UnorthodoxY Archive It's wasn't what you thought

I’ve been wanting to sign up to an organic box scheme for a while, but most places were too expensive. A friend recommended East Coast Organics, and so every week I now get one of these:

Box contents and my thoughts on the whole deal are after the jump.
This is actually my second box, unpacking it reveals (click image for a bigger view):

From left to right, top to bottom there’s a head of broccoli, a handful of carrots, a bag of chard (at least that’s what I think it is), a bag of onions, a bag of potatoes, a bag of mushrooms, a head of lettuce, a cauliflower, a bag of tomatoes, a bag of herbs (mostly parsley) and a garlic bulb. The contents of the box vary a bit, some things are regular (the salad, mushrooms, potatoes, tomatoes, carrots and onions) and the others are put in depending what’s available at the time.

The vegetables cost a tenner, the herb bag is a quid extra and delivery is free. I did a little shopping around to see how the price compared with the supermarkets, ignoring the herbs you can get the same amount of non-organic veg for around six or seven pounds. However to get the equivalent in organic vegetables costs at least ten pounds. So counting the delivery you can’t really complain in terms of value for money.

The quality is about what you’d expect, I’m generally not convinced that there’s such a great difference between organic and non-organic but a few things did seem to stand out. The carrots in particular are just a lot more, well, carroty than usual.

There’s a lot of stuff in the box certainly more than I would normally get for a week, I don’t think having too much veg is a bad thing but it’ll take a bit of effort to use it all before it goes off. Of course you could arrange a different delivery schedule, getting a box every fortnight perhaps. Some people will probably not like the random factor in what you get, personally I like getting things I’d never have picked up normally.

Overall I like it, I’m certainly going to keep getting them and see how it goes. They’ll happily send you a ‘try out’ box so it’s worth going for if you’ve ever fancied trying it.

If you do try it out, or if you already get a box, then let me know how it works out for you.