested from the garden invariably have soil sticking to them. Soil needs to be washed off before the vegs are brought into the house. In searching for a comfortable solution for a garden produce wash stand to rinse off large amounts of produce, I looked at such options as a portable camping table, or nicer yet, a stainless steel outdoor wash table.

My husband reminded me we had an old table saw stand. We had been thinking of converting it into a table for use in the garden. He suggested we fasten hardware cloth to the top to make a produce rinsing table.

I decided I would rather have a wire basket on top. I could use the removable basket transport the cleaned root crops into the kitchen. Then we remembered our garden cart came with such a wire basket, which we rarely used. It turned out to be exactly the right size to fit on top of the table saw stand.

Our garden faucet sits over a small concrete pad with a drain to channel run-off into our backyard pond. We placed the wash stand on the pad. Then we connected the faucet with a short length of hose from a defunct clothes washer, and attached our favorite garden hose nozzle.

The first time I used the wash stand I quickly realized that holding the nozzle in one hand while cleaning and turning the vegs with the other hand didn’t work real well. So we used a metal hanger strap to fasten the nozzle to the garden fence strategically above the wash stand.

Nearly everything used for this project was salvage from our farm “warehouse.” Our only expense was for the nozzle. And the best part is that the system is perfect for cleaning freshly harvested carrots, beets, turnips, celeriac, and anything else that needs to be rinsed off.